Nebraska: Final Approval of State Underground Storage Tank Program Revisions, Codification, and Incorporation by Reference

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR> 40 CFR Part 282</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R07-UST-2024-0452; FRL-12274-03-R7]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Nebraska: 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> Pursuant to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA or Act), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking direct final action to approve revisions to the State of Nebraska's Underground Storage Tank (UST) program submitted by the Nebraska State Marshal (NSFM). This action also codifies EPA's approval of Nebraska's State program and incorporates by reference those provisions of the State regulations that we have determined meet the requirements for approval. The provisions will be subject to EPA's inspection and enforcement authorities under the RCRA and other applicable statutory and regulatory provisions. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective February 7, 2025, unless EPA receives adverse comment by January 8, 2025. If EPA receives adverse comments, 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 February 7, 2025, in accordance with 5 U.S.C. 552(a) and 1 CFR part 51. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments by one of the following methods: 1. <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the on-line instructions for submitting comments. 2. <E T="03">Email: blankenship.marie@epa.gov.</E> <E T="03">Instructions:</E> Direct your comments to Docket ID No. EPA-R07-UST-2024-0452. EPA's policy is that all comments received will be included in the public docket without change and may be available online at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided, unless the comment includes information claimed to be Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Do not submit information that you consider to be CBI or otherwise protected through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> or email. The Federal <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> website is an “anonymous access” system, which means the EPA will not know your identity or contact information unless you provide it in the body of your comment. If you send an email comment directly to the EPA without going through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> your email address will be automatically captured and included as part of the comment that is placed in the public docket and made available on the internet. If you submit an electronic comment, EPA recommends that you include your name and other contact information in the body of your comment and also with any disk or CD-ROM you submit. If EPA cannot read your comment due to technical difficulties, and cannot contact you for clarification, EPA may not be able to consider your comment. Electronic files should avoid the use of special characters, any form of encryption, and be free of any defects or viruses. EPA encourages electronic submittals, but if you are unable to submit electronically, please reach out to the EPA contact person listed in the document for assistance. <E T="03">Docket:</E> All documents in the docket are listed in the <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> index. Although listed in the index, some information might not be publicly available, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> CBI or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Publicly available docket materials are available electronically through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> <E T="03">IBR and supporting material:</E> You can view and copy the documents that form the basis for this codification and associated publicly available materials either through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or by contacting Marie Blankenship at (913) 551-7908 or <E T="03">blankenship.marie@epa.gov.</E> Please call or email the contact listed above if you need access to material indexed but not provided in the docket. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Marie Blankenship, Tanks, Toxics, and Pesticides Branch, Land, Chemical, and Redevelopment Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 7, 11201 Renner Boulevard, Lenexa, Kansas 66219; telephone number: (913) 551-7908; email address: <E T="03">blankenship.marie@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Approval of Revisions to Nebraska's Underground Storage Tank Program</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Why are revisions to State 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 an underground storage tank program that is no less stringent than the Federal UST program. Either EPA or the approved State initiate program revision. When EPA makes revisions to 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. Program revision may be necessary when the controlling Federal or State statutory or regulatory authority is modified or when responsibility for the State program is shifted to a new agency or agencies. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. What decisions has the EPA made in this rule?</HD> On September 8, 2023, in accordance with 40 CFR 281.51(a), Nebraska submitted a complete program revision application seeking the EPA approval for its UST program revisions (State Application). Nebraska's revisions 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 requesting approval, a description of the program and operating procedures, a demonstration of the State's procedures ensure adequate enforcement, a Memorandum of Agreement outlining the roles and responsibilities of the EPA and the implementing agency, a statement of certification from the Attorney General, and copies of all relevant State statutes and regulations. We have reviewed the State Application and determined that the revisions to Nebraska's UST program are no less stringent than the corresponding Federal requirements in subpart C of 40 CFR part 281, and that the Nebraska program provides for adequate enforcement of compliance (40 CFR 281.11(b)). Therefore, the EPA grants Nebraska final approval to operate its UST program with the changes described in the program revision application and as outlined below in section I.G. of this document. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. What is the effect of this approval decision?</HD> This action does not impose additional requirements on the regulated community because the regulations being approved by this rule are already effective in Nebraska and they are not changed by this action. This action merely approves the existing State regulations as meeting the Federal requirements and renders them federally enforceable. <HD SOURCE="HD2">D. Why is EPA using a direct final rule?</HD> EPA is publishing this direct final rule concurrent with a proposed rule because we view this as a noncontroversial action and anticipate no adverse comment. EPA is providing an opportunity for public comment now. <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 publishing a separate document in the “Proposed Rules” section of this issue of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> that serves as the proposal to approve the State's UST program revisions, providing opportunity for public comment. If EPA receives comments that oppose this approval, EPA will withdraw the direct final rule by publishing a document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> before the rule becomes effective. The EPA will base any further decision on the approval of the State program changes after considering all comments received during the comment period. 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 Nebraska previously been approved?</HD> On August 19, 2002, the EPA finalized a rule approving the Nebraska UST program, effective September 18, 2002, to operate in lieu of the Federal program. The State's program has not previously been codified. <HD SOURCE="HD2">G. What changes are we approving with this action?</HD> On September 8, 2023, in accordance with 40 CFR 281.51(a), Nebraska submitted a complete application for final approval of its UST program revisions adopted on July 15, 2015. The EPA now makes an immediate final decision, subject to receipt of written comments that oppose this action, that Nebraska's UST program revisions satisfy all of the requirements necessary to qualify for final approval. Therefore, EPA grants Nebraska final approval for the following program changes: <GPOTABLE COLS="2" OPTS="L2,nj,tp0,i1" CDEF="s50,r125"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Required Federal element</CHED> <CHED H="1">Implementing State authority</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">40 CFR 281.30, New UST Systems and Notification</ENT> <ENT>Title 159 NAC Chapter 2; Chapter 3, intro; Chapter 4, section 001; Chapte ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 57k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━