Hazardous Waste Treatment, Storage and Disposal Facilities (TSDFs) facilitate collection, reception, transport, treatment, storage and disposal of hazardous wastes in an environmentally sound manner. The disposal facility may be having only a secured land fill (SLF) for ultimate disposal of hazardous wastes or may be having incineration alone or combination of secured landfill & incineration. At present, all the common disposal facility operators have not installed hazardous waste incinerator in view of either incinerable hazardous waste generation is not adequate enough for carrying out incineration in economical way or generation is not uniform in all the regions or operators might be in planning phase for installation of the hazardous waste incinerators as a part of the common disposal facilities.

Hazardous Waste (Management & Handling) Rules, 1989 as amended does not stipulate storage time limit either to the TSDF operators or to the Incineration Operators with regard to the storage of incinerable hazardous wastes within such facilities. It is a common practice by the operators of TSDF to store the hazardous waste (HW) till adequate quantum of Incinerable hazardous wastes is procured or accumulated in the common facilities for carrying out incineration as per a planned schedule or till the incinerator becomes operational in case of an incinerator under installation. There was a fire in one of the storage shed of TSDF containing 293 MT of incinerable hazardous waste in drums at Ankaleshwar on April 03, 2008. In this fire, said quantity of wastes in the drums got burnt. In order to prevent occurrence of such accidents, Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) have constituted a Committee vide office order No. F. No.B-29016 (SC)/1/06/HWMD/681 dated April 17, 2008 (Annexure-1), with the following terms of reference:
1. Prevention of fire hazards at TSDF site and major precautions to be taken.
2. Quantity of incinerable waste to be stored at TSDF site for incineration, considering the Incineration Capacity of TSDF site and HW (M & H) Rules.
3. Specification of the godown (s) and the major precaution to be taken in godown for storing hazardous waste in order to prevent fire hazard.
4. Any other aspects related to above with overall view to prevent such eventualities in future