Cite as: 511 U. S. 328 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
think it follows from the carefully constructed text of § 3001(i) that while a resource recovery facility's management activities are excluded from Subtitle C regulation, its generation of toxic ash is not.
Petitioners appeal to the legislative history of § 3001(i), which includes, in the Senate Committee Report, the statement that "[a]ll waste management activities of such a facility, including the generation, transportation, treatment, storage and disposal of waste shall be covered by the exclusion." S. Rep. No. 98-284, p. 61 (1983) (emphasis added). But it is the statute, and not the Committee Report, which is the authoritative expression of the law, and the statute prominently omits reference to generation. As the Court of Appeals cogently put it: "Why should we, then, rely upon a single word in a committee report that did not result in legislation? Simply put, we shouldn't." 948 F. 2d, at 351.3 Petitioners point out that the activity by which they "treat" municipal waste is the very same activity by which they "generate" MWC ash, to wit, incineration. But there is nothing extraordinary about an activity's being exempt for some purposes and nonexempt for others. The incineration here is exempt from TSDF regulation, but subject to regulation as hazardous waste generation. (As we have noted, see supra, at 331-332, the latter is much less onerous.)
Our interpretation is confirmed by comparing § 3001(i) with another statutory exemption in RCRA. In the Super-fund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986, Pub. L. 99-499, § 124(b), 100 Stat. 1689, Congress amended 42 U. S. C. § 6921 to provide that an "owner and operator of equipment used to recover methane from a landfill shall not be deemed to be managing, generating, transporting, treating, storing, or disposing of hazardous or liquid wastes within
3 Nothing in the dissent's somewhat lengthier discourse on § 3001(i)'s legislative history, see post, at 343-345, convinces us that the statute's omission of the term "generation" is a scrivener's error.
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