North Carolina: 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-R04-UST-2024-0279; FRL-12181-02-R4]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>North Carolina: 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 North Carolina (North Carolina) has applied to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for final approval of revisions to its Underground Storage Tank Program (UST Program) under subtitle I of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Pursuant to RCRA, the EPA is taking direct final action, subject to public comment, to approve revisions to the UST Program. The EPA has reviewed North Carolina's revisions and has determined that these revisions satisfy all requirements needed for approval. In addition, this action also codifies the EPA's approval of North Carolina's revised UST Program and incorporates by reference those provisions of the State statutes and regulations that the EPA has determined meet the requirements for approval. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective December 2, 2024, unless the EPA receives adverse comment by October 31, 2024. If the EPA receives adverse comment, it will publish a timely withdrawal in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> informing the public that the rule will not take effect. The incorporation by reference of certain publications listed in the regulations is approved by the Director of the Federal Register as of December 2, 2024. </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> (our preferred method). Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Email: giri.upendra@epa.gov.</E> Include the Docket ID No. EPA-R04-UST-2024-0279 in the subject line of the message. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R04-UST-2024-0279, via the Federal eRulemaking Portal 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">https://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 comment submittals, but if you are unable to submit electronically or need other assistance, please contact Upendra Giri, the contact listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> provision below. The index to the docket for this action and all documents that form the basis of this action and associated publicly available docket materials are available electronically in <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> The EPA encourages electronic reviewing of these documents, but if you are unable to review these documents electronically, please contact Upendra Giri for alternative access to docket materials. Please also contact Upendra Giri 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. For further information on EPA Docket Center services please visit us online at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Upendra Giri, RCRA Programs and Cleanup Branch, Land, Chemicals, and Redevelopment Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 4, Atlanta Federal Center, 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, Georgia 30303-8960; Phone number: (404) 562-8185; email address: <E T="03">giri.upendra@epa.gov.</E> Please contact Upendra Giri by phone or email for further information. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Approval of Revisions to North Carolina's Underground Storage Tank Program</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Why are revisions to State UST programs necessary?</HD> States that have received final approval from the EPA under section 9004(b) of RCRA, 42 U.S.C. 6991c(b), must maintain a UST program that is no less stringent than the Federal program. When the EPA revises the regulations that govern the UST program, States must revise their programs to comply with the updated regulations and submit these revisions to the EPA for approval. 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) part 280. States can also initiate changes on their own to their UST programs and these changes must then be approved by the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. What decision has the EPA made in this rule?</HD> In accordance with 40 CFR 281.51(a), North Carolina submitted a complete program revision application (State Application) seeking approval of changes to its UST Program. The State Application was submitted on October 22, 2018, and amended on February 22, 2023, May 4, 2023, and June 24, 2024. The program revisions described in the State Application correspond to the EPA final rule published 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 UST Program and operating procedures; a demonstration of the State of North Carolina's procedures to ensure adequate enforcement; a Memorandum of Agreement outlining the roles and responsibilities of the EPA and the implementing agency; an Attorney General's Statement; and copies of all relevant North Carolina statutes and regulations. The EPA has reviewed the State Application and has determined that the revisions to North Carolina's UST Program are no less stringent than the corresponding Federal requirements in subpart C of 40 CFR part 281, and that the North Carolina UST Program continues to provide adequate enforcement of compliance. Therefore, the EPA grants North Carolina final approval to operate its UST Program with the revisions described in the State Application, and as outlined below. The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) (formerly the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources) is the lead implementing agency for the UST Program in North Carolina, except in Indian country as noted below in Section I.I. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. What is the effect of this approval on the regulated community?</HD> Section 9004(b) of RCRA, 42 U.S.C. 6991c(b), as amended, allows the EPA to approve State UST programs to operate in lieu of the Federal program. With this approval, the changes described in the State Application will become part of the approved North Carolina UST Program, and therefore will be federally enforceable. North Carolina will continue to have primary enforcement authority and responsibility for its State UST Program. 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 North Carolina, and are not changed by this action. This action merely approves the existing North Carolina regulations as being no less stringent than the 2015 Federal Revisions and rendering them federally enforceable. <HD SOURCE="HD2">D. Why is the 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. North Carolina addressed all comments it received during its comment period when the rules and regulations being considered in this document were proposed at the State level. <HD SOURCE="HD2">E. What happens if the EPA receives comments that oppose this action?</HD> Along with this direct final rule, the EPA is simultaneously publishing a separate document in the “Proposed Rules” section of this <E T="04">Federal Register</E> that serves as the proposal to approve North Carolina's UST Program revisions and provides an opportunity for public comment. If the 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 make 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 North Carolina previously been approved?</HD> On January 16, 1998, North Carolina submitted a complete State program approval application seeking approval of its UST Program under subtitle I of RCRA. Effective Au ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 57k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━