City of Chicago v. Environmental Defense Fund

*340Justice Stevens, with whom Justice O’Connor joins,

dissenting.

The statutory provision in question is a 1984 amendment entitled “Clarification of Household Waste Exclusion.”1 To understand that clarification, we must first examine the “waste exclusion” that the amendment clarified and, more particularly, the ambiguity that needed clarification. I therefore begin with a discussion of the relevant pre-1984 law. I then examine the text of the statute as amended and explain why the apparent tension between the broad definition of the term “hazardous waste generation” in the 1976 Act and the more…