Chemical Data Reporting; Extension of the 2024 Submission Period

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 711</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0321; FRL-5982.2-01-OCSPP]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2070-AK33</RIN> <SUBJECT>Chemical Data Reporting; Extension of the 2024 Submission Period</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 Agency) is amending the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) regulations to extend the submission deadline for 2024 reports to November 22, 2024. This extension is for the 2024 submission period only. The TSCA CDR regulations require manufacturers (including importers) of certain chemical substances included on the TSCA Chemical Substance Inventory (TSCA Inventory) to report data on the manufacturing, processing, and use of the chemical substances. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective September 27, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The docket for this action, identified by docket identification (ID) number EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0321, is available online at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Additional information about dockets generally, along with instructions for visiting the docket in-person, is available at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets</E> . <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> <E T="03">For technical information contact:</E> Susan Sharkey, Data Gathering, Management, and Policy Division (7406M), Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20460-0001; telephone number: (202) 564-8789; email address: <E T="03">sharkey.susan@epa.gov.</E> <E T="03">For general information contact:</E> The TSCA-Hotline, ABVI-Goodwill, 422 South Clinton Ave., Rochester, NY 14620; telephone number: (202) 554-1404; email address: <E T="03">TSCA-Hotline@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Does this action apply to me?</HD> You may be potentially affected by this action if you manufacture (including import) chemical substances listed on the TSCA Inventory. The following list of North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) codes is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather provides a guide to help readers determine whether this document applies to them. Potentially affected entities may include but are not limited to: • Chemical manufacturers (including importers) (NAICS codes 325 and 324110, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> chemical manufacturing and processing and petroleum refineries) and • Chemical users and processors who may manufacture a byproduct chemical substance (NAICS codes 22, 322, 331, and 3344, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> utilities, paper manufacturing, primary metal manufacturing, and semiconductor and other electronic component manufacturing). <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. What action is the Agency taking?</HD> The current 2024 CDR submission period is from June 1 to September 30, 2024. EPA is issuing this amendment to extend the deadline for the submission of 2024 CDR reports until November 22, 2024. This extension is for the 2024 submission period only. Subsequent submission periods (recurring every four years, next in 2028) are not being amended. EPA is taking this action in response to concerns related to the 2024 CDR data submission tool, primarily associated with the ability of the reporting tool to correctly capture substantiations for chemical identity CBI claims. In the tool, submitters are able to claim as confidential the identity of a chemical substance already listed as confidential on the TSCA Inventory (40 CFR 711.30(c)) by checking the appropriate CBI box in the reporting tool and submitting detailed written answers to substantiation questions. Late in the 2024 reporting period, however, EPA found that when submitters used the reporting tool to copy the substantiation from one chemical to another, some questions and their responses were not copied and were, therefore, not included with the submission. The application erroneously indicated that the information was correctly copied and prevented users from supplying the missing information. Although this issue would only affect the small percentage of the submitters making chemical identity CBI claims, enabling each submitter to substantiate a CBI claim according to the requirements of 40 CFR 711.30 is important. As noted previously, this issue with the CDR data submission tool was identified very recently. When EPA identified the issue, the Agency took immediate action to fix the issue and extend the reporting period. EPA expects to have the reporting tool working properly before the end of September 2024. Ahead of deploying this correction to the tool, EPA (through the reporting application) has asked that users submitting CBI claims involving chemical identities refrain from copying data from one chemical to another. The risk that some users may still use this copy functionality without realizing that it does not work properly (and that their CBI claim(s) therefore have not been properly substantiated), however, indicates that more time is needed to ensure reports are accurately filed. To this end, submitters need adequate time to verify and update, if needed, their chemical identity confidentiality claims and supporting substantiations. Further, EPA needs time to ensure that the update to the reporting tool works as intended, and that sites that have submitted CDR forms prior to deployment of this update have adequate time to review their submission and make updates as appropriate, should this error have resulted in their submission having been incorrectly provided to EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. What is the Agency's authority for taking this action?</HD> The CDR rule was issued pursuant to the authority of TSCA section 8(a), 15 U.S.C. 2607(a). <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Why is this amendment issued as a final rule?</HD> Section 553(b)(B) of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(B), provides that, when an agency for good cause finds that public notice and comment procedures are impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest, the agency may issue a rule without providing notice and an opportunity for public comment. The EPA has determined that there is good cause for making this rule to extend the reporting period final without prior proposal and opportunity for comment, because such notice and opportunity for comment is impracticable for the reasons explained in this section. As explained in the prior section, the electronic reporting issue has unexpectedly narrowed the time window the Agency had allotted under the regulations to complete and submit 2024 CDR reports. The extent of this electronic reporting issue was unforeseen, given that EPA had conducted a beta test with expected users of the reporting tool prior to the beginning of the submission period, and EPA staff similarly had not discovered this issue until three weeks ahead of the September 30, 2024, reporting deadline. Further, most sites submit CDR data during the final month of the reporting period, having collected and prepared data earlier in the submission period. Given that the current reporting deadline is September 30, 2024, regular notice and comment procedures to extend that deadline to address these unforeseen circumstances are impracticable, as the rule could not be finalized before the current reporting deadline. Additionally, notice and comment is impracticable because this deadline extension merely enables reports to be submitted as required under the current regulations, absent these unforeseen submission problems, and does not impact the substance of the data collection or other regulatory requirements. This action does not alter the substantive CDR reporting requirements in any way. The Agency also believes this extension will not result in a significant delay in the processing and availability of CDR information to potential users. This extension will not significantly impact the Agency's ability to carry out actions and activities that rely upon CDR, including work on the TSCA risk evaluations. EPA will consider CDR information as soon as it becomes available and work on risk evaluations remains ongoing. Further, this action is consistent with the public interest because it is designed to facilitate compliance with the CDR rule and to ensure that the 2024 collection includes accurate data on chemical manufacturing, processing, and use in the United States. Finally, any impact on the regulated community is expected to be beneficial given that the extension provides additional time to submit accurate CDR reports to EPA. APA section 553(d) (5 U.S.C. 553(d)), in turn, allows an agency to make a rule immediately effective “for good cause found and published with the rule.” EPA has determined that there is good cause for making this final rule effective immediately because the current deadline for reporting is imminent and the regulated community does not need time to prepare for this change in the reporting deadline; rather, the reporting deadline extension provides the needed time for the regulated community to meet the existing requirements. Such an extension also “relieves a restriction” under APA 553(d)(1), 5 U.S.C. 553(d)(1). For the reasons discussed in this unit, the Agency finds that good cause exists under APA section 553(d) to make this rule effective immediately upon publication in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Do any of the statutory and executive order review requirements apply to this action?</HD> No. This action is a technical amendment to 40 CFR part 711 that is necessary in ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 16k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━