Clean Water Act Methods Update Rule 22 for the Analysis of Contaminants in Effluent

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 136</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OW-2024-0328; FRL 11799-01-OW]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2040-AG37</RIN> <SUBJECT>Clean Water Act Methods Update Rule 22 for the Analysis of Contaminants in Effluent</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to promulgate new methods and update the tables of approved methods for the Clean Water Act. The Clean Water Act requires the EPA to promulgate test procedures for the analysis of pollutants. Promulgating new methods and updating the tables of approved methods increases the quality and consistency of data collected for the purposes of the Clean Water Act. In this rule, the EPA proposes to add new EPA methods for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) congeners, and add methods previously published by voluntary consensus bodies that industries and municipalities would use for reporting under the EPA's National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit program. The EPA also proposes to withdraw the seven Aroclor (PCB mixtures) parameters. In addition, the EPA is proposing to simplify the sampling requirements for two volatile organic compounds, and make a series of minor corrections to existing tables of approved methods. This proposed rule does not mandate when a parameter must be monitored or establish a discharge limit. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before February 20, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OW-2024-0328, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/</E> (our preferred method). Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Docket Center, Office of Water Docket, Mail Code 28221T, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20460. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery or Courier:</E> EPA Docket Center, WJC West Building, Room 3334, 1301 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20004. The Docket Center's hours of operations are 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Monday-Friday (except Federal Holidays). <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions received must include the Docket ID No. for this rulemaking. Comments received may be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> /, including any personal information provided. For detailed instructions on sending comments and additional information on the rulemaking process, see the “Public Participation” heading of the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Adrian Hanley, Engineering and Analysis Division, Office of Water (4303T), Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20460-0001; telephone number: 202-564-1564; email address: <E T="03">hanley.adrian@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Table of Contents <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Public Participation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. General Information</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Corrections or Amendments to the Text and Tables of 40 CFR part 136</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Public Participation</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Written Comments</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OW-2024-0328, at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> (our preferred method), or the other methods identified in the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section. Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from the docket. The EPA may publish any comment received to its public docket. Do not submit to the EPA's docket at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> any information you consider to be Confidential Business Information (CBI), Proprietary Business Information (PBI), 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). Please visit <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets</E> for additional submission information; the full EPA public comment policy; information about CBI, PBI, or multimedia submissions; and general guidance on making effective comments. Publicly available docket materials are available electronically in <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> at the Water Docket in EPA Docket Center, EPA/DC, EPA West William J. Clinton Building, Room 3334, 1301 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC. The Public Reading Room is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, excluding legal holidays. Any copyright material can be viewed at the Reading Room, please contact the EPA Docket Center, Public Reading Room. The telephone number for the Public Reading Room is 202-566-1744, and the telephone number for the Water Docket is 202-566-2426. Fax: 202-566-9744. Email: <E T="03">docket-customerservice@epa.gov.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. General Information</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Does this action apply to me?</HD> Entities potentially affected by the requirements of this action include: <GPOTABLE COLS="2" OPTS="L2,nj,tp0,i1" CDEF="s50,r150"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Category</CHED> <CHED H="1">Examples of potentially affected entities</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">State, Territorial, and Indian Tribal Governments</ENT> <ENT>States authorized to administer the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permitting program; states, territories, and Tribes providing certification under CWA section 401; state, territorial, and Tribal-owned facilities that must conduct monitoring to comply with NPDES permits.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Industry</ENT> <ENT>Facilities that must conduct monitoring to comply with NPDES permits; the environmental monitoring industry.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Municipalities</ENT> <ENT>Publicly Owned Treatment Works or other municipality-owned facilities that must conduct monitoring to comply with NPDES permits.</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> This table is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather provides a guide for readers regarding entities likely to be affected by this action. This table lists types of entities that the EPA is now aware of that could potentially be affected by this action. Other types of entities not listed in the table could also be affected. To determine whether your facility is affected by this action, you should carefully examine the applicability language at 40 CFR 122.1 (NPDES purpose and scope), 40 CFR 136.1 (NPDES permits and CWA) and 40 CFR 403.1 (pretreatment standards purpose and applicability). If you have questions regarding the applicability of this action to a particular entity, consult the appropriate person listed in the preceding <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. What action is the Agency taking?</HD> Periodically, the EPA updates the approved methods in 40 CFR part 136. This proposed rulemaking is the 24th update to 40 CFR part 136 since its inception in 1973, 22 Method Update Rules and two Routine Method Update Rules. In general, the changes in this action fall into six categories. The first category is withdrawal of the seven Aroclor parameters and associated methods. The second category is withdrawal of outdated methods that have been supplanted by already approved methods at 40 CFR part 136. The third category is a simplification of the sampling and preservation requirements for two volatile organic compound methods. The fourth category includes minor corrections in the text and tables in 40 CFR part 136. The EPA is proposing these revisions to keep current with technology advances, and to improve data quality and consistency for the regulated community. The fifth category is new EPA methods for new parameters that are being added to 40 CFR part 136. The sixth category is new methods published by a voluntary consensus standard body or vendor for new parameters. The following paragraphs provide details on the revisions. The first four categories are discussed in section IV Corrections or Amendments to the Text and Tables of 40 CFR part 136 of this preamble, the fifth and sixth categories are discussed in section V Incorporation by Reference of this preamble. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. What is the Agency's authority for taking this action?</HD> The EPA is proposing this regulation under the authorities of sections 301(a), 304(h), and 501(a) of the CWA; 33 U.S.C. 1251, 1311(a), 1314(h) and 1361(a). Section 301(a) of the CWA prohibits the discharge of any pollutant into navigable waters unless the discharge complies with, among other provisions, a NPDES permit issued under section 402 of the CWA. Section 304(h) of the CWA requires the EPA Administrator to “. . .promulgate guidelines establishing test procedures for the analysis of pollutants that shall include the factors which must be provided in any certification pursuant to [section 401 of the CWA] or permit application pursuant to [section 402 of the CWA].” Section 501(a) of the CWA authorizes the EPA Administrator to “. . . prescribe such regulations as are necessary to carry out this function under [the CWA].” The EP ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 64k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━