arranged from the bottom to the top of the page to correspond generally
with trends of increasing cost. In terms of the estimated “volumes”
of hazardous wastes treated or disposed ofby commercial offsite
facilities alone, Booz-Allen et a!. estimate that: 36 percent are
treated by “secure landfill”; 30 percent by “chemical, biological and
physical treatment”; 11 percent by “deep well injection”; 8 percent
by “land treatment/solar evaporation”; 6 percent by “incinerator”; 6
percent by “resource recovery”; and 3 percent by “secure landfill
for chemical treatment wastes.”°These percentages reflect onlythe
amounts of waste treated by these commercial facilities, however,
and do not accurately characterize the distribution oftotal amounts
produced. A lot of hazardous materials are just abandoned at open
dumps, scattered along the roadside, or released into open waterways.
Formany of the wastes, the highest-priced process is to convert
them into usable products by recycling or reclamation. These processes
could involve comminution, magnetic or density separations,
and many other elaborate stages linked in various sequences. The
least expensivewaste process, but perhaps the most hazardous methodology,
could he just to abandon it.