North Carolina: Final Authorization of State Hazardous Waste Management Program Revisions

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 271</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R04-RCRA-2024-0116; FRL-11972-02-R4]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>North Carolina: Final Authorization of State Hazardous Waste Management Program Revisions</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final action. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking direct final action on the authorization of changes to North Carolina's hazardous waste program under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), as amended. These changes were outlined in a June 26, 2023, application to the EPA. We have determined that these changes satisfy all requirements needed for final authorization. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This authorization is effective on September 13, 2024 without further notice unless the EPA receives adverse comment by August 14, 2024. If the EPA receives adverse comment, we will publish a timely withdrawal of this direct final action in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> informing the public that the authorization will not take effect. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R04-RCRA-2024-0116, at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from <E T="03">www.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 or multimedia submissions, and general guidance on making effective comments, please visit <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> The EPA encourages electronic submittals and lists all publicly available docket materials electronically at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> If you are unable to make electronic submittals or require alternative access to docket materials, please notify Leah Davis through the provided contacts in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. Please also contact Leah Davis if you need assistance in a language other than English or if you are a person with disabilities who needs a reasonable accommodation at no cost to you. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Leah Davis; RCRA Programs and Cleanup Branch; Land, Chemicals and Redevelopment Division; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Atlanta Federal Center, 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, Georgia 30303-8960; telephone number: (404) 562-8562; fax number: (404) 562-9964; email address: <E T="03">davis.leah@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Why is the EPA using a direct final action?</HD> The EPA is publishing this action without a prior proposed rule because we view this as a noncontroversial action and anticipate no adverse comment. This action is a routine program change. However, in the “Proposed Rules” section of this issue of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , we are publishing a separate document that will serve as the proposed rule allowing the public an opportunity to comment. We will not institute a second comment period on this action. Any parties interested in commenting must do so at this time. For further information about commenting on this action, see the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section of this document. If the EPA receives comments that oppose this authorization, we will withdraw this action by publishing a document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> before the action becomes effective. The EPA will base any further decision on the authorization of the State's program changes on the proposal mentioned in the previous paragraph. We will then address all public comments in a later final action. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Why are revisions to State programs necessary?</HD> States that have received final authorization from the EPA under RCRA section 3006(b), 42 U.S.C. 6926(b), must maintain a hazardous waste 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 and ask the EPA to authorize the changes. 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 the EPA's regulations in title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), parts 124, 260 through 268, 270, 273, and 279. New Federal requirements and prohibitions imposed by Federal regulations that the EPA promulgates pursuant to the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments of 1984 (HSWA) take effect in authorized states at the same time they take effect in unauthorized States. Thus, the EPA will implement those requirements and prohibitions in North Carolina, including the issuance of new permits implementing those requirements, until the State is granted authorization to do so. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. What decisions has the EPA made in this action?</HD> North Carolina submitted a complete program revision application (PRA), dated June 26, 2023, seeking authorization of changes to its hazardous waste program corresponding to certain Federal rules promulgated between October 27, 1987, and October 1, 2021 (including HSWA Cluster  39.1, 50.1, and 66.1), RCRA Cluster IV (Checklist 126.1), RCRA Cluster VI (Checklist 152), RCRA Cluster VIII (Checklist 167C.1), RCRA Cluster XIX (Checklists 219 and 221  <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> ), RCRA Cluster XX (Checklist 224  <SU>3</SU> ), RCRA Cluster XXVII (Checklists 240 and 241), RCRA Cluster XXVIII (Checklist 242), RCRA Cluster XXIX (Checklist 243), and Cluster XXX (Checklist 244). The EPA concludes that North Carolina's application to revise its authorized program meets all of the statutory and regulatory requirements established under RCRA, as set forth in RCRA section 3006(b), 42 U.S.C. 6926(b), and 40 CFR part 271. Therefore, the EPA grants North Carolina final authorization to operate its hazardous waste program with the changes described in the PRA, and as outlined below in Section VI of this document. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  A “cluster” is a grouping of hazardous waste rules that the EPA promulgates from July 1st of one year to June 30th of the following year. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  A “checklist” is developed by the EPA for each Federal rule amending the RCRA regulations. The checklists document the changes made by each Federal rule and are presented and numbered in chronological order by date of promulgation. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  Although the State requested authorization for Checklists 221 and 224 in its PRA, the EPA is not authorizing North Carolina for these two checklists because they correspond to Federal rules that have been vacated. This vacatur was documented in Checklist 234. The EPA previously authorized North Carolina for Checklist 234 on October 10, 2019 (84 FR 54516). </FTNT> North Carolina has responsibility for permitting treatment, storage, and disposal facilities within its borders (except in Indian country, as defined at 18 U.S.C. 1151) and for carrying out the aspects of the RCRA program described in its PRA, subject to the limitations of HSWA, as discussed above. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. What is the effect of this authorization decision?</HD> The effect of this decision is that the changes described in North Carolina's PRA will become part of the authorized State hazardous waste program and will therefore be federally enforceable. North Carolina will continue to have primary enforcement authority and responsibility for its State hazardous waste program. The EPA will maintain its authorities under RCRA sections 3007, 3008, 3013, and 7003, including its authority to: • Conduct inspections, and require monitoring, tests, analyses, and reports; • Enforce RCRA requirements, including authorized State program requirements, and suspend or revoke permits; and • Take enforcement actions regardless of whether the State has taken its own actions. This action does not impose additional requirements on the regulated community because the regulations for which the EPA is authorizing North Carolina are already effective under State law and are not changed by this action. <HD SOURCE="HD1">V. What has North Carolina previously been authorized for?</HD> North Carolina initially received final authorization on December 14, 1984, effective December 31, 1984 (49 FR 48694), to implement a hazardous waste management program. The EPA granted authorization for changes to North Carolina's program on the following dates: March 25, 1986, effective April 8, 1986 (51 FR 10211); August 5, 1988, effective October 4, 1988 (53 FR 29460); February 9, 1989, effective April 10, 1989 (54 FR 6290); September 22, 1989, effective November 21, 1989 (54 FR 38993); January 18, 1991, effective March 19, 1991 (56 FR 1929); April 10, 1991, effective June 9, 1991 (56 FR 14474); July 19, 1991, effective September 17, 1991 (56 FR 33206); April 27, 1992, effective June 26, 1992 (57 FR 15254); December 12, 1992, effective February 16, 1993 (57 FR 59825); January 27, 19 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 27k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━