Standards and Practices for All Appropriate Inquiries; Notice of Proposed Rulemaking

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 312</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OLEM-2024-0097; FRL-11691-02-OLEM]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Standards and Practices for All Appropriate Inquiries; Notice of Proposed Rulemaking</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> EPA is proposing to amend the Standards and Practices for All Appropriate Inquiries to reference a standard practice recently made available by ASTM International, a widely recognized standards development organization. Specifically, EPA is proposing to amend the All Appropriate Inquiries Rule to reference ASTM International's E2247-23 “Standard Practice for Environmental Site Assessments: Phase I Environmental Site Assessment Process for Forestland or Rural Property” and allow for its use to satisfy the requirements for conducting all appropriate inquiries under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. EPA is additionally proposing to remove after one year, from the All Appropriate Inquiries Rule, recognition of the previous version of that standard, ASTM E2247-16, as compliant with the All Appropriate Inquiries Rule. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received by April 11, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OLEM-2024-0097 at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov:</E> Follow the on-line instructions for submitting comments. Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> . The EPA may publish any comment received to its public docket. Do not submit electronically any information you consider to be Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Multimedia submissions (audio, video, etc.) must be accompanied by a written comment. The written comment is considered the official comment and should include discussion of all points you wish to make. The EPA will generally not consider comments or comment contents located outside of the primary submission ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> on the web, cloud, or other file sharing system). For additional submission methods, the full EPA public comment policy, information about CBI and multimedia submissions, and general guidance on making effective comments, please visit <E T="03">http://www2.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For more detailed information on specific aspects of this rule, contact Patricia Overmeyer, Office of Brownfields and Land Revitalization (5105T), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20460-0002, 202-566-2774, or <E T="03">Overmeyer.patricia@epa.gov</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document, “we,' “us,” and “our” refer to the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Why is EPA issuing this proposed rule?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Does this action apply to me</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. What should I consider as I prepare my Comments for EPA?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Statutory Authority</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. What action is EPA taking?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VII. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Why is EPA issuing this proposed rule?</HD> With this action EPA proposes to amend the All Appropriate Inquiries Rule at 40 CFR part 312 to reference ASTM International's E2247-23 “Standard Practice for Environmental Site Assessments: Phase I Environmental Site Assessment Process for Forestland or Rural Property” and allow for its use to satisfy the requirements for conducting all appropriate inquiries under CERCLA. EPA also is proposing to sunset its reference to E2247-16, the historic version of the same ASTM standard, as compliant with the All Appropriate Inquiries Rule. EPA is not proposing any changes to regulatory requirements in the All Appropriate Inquiries Rule. Therefore, EPA is not seeking comments on the standards and practices included in the All Appropriate Inquiries Rule at 40 CFR part 312. EPA is only seeking comments on the Agency's decision to reference the revised ASTM E2247-23 “Standard Practice for Environmental Site Assessments: Phase I Environmental Site Assessment Process for Forestland or Rural Property” as compliant with the AAI regulation, and to sunset the reference to the previous version of the standard, ASTM E2247-16 as compliant with the AAI Rule. EPA is not seeking comments on the ASTM E2247-23 standard. EPA will address all public comments in any subsequent final rule based on this proposed rule. We do not intend to institute a second comment period on this action. Any parties interested in commenting on this proposal must do so at this time. For further information, please see the information provided in the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section of this document. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Does this action apply to me?</HD> This action offers certain parties the option of using an available industry standard to conduct all appropriate inquiries. Parties purchasing potentially contaminated properties will be able to use the ASTM E2247-23 standard practice to comply with the all appropriate inquiries requirements of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). This proposed rule will not require any entity to use this standard. Any party who wants to claim protection from liability under one of CERCLA's landowner liability protections may follow the regulatory requirements of the All Appropriate Inquiries Rule at 40 CFR part 312, use the ASTM's E1527-21 “Standard Practice for Environmental Site Assessments: Phase I Environmental Site Assessment Process,” or use the standard recognized in this proposed rule, the ASTM E2247-23 standard. Entities potentially affected by this action, or who may choose to use the newly referenced ASTM standard to perform all appropriate inquiries, include public and private parties who, as bona fide prospective purchasers, contiguous property owners, or innocent landowners, are purchasing potentially contaminated properties and wish to establish a limitation on CERCLA liability in conjunction with the property purchase. In addition, any entity conducting a site characterization or assessment on a property with a brownfields grant awarded under CERCLA section 104(k)(2)(B)(ii) may be affected by this action. This includes state, local, and Tribal governments that receive brownfields site assessment grants. A summary of the potentially affected industry sectors (by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes) is displayed in the table below. <GPOTABLE COLS="2" OPTS="L2,tp0,p7,7/8,i1" CDEF="s25,xs60"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Industry category</CHED> <CHED H="1">NAICS code</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Real Estate</ENT> <ENT>531.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Insurance</ENT> <ENT>52412.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Banking/Real Estate Credit</ENT> <ENT>522292.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Environmental Consulting Services</ENT> <ENT>54162.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">State, Local and Tribal Government</ENT> <ENT>926110, 925120.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Federal Government</ENT> <ENT>925120, 921190, 924120.</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> The list of potentially affected entities in the above table may not be exhaustive. Our aim is to provide a guide for readers regarding those entities that EPA is aware potentially could be affected by this action. However, this action may affect other entities not listed in the table. If you have questions regarding the applicability of this action to a particular entity, consult the person listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section of this document. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. What should I consider as I prepare my comments for EPA?</HD> Direct your comments to Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OLEM-2024-0097. EPA's policy is that all comments received will be included in the public docket without change and may be made available online at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided, unless the comment includes information claimed to be Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. <E T="03">A. Submitting CBI:</E> Do not submit any information that you consider to be CBI or otherwise protected through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> or email. You can only submit CBI to EPA via U.S. mail at: HQ EPA Docket Center, EPA/DC, EPA West, Room 3334, 1301 Constitution Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20460. Clearly mark all information that you claim to be CBI. For CBI submitted on a disk or CD ROM that you mail to EPA, mark the outside of the disk or CD ROM as CBI and then identify electronically within the disk or CD ROM the specific information that is claimed as CBI. In addition to one complete version of the comment that includes information claimed as CBI, a copy of the comment that does not contain the information claimed as CBI must be submitted for inclusion in the public docket. Information so marked will not be disclosed except in accordance with procedures set forth in 40 CFR part 2. <E T="03">B. Tips for Preparing Your Comments:</E> When submitting comments, remember to: • Identify the rulemaking by docket number and other identifying information (subject heading, <E T="04">Federal Register</E> date, and page number). • Explain why you agree or disagree; suggest alternatives and substitute language for your requested changes. • Describe any assumptions and provide any technical ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 28k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━