Spring 2024 Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Ch. I</CFR> <DEPDOC>[FRL 11974-01-OA; EPA-HQ-OAR-2011-0135; EPA-HQ-OAR-2024-0089]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Spring 2024 Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Semiannual Regulatory Agenda. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) publishes the Semiannual Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions online at <E T="03">https://www.reginfo.gov</E> to periodically update the public. This document contains information about: • Regulations in the Semiannual Agenda that are under development, completed, or canceled since the last agenda; and • Reviews of regulations with small business impacts under section 610 of the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA). </SUM> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> If you have questions or comments about a particular action, please get in touch with the agency contact listed in each agenda entry. If you have general questions about the Semiannual Agenda, please contact: Caryn Muellerleile ( <E T="03">muellerleile.caryn@epa.gov;</E> 202-564-2855). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Introduction</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. The EPA's Regulatory Information</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. What key statutes and Executive Orders guide the EPA's rule and policymaking process?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. How can you be involved in the EPA's rule and policymaking process?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Semiannual Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. What actions are included in the e-Agenda and the Regulatory Flexibility Agenda?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. How is the e-Agenda organized?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. What information is in the Regulatory Flexibility Agenda and the e-Agenda?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. What tools are available for mining Regulatory Agenda Data and for finding more about EPA rules and policies?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Review of Regulations Under Section 610 of the Regulatory Flexibility Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Reviews of Rules With Significant Impacts on a Substantial Number of Small Entities</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. What other special attention does EPA give to the impacts of rules on small businesses, small governments, and small nonprofit organizations?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Thank You for Collaborating With Us</FP> </EXTRACT> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Introduction</HD> The EPA is committed to a regulatory strategy that effectively achieves the Agency's mission of protecting human health and the environment. The EPA publishes the Semiannual Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions to update the public about regulatory activity undertaken in support of this mission. In the Semiannual Agenda, the EPA provides notice of our plans to review, propose, and issue regulations. The EPA is committed to environmental protection that benefits all communities and encourages public participation and meaningful engagement in our regulatory activities and processes. Additionally, the EPA's Semiannual Agenda includes information about rules that may have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities, and review of those regulations under the Regulatory Flexibility Act as amended. In this document, the EPA explains in greater detail the types of actions and information available in the Semiannual Agenda and actions that are currently undergoing review specifically for impacts on small entities. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. The EPA's Regulatory Information</HD> “E-Agenda,” “online regulatory agenda,” and “semiannual regulatory agenda” all refer to the same comprehensive collection of information that, until 2007, was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (FR). Currently, this information is only available through an online database at <E T="03">https://www.reginfo.gov/.</E> “Regulatory Flexibility Agenda” refers to a document that contains information about the subset of regulations that may have a significant impact on a substantial number of small entities. We continue to publish this document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> pursuant to the Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1980. This document is available at <E T="03">https://www.govinfo.gov/app/collection/fr.</E> “Unified Regulatory Agenda” refers to the collection of all agencies' agendas with an introduction prepared by the Regulatory Information Service Center facilitated by the U.S. General Services Administration. “Regulatory Agenda Preamble” refers to the document you are reading now. It appears as part of the Regulatory Flexibility Agenda and introduces both the EPA's Regulatory Flexibility Agenda and the e-Agenda. “Section 610 Review” as required by the Regulatory Flexibility Act means a periodic review within ten years of promulgating a final rule that has or may have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities. The EPA maintains a list of these actions at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/reg-flex/regulatory-flexibility-act-section-610-reviews.</E> EPA is initiating one section 610 review and is completing another with this semiannual agenda in spring 2024, as described in section III.A. below. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. What key statutes and Executive Orders guide the EPA's rule and policymaking process?</HD> Several environmental laws authorize the EPA's actions, including but not limited to: <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• American Innovation and Manufacturing Act (AIM),</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• Clean Air Act (CAA),</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• Clean Water Act (CWA),</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA, or Superfund),</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA),</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA),</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA),</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), and</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).</FP> The EPA must comply not only with environmental and other statutes, but also with applicable administrative legal requirements that apply to the issuance of regulations, such as the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the RFA as amended by the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act (SBREFA), the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA), the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), the National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act (NTTAA), and the Congressional Review Act (CRA). The EPA also meets a number of requirements contained in numerous Executive Orders: 12866, “Regulatory Planning and Review” (58 FR 51735, Oct. 4, 1993), as supplemented by Executive Order 13563, “Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review” (76 FR 3821, Jan. 21, 2011) and amended by Executive Order 14094, “Modernizing Regulatory Review” (88 FR 21879, April 11, 2023); 12898, “Environmental Justice” (59 FR 7629, Feb. 16, 1994) and 14096, “Revitalizing Our Nation's Commitment to Environmental Justice for All” (88 FR 25251, April 26, 2023); 13045, “Children's Health Protection” (62 FR 19885, Apr. 23, 1997); 13132, “Federalism” (64 FR 43255, Aug. 10, 1999); 13175, “Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribal Governments” (65 FR 67249, Nov. 9, 2000); and 13211, “Actions Concerning Regulations That Significantly Affect Energy Supply, Distribution, or Use” (66 FR 28355, May 22, 2001). <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. How can you be involved in the EPA's rule and policymaking process?</HD> You can make your voice heard by getting in touch with the contact person provided in each agenda entry. The EPA encourages you to participate as early in the process as possible. You may also participate by commenting on proposed rules published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . Instructions on how to submit your comments through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> are provided in each Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM). To be most effective, comments should contain information and data that support your position, and you also should explain why the EPA should incorporate your suggestion in the rule or other type of action. You can be particularly helpful and persuasive if you provide examples to illustrate your concerns and offer specific alternative(s) to what has been proposed by the EPA. The EPA believes its actions will be more cost effective and protective if the development process includes stakeholders working with us to help identify the most practical and effective solutions to environmental problems. The EPA encourages you to become involved in its rule- and policymaking processes. For more information about the EPA's efforts to increase transparency, participation, and collaboration in EPA activities, please visit <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/get-involved-epa-regulations.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Semiannual Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. What actions are included in the e-Agenda and the Regulatory Flexibility Agenda?</HD> The EPA includes key regulatory actions in the e-Agenda. However, there is no legal significance to the omission of an item from the agenda, and the EPA generally does not include the following categories of actions: • Administrative actions such as delegations of authority, changes of address, or phone numbers. • <E T="03">Under the CAA:</E> Revisions to state implementation plans; equivalent methods for ambient air quality monitoring; deletions from the new source performance standards source categories list; delegations of authority to states; area designations for air quality plannin ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 69k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━