Arizona Underground Injection Control (UIC) Program; Class I-VI Primacy

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 147</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OW-2025-0087; FRL 11786-01-OW]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Arizona Underground Injection Control (UIC) Program; Class I-VI Primacy</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 or Agency) has received a complete Underground Injection Control (UIC) primacy application from the State of Arizona requesting primary enforcement responsibility (primacy) for Class I-VI injection wells under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) section 1422. The EPA's approval of the State's UIC program primacy application would allow the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) to authorize underground injection for all underground injection wells regulated under the Federal SDWA and ensure compliance with UIC program requirements. The EPA proposes to issue a final rule approving Arizona's application to implement the UIC program for Class I-VI injection wells located within the State, except those on Indian lands. The EPA proposes amendments to reflect this proposed approval of Arizona's UIC program primacy application. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before July 3, 2025. <E T="03">Public hearing:</E> The EPA will hold one virtual public hearing during the comment period. Please refer to the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section for additional information on the public hearing. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OW-2025-0087 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, 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. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through 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 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> Suzanne Kelly, Drinking Water Infrastructure Development Division, Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water (4606M), Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20460; telephone number: (202) 564-3887; or Kate Rao, Water Division, Groundwater Protection Section (WTR-4-2), Environmental Protection Agency, Region 9, 75 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, CA 94105; telephone number: (415) 972-3533. Both can be reached by emailing <E T="03">UICprimacy@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Public Participation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Written Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Participation in Virtual Public Hearing </FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Public Participation Activities Conducted by Arizona</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">1. UIC Program Development Stakeholder Engagement</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">2. State Rulemaking</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">3. Proposal To Request UIC Program Primacy</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Introduction</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. UIC Program and Primary Enforcement Authority (Primacy)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Class I-VI Wells Under the UIC Program</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Legal Authorities</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. The EPA's Evaluation of Arizona's Primacy Application</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Summary of the EPA's Comprehensive Evaluation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. The EPA's Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Incorporation By Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Executive Order 12866: Regulatory Planning and Review</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Executive Order 14192: Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. Executive Order 13132: Federalism</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">G. Executive Order 13175: Consultation and Coordination With Indian Tribal Governments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">H. Executive Order 13045: Protection of Children From Environmental Health and Safety Risks</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">I. Executive Order 13211: Actions Concerning Regulations That Significantly Affect Energy Supply, Distribution, or Use</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">J. National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act (NTTAA)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VII. References</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-2025-0087, 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. If you need to submit CBI, contact Kate Rao with the contact information available in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. 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/commenting-epa-dockets</E> for additional submission methods; the full EPA public comment policy; information about CBI, PBI, or multimedia submissions; and general guidance on making effective comments. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Participation in Virtual Public Hearing</HD> The EPA will hold one virtual public hearing during the public comment period. To register to speak at the virtual hearing, please use the online registration form available at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/uic/az-primacy</E> or contact us by email at <E T="03">UICprimacy@epa.gov.</E> One week prior to the public hearing, the EPA will post a general agenda for the hearing that will list pre-registered speakers in approximate order at: <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/uic/az-primacy.</E> Please refer to <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/uic/az-primacy</E> for additional updates, including the date and time, related to this public hearing. The EPA will make every effort to follow the schedule as closely as possible on the day of the hearing; however, please plan for the hearings to run either ahead of schedule or behind schedule. Each commenter will have three minutes to provide oral testimony. The EPA encourages commenters to provide the EPA with a copy of their oral testimony electronically by emailing it to <E T="03">UICprimacy@epa.gov.</E> The EPA also recommends submitting the text of your oral comments as written comments to the rulemaking docket. The EPA will make every effort to accommodate all speakers who register, although preferences on speaking times may not be able to be fulfilled. The EPA may ask clarifying questions during the oral presentations but will not respond to the presentations at that time. Written statements and supporting information submitted during the comment period will be considered with the same weight as oral comments and supporting information presented at the public hearing. Updates on the virtual hearing logistics will be posted online at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/uic/az-primacy.</E> Please contact Kate Rao at (415) 972-3533 or email <E T="03">UICprimacy@epa.gov</E> with any questions about the virtual hearing. The EPA does not intend to publish a document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> announcing updates related to the public hearing. If you require the services of an interpreter or special accommodations such as audio description, please pre-register for the hearing at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/uic/az-primacy</E> and describe your needs at least one week prior to the public hearing date. The EPA may not be able to arrange accommodations without advance notice. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Public Participation Activities Conducted by Arizona</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD3">1. UIC Program Development Stakeholder Engagement</HD> In order to have State regulatory authority in place prior to seeking EPA approval of its UIC program, ADEQ conducted stakeholder outreach and engagement to inform the general public, the regulated community, and Tribes of ADEQ's rule development process and to explain and present drafts of the State rules. ADEQ held nine general stakeholder and three Tribal consultation events from De ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 41k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━