RCRA TSDF & Landfill Statistics
As of July 2023, the U.S. Government Accountability Office counted 1,091 hazardous waste treatment, storage, and disposal facilities (TSDFs) using EPA's own RCRAInfo database, and found 743 of them, or about 68%, sitting in an area with one or more selected climate-related natural hazards. Landfills are a different story: EPA's own current guidance says it does not maintain a list of all the landfills in the United States and "can't provide a definitive number on how many there are." Below are GAO's TSDF figures, all from a single July 2023 RCRAInfo snapshot, plus what EPA's own municipal solid waste landfill database tracks in place of a comprehensive count.
What is a TSDF, and how many are there
For this count, GAO defined a treatment, storage, and disposal facility (TSDF) as an operating facility permitted to actively receive and handle hazardous waste, or a nonoperating facility with at least one permitted post-closure unit that still has waste in place. Using EPA and state data from EPA's RCRAInfo database as of July 2023, GAO counted 1,091 TSDFs. RCRAInfo is EPA's own comprehensive information system supporting the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).
Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office, Hazardous Waste: EPA Should Take Additional Actions to Encourage Treatment, Storage, and Disposal Facilities to Manage Climate Risks (GAO-25-106253).
TSDF exposure to climate-related natural hazards, July 2023
GAO ran a screening-level analysis overlaying each TSDF's approximate location against federal hazard data for flooding, wildfire, storm surge, and sea level rise. It did not analyze site-specific information for any individual facility, so these figures show potential geographic exposure, not confirmed risk or damage.
| Hazard | TSDFs potentially exposed | Share of 1,091 | Data as of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Any of the four hazards below | 743 | ~68% | July 2023 |
| Flooding (FEMA high or moderate flood hazard) | 550 | ~50% | 2023 |
| Wildfire (U.S. Forest Service moderate/high/very high potential) | 370 | ~34% | 2023 |
| Storm surge (NOAA, Category 4-5 hurricane model) | 185 | ~17% | November 2023 |
| Sea level rise (interagency 2100 intermediate scenario) | 103 | ~9% | (2023 analysis) |
Each hazard was analyzed against its own federal dataset, dated as shown; these are four separate, possibly overlapping exposure counts against the same 1,091-facility base, not a trend or a timeline. Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office, Hazardous Waste: EPA Should Take Additional Actions to Encourage Treatment, Storage, and Disposal Facilities to Manage Climate Risks (GAO-25-106253).
Solid waste landfills: why there's no official national count
Per EPA's own current guidance: "EPA does not maintain a list of all the landfills in the United States, so we can't provide a definitive number on how many there are." EPA notes there are several distinct landfill types (municipal solid waste, hazardous waste, industrial waste, coal combustion residuals, PCB, and construction and demolition debris), and points to four of its own databases as partial references, stating directly that "none of them are comprehensive": a list of landfills accepting PCB waste, the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program list, the Landfill Methane Outreach Program (LMOP) list, and an archived 1996 list of municipal solid waste landfills.
Source: U.S. EPA, Frequent Questions about Landfills.
What EPA's own landfill database tracks instead
The LMOP Landfill and Landfill Gas Energy Database is a data repository for more than 2,600 municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills that are either accepting MSW or closed in the past few decades, which EPA itself describes as "a majority of MSW landfills" but not every one, and it excludes industrial and hazardous waste landfills entirely. As of September 2024, 488 of the MSW landfills in the database supplied landfill gas to one or more energy projects currently in operation, for a total of 542 such projects, and EPA estimated 444 additional "candidate" landfills could cost-effectively convert their methane into an energy resource.
Source: U.S. EPA, LMOP Landfill and Project Database.
What this data does, and doesn't, cover
Under 40 CFR 312.26, 312.26(c), covering records searched for nearby or adjoining properties, names "federally-permitted, tribal-permitted, or state-permitted (or registered) landfills and solid waste management facilities" within a one-half-mile search radius as one of the record classes a Phase 1 ESA's regulatory database review checks; it does not name TSDFs as a separate record class. TSDFs are hazardous waste facilities regulated under RCRA Subtitle C; the MSW landfills LMOP tracks are a separate, mostly non-hazardous Subtitle D universe, so the TSDF count and the LMOP landfill count above are not the same population and are never added together on this page. The TSDF figures are a single GAO screening-level analysis as of July 2023 (storm surge data dated November 2023), not a current real-time count and not compared against any other year's TSDF total. The landfill figures reflect only what EPA's own LMOP database currently tracks: the 2,600+ MSW landfill total carries no edition date of its own, and only the 488/542/444 energy-project figures above are dated September 2024. EPA's own position, quoted above, is that no database it maintains, including LMOP, gives a comprehensive national landfill count.
Sources
Every figure on this page traces to one of the following primary sources, all fetched and verified on 2026-10-05 and unchanged as of 2026-10-10:
- U.S. Government Accountability Office, Hazardous Waste: EPA Should Take Additional Actions to Encourage Treatment, Storage, and Disposal Facilities to Manage Climate Risks (GAO-25-106253) (published November 14, 2024)
- U.S. EPA, Frequent Questions about Landfills
- U.S. EPA, LMOP Landfill and Project Database
- Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute, 40 CFR 312.26 (Reviews of Federal, State, Tribal, and local government records)
How to cite this page
"RCRA TSDF & Landfill Statistics," Phase 1 ESA Quotes, https://phase1esaquotes.com/rcra-tsdf-landfill-statistics/, accessed 2026-10-10.