Integrating e-Manifest With Hazardous Waste Exports and Other Manifest-Related Reports, PCB Manifest Amendments, and Technical Corrections

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Parts 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 267, 270, 271, and 761</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OLEM-2021-0609; FRL-7308-02-OLEM]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2050-AH12</RIN> <SUBJECT>Integrating e-Manifest With Hazardous Waste Exports and Other Manifest-Related Reports, PCB Manifest Amendments, and Technical Corrections</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) or (the Agency) is finalizing certain amendments to the hazardous waste manifest regulations, and the hazardous waste electronic manifest (e-Manifest) regulations under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) to increase utility of the e-Manifest system in delivering benefits to reduce administrative burden and improve tracking of hazardous waste shipments, and to various related regulations. Among other things, EPA is finalizing changes to manifest regulations for shipments of hazardous waste that are exported for treatment, storage, and disposal. EPA is also finalizing regulatory changes to the hazardous waste export and import shipment international movement document-related requirements to more closely link the manifest data with the international movement document (hereafter referred to as “movement document”) data. In addition, EPA is finalizing regulatory amendments to three manifest-related reports ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> Discrepancy, Exception, and Unmanifested Waste Reports). EPA is also finalizing conforming regulatory changes to the manifest regulations under the Toxic Substances and Control Act (TSCA) for polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) wastes to better align these requirements with the RCRA manifest regulations and the e-Manifest program. Lastly, this action makes technical corrections to fix typographical errors in the e-Manifest and movement document regulations. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective on January 22, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The docket for this action, identified by docket identification (ID) number, EPA-HQ-OLEM-2021-0609, is available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or at the Office of Land and Emergency Management Docket (OLEM Docket), Environmental Protection Agency Docket Center (EPA/DC), William Jefferson Clinton West Bldg., Rm. 3334, 1301 Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, DC. The Public Reading Room is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, excluding Federal holidays. The telephone number for the Public Reading Room is (202) 566-1744, and the telephone number for the OLEM Docket is (202) 566-0270. Please review the visitor instructions and additional information about the docket available at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For further information regarding specific aspects of this document, contact Bryan Groce, Program Implementation and Information Division, Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery, (202) 566-0339; email address: <E T="03">groce.bryan@epa.gov</E> or David Graham, Program Implementation and Information Division, Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery (202) 566-2847; email address: <E T="03">graham.david@epa.gov.</E> In addition, please refer to EPA's e-Manifest web page for further information <E T="03">www.epa.gov/e-manifest.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> The information presented in this preamble is organized as follows: <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. General Information</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Does this action apply to me?</HD> The hazardous waste manifest program affects approximately 106,617 federally regulated entities and almost an equal number of entities handling State-only regulated wastes in at least 750 industries. These industries are involved in the off-site shipping, transporting, and receiving of several million tons of wastes that are required under either Federal or State regulation to use the RCRA hazardous waste manifest. EPA estimates that these entities currently use between 1,834,512 hazardous waste manifests (EPA Form 8700-22) and continuation sheets (EPA Form 8700-22A) annually to track RCRA hazardous wastes, TSCA polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) wastes, and State-only regulated wastes from generation sites to destination facilities designated on a manifest for treatment, storage, or disposal. The affected entities include hazardous waste generators, hazardous waste transporters, owners or operators of treatment, storage, and disposal facilities (TSDFs), as well as the corresponding entities that handle State-only regulated wastes and PCB wastes subject to tracking with the RCRA manifest. Additionally, this final rule affects entities (including exporter, importer, disposal facility owner/operator, or recovery facility owner/operator) who are involved in transboundary movements of hazardous waste for recovery or disposal that are subject to the manifest regulations to track their import or export shipments in the United States, or to the movement document requirements to track their import or export shipments both inside and outside of the United States. Finally, this final rule affects entities who are required to complete any of the following manifest-related reports: (1) An Exception Report when the generator has not received a final manifest from the receiving facility; (2) a Discrepancy Report when the materials received do not match with the quantities or types of materials indicated as being shipped by generators; or (3) an Unmanifested Waste Report when hazardous wastes that should have been manifested arrive at a facility without a manifest. Potential affected entities include, but are not limited to: <GPOTABLE COLS="2" OPTS="L2,nj,tp0,p7,7/8,i1" CDEF="s50,6"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Industrial sector</CHED> <ENT I="01">Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing, and Hunting</ENT> <ENT>11</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Mining</ENT> <ENT I="01">Transportation and Warehousing</ENT> <ENT>48-49</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Information</ENT> <ENT I="01">Waste Management & Remediation Services</ENT> <ENT>562</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Public Administration</ENT> This table is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather provides a guide for readers regarding entities that EPA is now aware could potentially be regulated by this action. Other types of entities not listed in the table could also be regulated. To determine whether your entity is regulated by this action, you should carefully examine the applicability criteria found in the title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) parts 262, 263, 264, 265, and 761. 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. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. What action is the Agency taking?</HD> EPA is finalizing regulatory amendments to the RCRA manifest regulations, e-Manifest regulations, and other related regulations. Among other things, EPA is finalizing regulatory amendments to require hazardous waste exporters of manifested hazardous waste shipments out of the U.S. to submit the export manifests to EPA's e-Manifest system and pay the requisite user fee to process these export manifests. With respect to the movement document requirements, EPA is finalizing regulatory amendments to allow movement document confirmations to link to RCRA manifest tracking for export and import shipments. In addition, EPA is finalizing regulatory amendments to integrate existing Discrepancy Reports, Exception Reports, and Unmanifested Waste Reports into the e-Manifest system which would allow entities to use the e-Manifest system to complete these reports electronically. Also, the Agency is finalizing conforming changes to the TSCA manifest regulations for PCB wastes to align them with the RCRA manifest regulations and the e-Manifest program. Finally, this action fixes typographical errors and makes other technical corrections to certain e-Manifest, movement document, and PCB regulations. Although this final rule becomes effective on January 22, 2025, EPA needs additional time to implement e-Manifest system changes related to the final rule and is, thus, establishing a compliance date for certain final regulations. Specifically, EPA's final regulations associated with the collection of hazardous waste export manifests in the e-Manifest system, use of electronic manifests for hazardous waste export shipments, and use of electronic Exception, Discrepancy, and Unmanifested Waste Reports will not go into effect until December 1, 2025. Affected entities must continue to comply with the existing manifest requirements until and on November 30, 2025, for hazardous waste export shipments and the manifest requirements for exception, discrepancy, and unmanifested waste reporting. EPA is implementing a delayed compliance for these revised requirements so that the Agency can ensure completion of the system updates and necessary preparations for collection of hazardous waste export manifests and Exception, Discrepancy, and Unmanifested Waste Reports in the system. The compliance date is also needed so that EPA has adequate time to work with State regulating agencies to ensure that these manifest related reports are disseminated immediately to the appropriate staff ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> enforcement) in authorized State agencies. EPA intends that the provisions of this rule be severable. In the event that any individual provision or part of the rule is invalidated, EPA intends that this would not render the entire rule invalid, and that any individual provisions that can continue to operate wi ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 347k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━