Hazardous Materials: Reducing Burdens by Allowing Continued Use of Department of Transportation Special Permit Packagings

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Part 173</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. PHMSA-2025-0094 (HM-268F)]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2137-AG08</RIN> <SUBJECT>Hazardous Materials: Reducing Burdens by Allowing Continued Use of Department of Transportation Special Permit Packagings</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM). <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This NPRM proposes to revise the Hazardous Materials Regulations (HMR) to allow for the continued use of packagings authorized under a manufacturing special permit for duration of the useful life of the package. The current HMR provisions require an otherwise safe and usable package to be discontinued solely because the original special permit has expired or was not renewed. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before September 2, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments identified by the Docket Number PHMSA-2025-0094 using any of the following methods: <E T="03">E-Gov Web: https://www.regulations.gov.</E> This site allows the public to enter comments on any <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notice issued by any agency. Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. <E T="03">Mail:</E> Docket Management System: U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, Washington, DC 20590-0001. <E T="03">Hand Delivery:</E> U.S. DOT Docket Management System: West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. <E T="03">Fax:</E> 1-202-493-2251. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> Please include the docket number PHMSA-2025-0094 at the beginning of your comments. If you submit your comments by mail, submit two copies. If you wish to receive confirmation that PHMSA received your comments, include a self-addressed stamped postcard. Internet users may submit comments at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> <NOTE> <HD SOURCE="HED">Note:</HD> Comments are posted without changes or edits to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. There is a privacy statement published on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> </NOTE> <E T="03">Privacy Act:</E> In accordance with 5 U.S.C. 553(c), DOT solicits comments from the public to inform its rulemaking process. DOT posts these comments, without edit, including any personal information the commenter provides, to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> as described in the system of records notice (DOT/ALL-14 FDMS), which can be reviewed at <E T="03">https://www.dot.gov/privacy.</E> <E T="03">Confidential Business Information:</E> Confidential Business Information (CBI) is commercial or financial information that is both customarily and actually treated as private by its owner. Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA, 5 U.S.C. 552), CBI is exempt from public disclosure. It is important that you clearly designate the comments submitted as CBI if: your comments responsive to this document contain commercial or financial information that is customarily treated as private; you actually treat such information as private; and your comment is relevant or responsive to this notice. You may ask PHMSA to provide confidential treatment to information you give to the agency by taking the following steps: (1) mark each page of the original document submission containing CBI as “Confidential”; (2) send PHMSA, along with the original document, a second copy of the original document with the CBI deleted; and (3) explain why the information that you are submitting is CBI. Submissions containing CBI should be sent to Steven Andrews, Standards and Rulemaking Division, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), 2nd Floor, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590-0001, or by email at <E T="03">steven.andrews@dot.gov.</E> Any materials PHMSA receives that is not specifically designated as CBI will be placed in the public docket. <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the docket to read background documents or comments received, go to <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for accessing the docket. Alternatively, you may review the documents in person at the street address listed above. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Steven Andrews, Transportation Regulations Specialist, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590, 202-366-6199, <E T="03">steven.andrews@dot.gov.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. General Discussion</HD> PHMSA is proposing to revise 49 CFR 173.23, “Previously authorized packaging,” to allow for the continued use of a Department of Transportation (DOT) special permit (SP) packaging for which the special permit has expired. The current requirements impose an unnecessary burden on the regulated community, wherein a packaging manufactured, marked, and sold under the terms of a DOT-SP may no longer be authorized solely based on the original manufacturer going out of business, ceasing manufacture of a product under the condition of the original DOT-SP, or choosing to not renew a DOT-SP. Authorizing the continued use of such packagings for the life of the package, provided the package continues to be in conformance with the terms of the DOT-SP, eliminates that burden without compromising public safety. For these reasons, PHMSA is proposing to add a new exception to § 173.23 in paragraph (j) to allow approved packagings to be used for the duration of the usable life of the DOT-SP packaging, regardless of the status of the grantee ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> such as when the original grantee has gone out of business but some of their packagings remain in commerce because they have not yet completed shipment to their end consumer, or when the original grantee has gone out of business and their assets have been purchased by another company) and whether the special permit was renewed. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  However, PHMSA notes that even with this revision, a carrier may still choose to not accept a package where the manufacturing DOT-SP is not renewed by the grantee. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Regulatory Analysis and Notices</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Legal Authority</HD> This proposed rule is published under the authority of the Secretary of Transportation set forth in the Federal Hazardous Materials Transportation Laws (49 U.S.C. 5101 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) and delegated to the PHMSA Administrator pursuant to 49 CFR 1.97. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Executive Order 12866; Regulatory Planning and Review</HD> Executive Order (E.O.) 12866 (“Regulatory Planning and Review”), <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> as implemented by DOT Order 2100.6B (“Policies and Procedures for Rulemaking”), requires agencies to regulate in the “most cost-effective manner,” to make a “reasoned determination that the benefits of the intended regulation justify its costs,” and to develop regulations that “impose the least burden on society.” DOT Order 2100.6B specifies that regulations should generally “not be issued unless their benefits are expected to exceed their costs.” In arriving at those conclusions, E.O. 12866 requires that agencies should consider “both quantifiable measures . . . and qualitative measures of costs and benefits that are difficult to quantify” and “maximize net benefits . . . unless a statute requires another regulatory approach.” E.O. 12866 also requires that “agencies should assess all costs and benefits of available regulatory alternatives, including the alternative of not regulating.” DOT Order 2100.6B directs that PHMSA and other Operating Administrations must generally choose the “least costly regulatory alternative that achieves the relevant objectives” unless required by law or compelling safety need. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  58 FR 51735 (Oct. 4, 1993). </FTNT> E.O. 12866 and DOT Order 2100.6B also require that PHMSA submit “significant regulatory actions” to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Executive Office of the President's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review. This proposed rule is a not significant regulatory action pursuant to E.O. 12866; it also has not designated this rule as a “major rule” as defined by the Congressional Review Act (5 U.S.C. 801 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ). PHMSA has complied with the requirements in E.O. 12866 as implemented by DOT Order 2100.6B and preliminarily determined that this proposed rule may result in cost savings by reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty for affected entities by allowing for the use of packages manufactured under a special permit for the useful life of the package beyond the original permit's expiration date. PHMSA expects those cost savings will also result in reduced costs for the public to whom those entities generally transfer a portion of their compliance costs. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Executive Orders 14192 and 14219</HD> This proposed rule, if finalized as proposed, is expected to be an E.O. 14192 deregulatory action. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> PHMSA seeks data that would be helpful to generate an estimate of the cost savings from this rule. PHMSA's initial estimates are that the total costs of the rule on the regulated community will be less than zero. Nor does this proposed rule does implicate any of the factors identified in section 2(a) of E.O. 14219 indicative of a regulation that is “unlawful . . . [or] that undermine[s] the national interest.”  <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3< ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 23k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━