The Hazardous Waste Treatment - Tiered Permitting Program covers businesses that generate hazardous waste and treats it to reduce the hazardous waste quantities or to reduce the hazards associated with the waste streams. Treatment includes neutralization, flocculation, precipitation, filtering, ion exchange, adsorption, gravity separation, sieving, heating, biological degradation, laundering, passive/solar evaporation, washing, absorption, crushing, shredding, etc.
Treating a hazardous waste requires that a permit be obtained from the Certified Unified Program Agency, Environmental Health. Facilities regulated under the hazardous waste program will be classified into one of the following categories based on the type and volume of hazardous waste generated onsite.
The level of regulation of hazardous waste treatment is scaled to the relative risk and complexity involved. Under California's five-tiered system, the County has jurisdiction over the lower three tiers:
- Conditionally exempt (CE)
- Conditional authorization (CA)
- Permit by rule (PBR)