For the purposes of this chapter and chapter 103b:

(1) “Commissioner” means the Commissioner of Energy and Environmental Protection or his authorized agent;

(2) “Department” means the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection;

(3) “Solid waste” means unwanted or discarded solid, liquid, semisolid or contained gaseous material, including, but not limited to, demolition debris, material burned or otherwise processed at a resources recovery facility or incinerator, material processed at a recycling facility and sludges or other residue from a water pollution abatement facility, water supply treatment plant or air pollution control facility;

(4) “Solid waste facility” means any solid waste disposal area, volume reduction plant, transfer station, wood-burning facility or biomedical waste treatment facility;

(5) “Volume reduction plant” means any location or structure, whether located on land or water, where more than two thousand pounds per hour of solid waste generated elsewhere may be reduced in volume, including, but not limited to, resources recovery facilities, waste conversion facilities and other incinerators, recycling facilities, pulverizers, compactors, shredders, balers and composting facilities;

(6) “Solid waste disposal area” means any location, including a landfill or other land disposal site, used for the disposal of more than ten cubic yards of solid waste. For purposes of this subdivision, “disposal” means the placement of material at a location with the intent to leave it at such location indefinitely, or to fail to remove material from a location within forty-five days, but does not mean the placement of material required to be recycled under section 22a-241b in a location on the premises of a recycling facility, provided such facility is in compliance with all requirements of state or federal law and any permits required thereunder;

(7) “Recycling” means the processing of solid waste to reclaim material therefrom;

(8) “Recycling facility” or “recycling center” means land and appurtenances thereon and structures where recycling is conducted, including but not limited to, an intermediate processing center as defined in section 22a-260;

(9) “Resources recovery facility” means a facility that combusts municipal solid waste to generate electricity;

(10) “Waste conversion facility” means a facility that uses thermal, chemical or biological processes to convert solid waste, including, but not limited to, municipal solid waste, into electricity, fuel, gas, chemical or other products and that is not a facility that combusts mixed municipal solid waste to generate electricity;

(11) “Transfer station” means any location or structure, whether located on land or water, where more than ten cubic yards of solid waste, generated elsewhere, may be stored for transfer or transferred from transportation units and placed in other transportation units for movement to another location, whether or not such waste is stored at the location prior to transfer;

(12) “Municipality” means any town, city or borough within the state;

(13) “Municipal authority” means the local governing body having legal jurisdiction over solid waste management within its corporate limits which shall be, in the case of any municipality which adopts a charter provision or ordinance pursuant to section 7-273aa, the municipal resource recovery authority;

(14) “Regional authority” means the administrative body delegated the responsibility of solid waste management for two or more municipalities which have joined together by creating a district or signing an interlocal agreement or signing a mutual contract for a definitive period of time;

(15) “Region” means two or more municipalities which have joined together by creating a district or signing an interlocal agreement or signing a mutual contract for a definite period of time concerning solid waste management within such municipalities;

(16) “Solid waste management plan” means an administrative and financial plan for an area which considers solid waste storage, collection, transportation, volume reduction, recycling, reclamation and disposal practices for a twenty-year period, or extensions thereof;

(17) “Municipal collection” means solid waste collection from all residents thereof by a municipal authority;

(18) “Contract collection” means collection by a private collector under a formal agreement with a municipal authority in which the rights and duties of the respective parties are set forth;

(19) “Solid waste planning region” means those municipalities within the defined boundaries of regional councils of governments or as prescribed in the state solid waste management plan;

(20) “Biomedical waste” means infectious waste, pathological waste and chemotherapy waste generated during the administration of medical care or the performance of medical research involving humans or animals and which, because of its quantity, character or composition, has been determined by the commissioner to require special handling but excluding any solid waste which has been classified by the department as a hazardous waste pursuant to section 22a-115 or is a radioactive material regulated pursuant to section 22a-148;

(21) “Generator of biomedical waste” means any person who owns or operates a facility that produces biomedical waste in any quantity, including, but not limited to the following: General hospitals, skilled nursing facilities or convalescent hospitals, intermediate care facilities, chronic dialysis clinics, free clinics, health maintenance organizations, surgical clinics, acute psychiatric hospitals, laboratories, medical buildings, physicians’ offices, veterinarians, dental offices and funeral homes. Where more than one generator is located in the same building, each individual business entity shall be considered a separate generator;

(22) “Biomedical waste treatment facility” means a solid waste facility capable of storing, treating or disposing of any amount of biomedical waste, excluding any facility where the only biomedical waste treated, stored or disposed of is biomedical waste generated at the site and any licensed acute care facility or licensed regional household hazardous waste collection facility accepting untreated solid waste generated during the administration of medical care in a single or multiple family household by a resident of such household;

(23) “Throughput” means the amount of municipal solid waste processed by a resources recovery facility determined by dividing the average annual tonnage of municipal solid waste by three hundred sixty-five days;

(24) “Municipal solid waste” means solid waste from residential, commercial and industrial sources, excluding solid waste consisting of significant quantities of hazardous waste as defined in section 22a-115, land-clearing debris, demolition debris, biomedical waste, sewage sludge and scrap metal;

(25) “Wood-burning facility” means a facility, as defined in section 16-50i, whose principal function is energy recovery from wood for commercial purposes. “Wood-burning facility” does not mean a biomass gasification plant that utilizes land clearing debris, tree stumps or other biomass that regenerates, or the use of which will not result in a depletion of, resources;

(26) “Person” has the same meaning as in subsection (b) of section 22a-2;

(27) “Closure plan” means a comprehensive written plan, including maps, prepared by a professional engineer licensed by the state that details the closure of a solid waste disposal area and that addresses final cover design, stormwater controls, landfill gas controls, water quality monitoring, leachate controls, postclosure maintenance and monitoring, financial assurance for closure and postclosure activities, postclosure use and any other information that the commissioner determines is necessary to protect human health and the environment from the effects of the solid waste disposal areas;

(28) “Designated recyclable item” means an item designated for recycling by the Commissioner of Energy and Environmental Protection in regulations adopted pursuant to subsection (a) of section 22a-241b, or designated for recycling pursuant to section 22a-208v or 22a-256;

(29) “Composting facility” means land, appurtenances, structures or equipment where organic materials originating from another process or location that have been separated at the point or source of generation from nonorganic material are recovered using a process of accelerated biological decomposition of organic material under controlled aerobic or anaerobic conditions;

(30) “Source-separated organic material” means organic material, including, but not limited to, food scraps, food processing residue and soiled or unrecyclable paper that has been separated at the point or source of generation from nonorganic material.

(1971, P.A. 845, S. 1; June, 1971, P.A. 1, S. 5; P.A. 73-646, S. 1; P.A. 79-605, S. 14, 17; P.A. 81-213, S. 1, 18; P.A. 87-531, S. 1; P.A. 88-341, S. 1; P.A. 89-386, S. 1, 24; P.A. 91-55, S. 1; P.A. 92-249, S. 2; P.A. 94-182, S. 1, 4; P.A. 01-204, S. 8, 29; June Sp. Sess. P.A. 01-9, S. 73, 131; P.A. 03-19, S. 64; P.A. 06-76, S. 25; P.A. 10-87, S. 1; P.A. 11-80, S. 1; 11-217, S. 1; P.A. 13-247, S. 312; P.A. 17-218, S. 7.)

History: June, 1971 act replaced commissioner and department of health with commissioner and department of environmental protection; P.A. 73-646 replaced “scrap metals” with “scrap materials” in Subdiv. (c), redefined “solid waste facility” to include resource recovery facilities and limited definition to facilities handling more than five tons of solid waste per year, redefined “volume reduction plant” as one which can process more than 2,000 pounds of waste input per hour and included plants processing refuse for recovery and reuse; P.A. 79-605 rephrased Subdiv. (c) defining “solid waste”; P.A. 81-213 redefined “municipal authority” in Subsec. (j) to include municipal resource recovery authorities under chapter 103b and extended applicability of definitions to that chapter; Sec. 19-524a transferred to Sec. 22a-207 in 1983 and alphabetic Subdiv. indicators replaced editorially by the Revisors with numeric indicators; P.A. 87-531 deleted reference to approval of department of environmental protection in definition of “solid waste disposal area”; P.A. 88-341 amended Subdiv. (4) to redefine “solid waste facility” to include biomedical waste treatment facilities and added definitions for “biomedical waste”, “generator of biomedical waste” and “biomedical waste treatment facility”; P.A. 89-386 redefined “solid waste”, “solid waste facility”, “volume reduction plant”, “solid waste disposal area”, and “recycling”, substituted definition of “resources recovery facility” for definition of “resources recovery system”, added definitions of “recycling facility” or “center”, “transfer station”, “throughput”, “municipal solid waste” and “wood burning facility” and renumbered the terms accordingly; P.A. 91-55 rephrased the definition of “solid waste” and broadened the definitions of “volume reduction plant”, “solid waste disposal area” and “transfer station”; P.A. 92-249 amended Subdiv. (6) to define “disposal”; P.A. 94-182 amended Subdiv. (19) to limit the definition of “biomedical waste” to infectious waste, pathological waste and chemotherapy waste, amended Subdiv. (20) to remove in-patient care facilities from the definition of “generator of biomedical waste” and to specify that multiple generators within one building count as separate generators, and amended Subdiv. (21) to exclude licensed acute care facilities and certain licensed regional household hazardous waste collection facilities from the definition of “biomedical waste treatment facility”, effective July 1, 1994; P.A. 01-204 amended Subdiv. (24) to exclude biomass gasification plants from the definition of “wood-burning facility”, effective July 11, 2001; June Sp. Sess. P.A. 01-9 revised effective date of P.A. 01-204 but without affecting this section; P.A. 03-19 made technical changes in Subdiv. (24), effective May 12, 2003; P.A. 06-76 added Subdivs. (25) and (26) defining “person” and “closure plan”, respectively; P.A. 10-87 applied definitions to Secs. 22a-241j to 22a-241l and added Subdivs. (27) and (28) defining “designated recyclable item” and “composting facility”; pursuant to P.A. 11-80, “Commissioner of Environmental Protection” and “Department of Environmental Protection” were changed editorially by the Revisors to “Commissioner of Energy and Environmental Protection” and “Department of Energy and Environmental Protection”, respectively, effective July 1, 2011; P.A. 11-217 added Subdiv. (29) defining “source-separated organic material”; pursuant to P.A. 13-247, “regional planning agencies” was changed editorially by the Revisors to “regional councils of governments” in Subdiv. (18), effective January 1, 2015; P.A. 17-218 amended Subdiv. (5) to redefine “volume reduction plant” and make a technical change, amended Subdiv. (9) to redefine “resources recovery facility”, added new Subdiv. (10) defining “waste conversion facility”, and redesignated existing Subdivs. (10) to (29) as Subdivs. (11) to (30), effective July 1, 2017.