North Dakota: Approval of State Coal Combustion Residuals Permit Program

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 257</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OLEM-2021-0051; FRL-12769-01-OLEM]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>North Dakota: Approval of State Coal Combustion Residuals Permit Program</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notification of availability; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA or the Agency) is proposing to approve North Dakota Coal Combustion Residuals (CCR) partial permit program under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). After reviewing the CCR permit program application submitted by the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality (NDDEQ), EPA has preliminarily determined that North Dakota's CCR permit program meets the standard for partial approval under RCRA. If approved, North Dakota's CCR permit program will operate in lieu of the Federal CCR program with the exception of the specific provisions noted below. EPA is seeking comment on this proposal during a 60-day public comment period and will be holding a hybrid in-person and virtual public hearing on EPA's preliminary approval of North Dakota's partial CCR permit program. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before July 15, 2025. <E T="03">Public hearing:</E> EPA will hold an in-person and online hybrid public hearing on July 8, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OLEM-2021-0051, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: 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 Land and Emergency Management (OLEM) Docket, Mail Code 28221T, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20460. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery or Courier</E> (by scheduled appointment only): 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> Michelle Lloyd, Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery, Materials Recovery and Waste Management Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, MC: 5304T, Washington, DC 20460; telephone number: (202) 566-0560; email address: <E T="03">lloyd.michelle@epa.gov.</E> For more information on this document please visit <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/coalash.</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 Hybrid Public Hearing</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. General Information</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Overview of Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Statutory Authority</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. The North Dakota Application</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. EPA Analysis of the North Dakota Application—Basis for Approval</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Adequacy of the North Dakota Permit Program</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">1. Guidelines for Permitting</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">2. Guidelines for Public Participation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">3. Guidelines for Compliance Monitoring Authority</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">4. Guidelines for Enforcement Authority</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">5. Intervention in Civil Enforcement Proceedings</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Adequacy of Technical Criteria</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">1. North Dakota CCR Units and Resources</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">2. North Dakota CCR Regulations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">3. North Dakota Partial Program</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. North Dakota's Permits Issued Under the State CCR Regulations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">1. North Dakota's Permits Issued Under the State CCR Regulations Are Not Part of the Permit Program Evidence Under Review</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">2. Status of North Dakota's Previously-Issued Permits Issued Under the State CCR Regulations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Proposed Action</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">List of Acronyms</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">CBI Confidential Business Information</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">CCR coal combustion residuals</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">CFR Code of Federal Regulations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">EPA Environmental Protection Agency</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">MSWLF municipal solid waste landfill</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">NDAC North Dakota Administrative Code</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">NDCC North Dakota Century Code</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">NDDEQ North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">MCL maximum contaminant level</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">OLEM Office of Land and Emergency Management</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">RCRA Resource Conservation and Recovery Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">STAG State and Tribal Assistance Grant</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">USWAG Utility Solid Waste Activities Group</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">WIIN Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation</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-OLEM-2021-0051, 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. EPA may publish any comment received to its public docket. Do not submit to EPA's docket at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> any information you consider to be Confidential Business Information (CBI) 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. 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). For additional submission methods, the full EPA public comment policy, information about CBI or multimedia submissions, and general guidance on making effective comments, please visit <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Participation in Hybrid Public Hearing</HD> EPA will begin pre-registering speakers for the hybrid public hearing upon publication of this document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . To register to speak at the hearing, please use the online registration form available on EPA's CCR website ( <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/coalash/forms/public-hearing-north-dakotas-coal-combustion-residuals-permit-program</E> ) or contact the person listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section to register to speak at the hearing. Both in-person and virtual hearing attendees are requested to pre-register at the link provided above. The last day to pre-register to speak at the hearing will be July 2, 2025. 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. Additionally, requests to speak will be taken the day of the hearing at the hearing registration desk or via the Q&A functionality of the online platform. EPA will make every effort to accommodate all speakers who arrive and register, although preferences on speaking times may not be able to be fulfilled. Each commenter will have five (5) minutes to provide oral testimony. EPA encourages commenters to provide EPA with a copy of their oral testimony electronically by emailing it to the person listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. EPA also recommends submitting the text of your oral comments as written comments to the rulemaking docket. If EPA is anticipating a high attendance, the time allotment per testimony may be shortened to no shorter than three (3) minutes per person to accommodate all those wishing to provide testimony and who have pre-registered. While EPA will make every effort to accommodate all speakers who do not preregister, opportunities to speak may be limited based upon the number of pre-registered speakers. Therefore, EPA strongly encourages anyone wishing to speak to preregister. Participation in the public hearing does not preclude any entity or individual from submitting a written comment. 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. Please note that any updates made to any aspect of the hearing are posted online at EPA's CCR website at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/coalash/forms/public-hearing-north-dakotas-coal-combustion-residuals-permit-program.</E> While EPA expects the hearing to go forward as set forth above, please monitor ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 78k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━