South Dakota: Final Approval of State Underground Storage Tank Program Revisions, Codification, and Incorporation by Reference

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Parts 281 and 282</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R08-UST-2023-0563; FRL-11550-02-R8]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>South Dakota: Final Approval of State Underground Storage Tank Program Revisions, Codification, and Incorporation by Reference</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Direct final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The State of South Dakota Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources (DANR) has applied to the EPA for final approval of the changes to its Underground Storage Tank (UST) program under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). The EPA has reviewed South Dakota's application and determined that South Dakota's UST program revisions satisfy all requirements needed for program approval. This action also codifies the EPA's approval of South Dakota's State program and incorporates by reference those provisions of the State's regulations that we have determined meet the requirements for approval. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective on July 15, 2024 unless EPA receives adverse written comment by June 14, 2024. Should EPA receive such comments, it will publish a timely document either: withdrawing the direct final publication or affirming the publication and responding to comments. The incorporation by reference of certain publications listed in the regulations is approved by the Director of the Federal Register, as of July 15, 2024, in accordance with 5 U.S.C. 552(a) and 1 CFR part 51. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments by one of the following methods: <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. <E T="03">Email: fitzgibbons.jeffrey@epa.gov.</E> <E T="03">Fax:</E> (303) 312-6341 (prior to faxing, please notify the EPA contact listed below). <E T="03">Mail, hand delivery or courier:</E> Jeff Fitzgibbons, Resource Conservation and Recovery Program, EPA Region 8, Mailcode 8LCR-RC, 1595 Wynkoop Street, Denver, Colorado 80202-1129. Courier or hand deliveries are only accepted during the Regional Office's normal hours of operation. The public is advised to call in advance to verify business hours. Special arrangements should be made for deliveries of boxed information. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> EPA must receive your comments by June 14, 2024. Direct your comments to Docket ID No. EPA-R08-UST-2023-0563; FRL-11550-02-R8. The EPA's policy is that all comments received will be included in the public docket without change and may be available online at <E T="03">https://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. Do not submit information that you consider to be CBI or otherwise protected through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> or email. The Federal <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> website is an “anonymous access” system, which means the EPA will not know your identity or contact information unless you provide it in the body of your comment. If you send an email comment directly to the EPA without going through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> your email address will be automatically captured and included as part of the comment that is placed in the public docket and made available on the internet. If you submit an electronic comment, the EPA recommends that you include your name and other contact information in the body of your comment with any CD you submit. If EPA cannot read your comment due to technical difficulties and cannot contact you for clarification, EPA may not be able to consider your comment. Electronic files should avoid the use of special characters, any form of encryption and be free of any defects or viruses. <E T="03">Docket:</E> All documents in the docket are listed in the <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> index. Although listed in the index, some information is not publicly available, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> CBI or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Certain other material, such as copyrighted material, will be publicly available only in hard copy. Publicly available docket materials are available electronically through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> For alternative access to docket materials, please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Jeff Fitzgibbons, Resource Conservation and Recovery Program, EPA Region 8, 1595 Wynkoop Street, Denver, Colorado 80202-1129; telephone number (303) 312-6633; email address: <E T="03">fitzgibbons.jeffrey@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Approval of Revisions to South Dakota's Underground Storage Tank Program</HD> EPA is publishing this rule without prior proposal because the EPA views this as a noncontroversial action and does not anticipate adverse comments. However, in the “Proposed Rules” section of this <E T="04">Federal Register</E> <E T="03">,</E> EPA is publishing a separate document that will serve as a proposal to authorize the revision should the EPA receive adverse comment. Unless EPA receives adverse written comments during the review and comment period, the decision to authorize South Dakota's UST program revision will take effect as provided below. The State's federally authorized and codified UST program, as revised pursuant to this action, will remain subject to the EPA's inspection and enforcement authorities under RCRA and other applicable statutory and regulatory provisions. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Why are revisions to State programs necessary?</HD> States which have received final approval from the EPA under RCRA section 9004(b) of RCRA, 42 U.S.C. 6991c(b), must maintain an underground storage tank program that is equivalent to, consistent with, and no less stringent than the Federal program. As the Federal program changes, States must change their programs to comply with the updated regulations and submit these revisions to the EPA for approval. Changes to State programs may be necessary when Federal or State statutory or regulatory authority is modified or when certain other changes occur. Most commonly, States must change their programs because of changes to EPA's regulations in 40 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) part 280. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. What decisions has the EPA made in this rule?</HD> On October 24, 2023, the State of South Dakota submitted a final complete program revision application seeking authorization of changes to its UST program that correspond to the EPA final rule promulgated on July 15, 2015 (80 FR 41566), which revised the 1988 UST regulations and the 1988 State program approval (SPA) regulations (2015 Federal Revisions). As required by 40 CFR 281.20, the State Application contains the following: a transmittal letter from the Governor requesting approval, a description of the program and operating procedures, a demonstration of the State's procedures to ensure adequate enforcement, a Memorandum of Agreement outlining the roles and responsibilities of the EPA and the implementing agency, a statement of certification from the Attorney General, and copies of all relevant State statutes and regulations. The EPA has reviewed South Dakota's application to revise its authorized program and determined that the revisions to South Dakota's UST program are equivalent to, consistent with, and no less stringent than the corresponding Federal requirements in subpart C of 40 CFR part 281, and that the South Dakota program provides for adequate enforcement of compliance (40 CFR 281.11(b)). Therefore, we grant South Dakota final authorization to operate its UST program with the changes described in the program revision application and as outlined below in section I.G. of this document. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. What is the effect of this authorization decision?</HD> This action does not impose additional requirements on the regulated community because the regulations being approved by this rule are already in effect in the State of South Dakota and are not changed by this action. This action merely approves the existing State regulations as meeting the Federal requirements and renders them federally enforceable. <HD SOURCE="HD2">D. Why is EPA using a direct final rule?</HD> The EPA is publishing this direct final rule without a prior proposed rule because we view this as a noncontroversial action and we anticipate no adverse comment. South Dakota received comments during its comment period when the rules and regulations in this document were being considered and were proposed at the State level. All comments were addressed at public hearing and/or reflected in the adopted regulations. <HD SOURCE="HD2">E. What happens if the EPA receives comments that oppose this action?</HD> If EPA receives comments that oppose this approval, the EPA will withdraw this direct final rule by publishing a document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> before it becomes effective. The EPA will base any further decision on approval of the State Application after considering all comments received during the comment period. The EPA will then address all public comments in a later final rule. You may not have another opportunity to comment. If you want to comment on this approval, you must do so at this time. <HD SOURCE="HD2">F. For what has South Dakota previously been authorized?</HD> On May 15, 1995, the EPA finalized a rule approving the UST program that South Dakota proposed to administer in lieu of the Federal ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 48k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━