Inflation Adjustment References for Civil Monetary Penalty Amounts in Title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Parts 51, 79, 80, 85, 122, 300, 372, 501, 704, 745, 763, 790, 1036, and 1037</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OECA-2024-0208; FRL 11265-02-OECA]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2020-AA55</RIN> <SUBJECT>Inflation Adjustment References for Civil Monetary Penalty Amounts in Title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations</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 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking direct final action to address outdated maximum and minimum statutory civil monetary penalty amounts by adding language that refers readers to the up-to-date maximum and minimum statutory civil monetary penalty amounts. The Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act of 1990, as amended through the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act Improvements Act of 2015 requires the EPA to annually issue rules that adjust the statutory maximum and minimum civil penalty amounts under the various environmental laws implemented by the EPA to account for inflation. The EPA makes inflation adjustments for each of the outdated penalty amounts in a separate rule. This rule adds language notifying the reader that the penalty amount listed may not be accurate and refers the reader to the EPA's regulation to find the correct amounts. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective on November 8, 2024, without further notice, unless the EPA receives adverse comment by December 9, 2024. If the EPA receives adverse comment, we will publish a timely withdrawal in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> informing the public that the rule will not take effect. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OECA-2024-0208. All documents in the docket are listed on the <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov</E> website. Although listed in the index, some information is not publicly available, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> CBI or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Certain other material, such as copyrighted material, is not placed on the internet and will be publicly available only in hard copy form. Publicly available docket materials are available electronically through <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Ryan Didion, Office of Civil Enforcement, Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, Mail Code 2241A, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20460; telephone number: (202) 564-0332; email: <E T="03">didion.ryan@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Why is the EPA using a direct final rule?</HD> The EPA is publishing this rule without a prior proposed rulemaking because we view this as a noncontroversial action and anticipate no adverse comment because this matter is clerical in nature as these are minor technical amendments where there is no substantive issue and the EPA finds it has good cause to forgo notice and comment because notice and comment would be unnecessary and contrary to the public interest in understanding where the most current penalty limits may be found. If the EPA receives adverse comment, we will publish a timely withdrawal in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> informing the public that the rule will not take effect. Any parties interested in commenting must do so at this time. For further information about commenting on this rule, see the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section of this document. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> The Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act Improvements Act of 2015 (2015 Act) requires each Federal agency to adjust the level of statutory civil monetary penalties under the laws implemented by that agency with annual adjustments to account for inflation. The purpose of the 2015 Act is to maintain the deterrent effect of civil monetary penalties by translating originally enacted statutory civil penalty amounts to today's dollars. The EPA promulgates annual rules as required by the 2015 Act to adjust the statutory maximum and minimum civil penalty amounts in 40 CFR 19.4. Currently, there are statutory civil penalty amounts in 40 CFR parts 51, 79, 80, 85, 122, 300, 372, 501, 704, 745, 763, 790, 1036, and 1037, that were previously correct when promulgated but are no longer accurate because they have not been adjusted for inflation. This rule adds language in 16 instances throughout CFR Title 40 stating the current inflation adjusted figures can be found in 40 CFR 19.4. With these revisions, the corrected regulatory provisions will now be adjusted annually per the 2015 Act. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</HD> Additional information about these statutes and Executive orders can be found at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/laws-and-executive-orders.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Executive Order 12866: Regulatory Planning and Review and Executive Order 14094: Modernizing Regulatory Review</HD> This action is not a significant regulatory action as defined in Executive Order 12866, as amended by Executive Order 14094, and was therefore not subject to a requirement for Executive Order 12866 review. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA)</HD> This action does not impose an information collection burden under the PRA. This action contains no information collection activities and, therefore, no information collection request will be submitted to the Office of Management and Budget for review under the Paperwork Reduction Act, 44 U.S.C. 3501 <E T="03">et seq.</E> This rule adds a sentence to statutory civil penalty amounts in 40 CFR parts 51, 79, 80, 85, 122, 300, 372, 501, 704, 745, 763, 790, 1036, and 1037, stating the current statutory penalty amount can be found in 40 CFR 19.4. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA)</HD> This action is not subject to the RFA. The RFA applies only to rules subject to notice and comment rulemaking requirements under the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. 553, or any other statute. This rule is not subject to notice and comment requirements because this rule fits with the APA's “good cause” exemption under 5 U.S.C. 553(b). <HD SOURCE="HD2">D. Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA)</HD> This action does not contain an unfunded mandate as described in UMRA, 2 U.S.C. 1531-1538, and does not significantly or uniquely affect small governments. The action imposes no enforceable duty on any state, local, or tribal governments or the private sector. <HD SOURCE="HD2">E. Executive Order 13132: Federalism</HD> This action does not have federalism implications. It will not have substantial direct effects on the States, on the relationship between the National Government and the States, or on the distribution of power and responsibilities among the various levels of government. <HD SOURCE="HD2">F. Executive Order 13175: Consultation and Coordination With Indian Tribal Governments</HD> This action does not have tribal implications as specified in Executive Order 13175. This action simply inserts language to inform the public of the current statutory civil monetary penalty amounts. Accordingly, this rule will not have a substantial direct effect on tribal governments, on the relationship between the Federal Government and Indian tribes, or on the distribution of power and responsibilities between the Federal Government and Indian tribes. Thus, Executive Order 13175 does not apply to this action. <HD SOURCE="HD2">G. Executive Order 13045: Protection of Children From Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks</HD> The EPA interprets Executive Order 13045 as applying only to those regulatory actions that concern environmental health or safety risks that the EPA has reason to believe may disproportionately affect children, per the definition of “covered regulatory action” in section 2-202 of the Executive Order. This action is not subject to Executive Order 13045 because it does not concern an environmental health risk or safety risk. Since this action does not concern human health, the EPA's Policy on Children's Health also does not apply. <HD SOURCE="HD2">H. Executive Order 13211: Actions Concerning Regulations That Significantly Affect Energy Supply, Distribution, or Use</HD> This action is not subject to Executive Order 13211, because it is not a significant regulatory action under Executive Order 12866. <HD SOURCE="HD2">I. National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act (NTTAA)</HD> This rule does not involve technical standards. <HD SOURCE="HD2">J. Executive Order 12898: Federal Actions To Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations and Executive Order 14096: Revitalizing Our Nation's Commitment to Environmental Justice for All</HD> The EPA believes that this type of action does not concern human health or environmental conditions and therefore cannot be evaluated with respect to potentially disproportionate and adverse effects on communities with environmental justice concerns. These corrections have no substantive impact; they simply notify readers that accurate inflation adjusted statutory penalty amounts can be found in 40 CFR 19.4. <HD SOURCE="HD2">K. Congressional Review Act (CRA)</HD> This action is subject to the CRA, and the EPA will submit a rule report to each House of the Congress and to the Comptroller General of the United States. This action is not a “major rule” as defined by 5 U.S.C. 804(2). <LSTSUB> <HD SOURCE="HED">List of Subjects</HD> <CFR>40 CFR Part 51</CFR> Environmental protection, Administrative practice and procedure, Air pollution control, Carbon ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 25k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━