Mission Statement

The Environmental Waste Management Program (EWMP) protects Tribal Resources by identifying, cleaning up, and monitoring contaminated locations within the Reservation that pose a threat to human health and the environment. Additionally, the EWMP assists with cleanup efforts at contaminated locations off the Fort Hall Indian Reservation, but on Ancestral Lands.

Areas of Action

The Environmental Waste Management Program manages these federal and state actions on the reservation

1 Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and Superfund (participation), which provides a means to cleanup uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous-waste sites as well as accidents, spills, and other emergency releases of pollutants and contaminants into the environment.

2 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), which controls the generation, transportation, treatment, storage, and disposal of hazardous waste on the Reservation.

3 Brownfields site investigation and cleanup with EPA. Residential and industrial sites containing hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants are prioritized by risk to human health and the environment, remediated if feasible, then prepared for reuse and revitalization.

EWMP Tribal Brownfields Response Program

In 1995, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established the Brownfields Program and it has since grown into a nationwide plan of environmental restoration. Since 2006, the EWMP Tribal Brownfields Response Program has provided identification, assessment, cleanup, oversight and monitoring of sites within the Reservation that contain contaminants, pollutants or other materials with the potential to adversely affect human health and the environment.