Hazardous and Solid Waste Management System: Disposal of Coal Combustion Residuals From Electric Utilities; Legacy CCR Surface Impoundments; Correction

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Parts 9 and 257</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OLEM-2020-0107; FRL-7814.1-02-OLEM]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2050-AH34</RIN> <SUBJECT>Hazardous and Solid Waste Management System: Disposal of Coal Combustion Residuals From Electric Utilities; Legacy CCR Surface Impoundments; Correction</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Direct final rule; correction. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA or the Agency) is taking direct final action to correct three errors published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on May 8, 2024. This May 8, 2024 rule (Legacy Final Rule) established regulatory requirements for legacy coal combustion residuals (CCR) surface impoundments and CCR management units, among other things, under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). This document makes clear that the effective date of the Legacy Final Rule is November 8, 2024 and corrects inadvertent deletions in the existing 2015 regulatory text. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective on February 6, 2025 without further notice unless EPA receives adverse comment by December 9, 2024. If EPA receives adverse comment, the Agency will publish a timely withdrawal in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> informing the public about the specific regulatory paragraph or amendment that will not take effect. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OLEM-2020-0107. 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> Taylor Holt, Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery, Materials Recovery and Waste Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, MC: 5304T, Washington, DC 20460; telephone number: (202) 566-1439; email address: <E T="03">Holt.Taylor@epa.gov,</E> or Frank Behan, Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery, Materials Recovery and Waste Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, MC: 5304T, Washington, DC 20460; telephone number: (202) 566-0531; email address: <E T="03">Behan.Frank@epa.gov.</E> For more information on this rulemaking, please visit <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/coalash.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Why is the EPA using a direct final rule?</HD> EPA is publishing this rule without a prior proposed rule because EPA views this as a noncontroversial action and anticipates no adverse comment since the amendments merely correct errors in the Legacy Final Rule. However, in the “Proposed Rules” section of this <E T="04">Federal Register</E> publication, EPA is publishing a separate document that will serve as the proposed rule to adopt the provisions in this direct final rule if adverse comments are received on this direct final rule. The Agency 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 rule, see the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section of the proposed rule document. If EPA receives adverse comment, EPA will publish a timely withdrawal in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> informing the public about the specific regulatory paragraph(s) or amendment(s) that will not take effect. The corrections that are not withdrawn will become effective on the date set out above. EPA would address all public comments in any subsequent final rule based on the comments and new information submitted in response to the proposed rule. In light of the narrow purpose of this rule to conform the regulatory text to the final actions described in the Legacy Final Rule, EPA is only soliciting comment on whether the changes in this direct final rule conform the text to EPA's stated intent in the Legacy Final Rule preamble. EPA is not reconsidering, proposing to reopen, or otherwise soliciting comment on any provisions of the Legacy Final Rule itself. For the reader's convenience, EPA has provided a background description of individual provisions in the Legacy Final Rule in several places throughout this preamble. These descriptions do not reopen the underlying described provisions, but merely explain the context to inform the public of the basis for this action's technical corrections. EPA will not respond to comments submitted on any issues other than those specifically identified in this action, and such comments will not be considered part of the rulemaking record. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. General Information</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Does this action apply to me?</HD> This rule may be of interest to electric utilities and independent power producers that fall within the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code 221112. The reference to NAICS code 221112 is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather provides a guide for readers regarding entities likely to be regulated by this action. This discussion lists the types of entities that EPA is now aware could potentially be regulated by this action. Other types of entities not described here could also be regulated. To determine whether your entity is regulated by this action, you should carefully examine the applicability criteria found in 40 CFR 257.50 of title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations. If you have questions regarding the applicability of this action to a particular entity, consult the persons listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. What action is the agency taking?</HD> EPA is correcting errors in the Legacy Final Rule published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on May 8, 2024, which established regulatory requirements for legacy CCR surface impoundments and CCR management units (CCRMU). <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. What is the agency's authority for taking this action?</HD> EPA is publishing this rule under the authority of sections 1008(a)(3), 2002(a), 4004, and 4005(a), (d) of the Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1970, as amended by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA), as amended by the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments of 1984 (HSWA) and the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation (WIIN) Act of 2016, 42 U.S.C. 6907(a), 6912(a), 6944, 6945(a) and (d). <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Background</HD> On April 17, 2015, EPA issued national minimum criteria for the disposal of CCR as solid waste under subtitle D of RCRA (80 FR 21302) (2015 CCR Rule or CCR regulations). The 2015 CCR Rule, codified in subpart D of part 257 of Title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations, established regulations for existing and new CCR landfills, existing and new CCR surface impoundments, and all lateral expansions of these CCR units. The 2015 CCR Rule also imposed requirements on inactive surface impoundments at active facilities but exempted inactive surface impoundments at inactive facilities. On August 21, 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated and remanded the provision that exempted inactive impoundments at inactive facilities from the CCR regulations. <E T="03">Utility Solid Waste Activities Group, et al.</E> v. <E T="03">EPA</E> ( <E T="03">USWAG</E> ) 901 F.3d 414 (D.C. Cir. 2018). On May 8, 2024, EPA published the Legacy Final Rule regulating inactive surface impoundments at inactive facilities (legacy CCR surface impoundments or legacy impoundments) under 40 CFR part 257, subpart D. (89 FR 38950). In addition, the final rule established requirements to address the risks from solid waste management activities involving the direct placement of CCR on the land that was exempt from regulation under the 2015 CCR Rule. This included inactive CCR landfills, and CCR surface impoundments and landfills that closed prior to the effective date of the 2015 CCR Rule; the final rule refers to these newly regulated units as CCRMU. The Legacy Final Rule added a definition for legacy CCR surface impoundments, CCRMU, among other terms. It also established the regulatory requirements applicable to legacy CCR surface impoundments and CCRMU, which largely consist of requiring compliance with certain existing CCR regulations, along with tailored compliance deadlines. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Revisions to Part 257, Subpart D</HD> Since publication of the Legacy Final Rule, EPA has identified several errors in the Legacy Final Rule. Some of these issues were raised to the Agency's attention by members of the public including industry, non-governmental organizations, and State regulatory agencies. EPA is addressing three of these errors in this direct final rule and companion proposed rule. These changes are: (1) Fixing an error that caused confusion regarding the November 8, 2024 effective date of the Legacy Final Rule; and (2) Correcting inadvertent deletions in existing 2015 regulatory text caused by incorrect amendatory instruction. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Amendatory instructions are the specific instructions the Agency provides to the Office of the Federal Register on how to amend the regulatory text. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. The Effective Date of the Legacy Final Rule Is November 8, 2024</HD> Section 4004(c) of ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 24k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━