Fees for the Administration of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 700</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OPPT-2020-0493; FRL-7911-05-OCSPP]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2070-AK64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fees for the Administration of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is finalizing amendments to the 2018 final rule that established fees for the administration of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Specifically, EPA is finalizing changes to the fee amounts and EPA's total costs for administering TSCA; exemptions for entities subject to the EPA-initiated risk evaluation fees; exemptions for test rule fee activities; modifications to the self-identification and reporting requirements of EPA-initiated risk evaluation and test rule fees; modifications to EPA's proposed methodology for the production-volume-based fee allocation for EPA-initiated risk evaluation fees in any scenario in which a consortium is not formed; expanded fee requirements to companies required to submit information for test orders; modifications to the fee payment obligations of processors subject to test orders and enforceable consent agreements (ECA); and extended timeframes for certain fee payments and notices. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective on April 22, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The docket for this action, identified by docket identification (ID) number EPA-HQ-OPP-2020-0493, is available online at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Additional instructions on visiting the docket, along with more information about dockets generally, is available at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> <E T="03">For technical information contact:</E> Marc Edmonds, Existing Chemicals Risk Management Division (7404M), Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20460-0001; telephone number: (202) 566-0758; email address: <E T="03">edmonds.marc@epa.gov.</E> <E T="03">For general information contact:</E> The TSCA-Hotline, ABVI-Goodwill, 422 South Clinton Ave., Rochester, NY 14620; telephone number: (202) 554-1404; email address: <E T="03">TSCA-Hotline@epa.gov.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Does this action apply to me?</HD> You may be affected by this action if you manufacture (including import), process, or distribute in commerce a chemical substance (or any combination of such activities) and are required to submit information to EPA under TSCA sections 4 or 5, or if you manufacture a chemical substance that is the subject of a risk evaluation under TSCA section 6(b). The following list of North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather provides a guide to help readers determine whether this document applies to them. Potentially affected entities may include companies found in major NAICS groups: • Chemical Manufacturers (NAICS code 325). • Petroleum and Coal Products (NAICS code 324). • Chemical, Petroleum and Merchant Wholesalers (NAICS code 424). If you have any questions regarding the applicability of this action, please consult the technical person listed under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. What is the Agency's authority for taking this action?</HD> TSCA, 15 U.S.C. 2601 <E T="03">et seq.,</E> as amended by the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act of 2016 (Pub. L. 114-182) (Ref. 1), provides EPA with authority to establish fees to defray, or provide payment for, a portion of the costs associated with administering TSCA sections 4, 5, and 6, as amended, as well as the costs of collecting, processing, reviewing, and providing access to and protecting from disclosure as appropriate under TSCA section 14 information on chemical substances under TSCA. EPA is required in TSCA section 26(b)(4)(F) to review and, if necessary, adjust the fees every three years after consultation with parties potentially subject to fees, to ensure that funds are sufficient to defray part of the cost of administering TSCA. EPA is issuing this final rule under TSCA section 26(b), 15 U.S.C. 2625(b). <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. What action is the Agency taking?</HD> After establishing fees under TSCA section 26(b), TSCA requires EPA to review and, if necessary, adjust the fees every three years, after consultation with parties potentially subject to fees. This document describes the final changes to 40 CFR part 700, subpart C as promulgated in the final rule entitled “Fees for the Administration of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)” (2018 Fee Rule) (83 FR 52694) (Ref. 2) and explains the methodology by which these changes to TSCA fees were determined. <HD SOURCE="HD2">D. Why is the Agency taking this action?</HD> The fees collected under TSCA are intended to achieve the goals articulated by Congress by providing a sustainable source of funds for EPA to fulfill its legal obligations under TSCA sections 4, 5, and 6 and with respect to information management under TSCA section 14. Information management includes “collecting, processing, reviewing, and providing access to and protecting from disclosure as appropriate under [section 14] information on chemical substances under [TSCA]” (15 U.S.C. 2625(b)(1)). In 2021, EPA proposed changes to the TSCA fee requirements established in the 2018 Fee Rule (2021 Proposal) (Ref. 3) based upon TSCA implementation experience. In the 2021 Proposal, EPA proposed to adjust the fee amounts based on changes to program costs and inflation and to address certain issues related to implementation of the fee requirements (Ref. 3). EPA consulted and met with stakeholders that were potentially subject to fees, including several meetings with individual stakeholders and public webinars in February 2021 and December 2022. Additional information on the stakeholder engagement can be found in the 2021 Proposal, Unit III.A.1. (Ref. 3) and in Unit II.B. of this final rule. This final rule takes into consideration comments received in response to the 2021 Proposal and a 2022 Supplemental Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (2022 Supplemental Notice) (87 FR 68647) (Ref. 4). A summary of those comments and the responses can be found in the Response to Comments (RtC) document for this rulemaking (Ref. 5). Based on the comments received, EPA experience implementing TSCA, adjustments to EPA's cost estimates, and experience implementing the 2018 Fee Rule, EPA is issuing this final rule to amend the 2018 Fee Rule. <HD SOURCE="HD2">E. What are the estimated incremental impacts of this action?</HD> EPA has evaluated the potential incremental economic impacts of the 2021 Proposal, as modified by the 2022 Supplemental Notice for FY 2023 through FY 2025, and the economic analysis for this final rule, entitled “Economic Analysis of the Final Rule; Fees for the Administration of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)” (Economic Analysis) (Ref. 6) is available in the docket and is briefly summarized here. 1. <E T="03">Benefits.</E> The principal benefit of the 2021 Proposal, as modified by the 2022 Supplemental Notice, is to provide EPA with a sustainable source of funding necessary to administer certain provisions of TSCA. 2. <E T="03">Cost.</E> The annualized fees collected from industry under the proposed cost estimate described in this final rule are approximately $36.69 million (after refunds) at both 3 percent and 7 percent discount rates (the annualized fee collection is independent of the discount rate), excluding fees collected for manufacturer-requested risk evaluations. Total annualized fee collection was calculated by multiplying the estimated number of fee-triggering events anticipated each year by the corresponding fees (Refs. 6 and 7). Total annual fee collection for manufacturer-requested risk evaluations (MRREs) is estimated to be $2.84 million for chemicals included in the 2014 TSCA Work Plan (TSCA Work Plan) (Ref. 7) (based on the assumed potential for two requests over the three-year period) and approximately $2.83 million for chemicals not included in the TSCA Work Plan (based on the assumed potential for one request over the three-year period) (Ref. 7). EPA analyzed a three-year period because the statute requires EPA to reevaluate and adjust the fees, as necessary, every three years. 3. <E T="03">Small entity impact.</E> EPA estimates that 31.7 percent of TSCA section 5 submissions will be from small businesses in the 33 industries anticipated to be affected by this rulemaking (from the petroleum manufacturing, chemical manufacturing, and merchant wholesalers, and nondurable goods sectors with three-digit NAICS codes 324, 325, and 424) that are eligible to pay the TSCA section 5 small business fee because they meet the definition of “small business concern” as defined in 40 CFR 700.43. Total annualized fee collection from small businesses submitting notices under TSCA section 5 is estimated to be $583,104 (Ref. 6). For TSCA sections 4 and 6, reduced fees paid by eligible small businesses and fees paid by non-small businesses may differ because the fee paid by each entity would be dependent on the number of entities required to share the total fee per fee-triggering event and production volume of that chemical substance. EPA estimates that average annual fee collection from small businesses for fee-triggering events under TSCA sections 4 and 6 would be approximately $20,427 and $1,827,483, respectively (Ref. 6). For each of the three years covered by this final rule, EPA estimates that total fee revenue collected fro ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 131k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━