Massachusetts: Final Authorization of State Hazardous Waste Management Program Revisions

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 271</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R01-RCRA-2025-0188; FRL 12874-02-R1]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Massachusetts: Final Authorization of State Hazardous Waste Management Program Revisions</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Direct final authorization. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> Massachusetts has applied to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for final authorization of revisions to its hazardous waste program under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), as amended. The EPA has reviewed Massachusetts' application and has determined that these revisions satisfy all requirements needed to qualify for final authorization. Therefore, we are taking direct final action to authorize the State's changes. In the “Proposed Rules” section of this <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , EPA is also publishing a separate document that serves as the proposal to authorize these revisions. Unless EPA receives written comments that oppose this authorization during the comment period, the decision to authorize Massachusetts' revisions to its hazardous waste program will take effect. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final authorization will become effective on November 4, 2025, unless EPA receives adverse written comments by October 6, 2025. If the EPA receives adverse comment, we will either publish a timely withdrawal of this direct final action in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> informing the public that the authorization will not take effect, or we will publish a notice containing a response to comments that either reverses the decision or affirms that the final action will take effect. In the event that the final action is withdrawn, we would address all public comments and make a final decision on authorization in a subsequent final action. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R01-RCRA-2025-0188, at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> The EPA may publish any comment received to its public docket. Do not submit electronically 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. 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). 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> If you are unable to make electronic submittals or require alternative access to docket materials, please notify Sara Kinslow through the provided contact information in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Sara Kinslow, RCRA Waste Management and Lead Branch; Land, Chemicals, and Redevelopment Division; U.S. EPA Region 1, 5 Post Office Square, Suite 100 (Mail code 07-1), Boston, MA 02109-3912; phone: 617-918-1648; email: <E T="03">kinslow.sara@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED"> SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: </HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">A. Why are revisions to State programs necessary?</HD> States that have received final authorization from the EPA under RCRA section 3006(b), 42 U.S.C. 6926(b), must maintain a hazardous waste program that is equivalent to, consistent with, and no less stringent than the Federal program. As the Federal program changes, states must change their programs and ask the EPA to authorize the changes. Changes to state programs may be necessary when Federal or state statutory or regulatory authority is modified or when certain other changes occur. Most commonly, states must change their programs because of changes to the EPA's regulations in 40 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) parts 124, 260 through 268, 270, 273, and 279. New Federal requirements and prohibitions imposed by Federal regulations that the EPA promulgates pursuant to the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments of 1984 (HSWA) take effect in authorized states at the same time that they take effect in unauthorized states. Thus, the EPA will implement those requirements and prohibitions in Massachusetts, including the issuance of new permits implementing those requirements, until the State is granted authorization to do so. <HD SOURCE="HD1">B. What decisions has the EPA made in this final action?</HD> On August 26, 2024, Massachusetts submitted a complete program revision application seeking authorization of revisions to its hazardous waste program. The EPA concludes that Massachusetts' application to revise its authorized program meets all of the statutory and regulatory requirements established by RCRA, as set forth in RCRA Section 3006(b), 42 U.S.C 6926(b), and 40 CFR part 271. Therefore, the EPA grants final authorization to Massachusetts to operate its hazardous waste program with the revisions described in its authorization application, and as listed below in Section G of this document. The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) has responsibility for permitting treatment, storage, and disposal facilities within its borders and for carrying out the aspects of the RCRA program described in its application, subject to the limitations of HSWA, as discussed above. <HD SOURCE="HD1">C. What is the effect of this authorization decision?</HD> This decision authorizes Massachusetts for the revisions to its authorized hazardous waste program described in its authorization application. These changes will become part of the authorized State hazardous waste program and will therefore be Federally enforceable. Massachusetts will continue to have primary enforcement authority and responsibility for its State hazardous waste program. The EPA would maintain its authorities under RCRA sections 3007, 3008, 3013, and 7003, including its authority to: • Conduct inspections, and require monitoring, tests, analyses and reports; • Enforce RCRA requirements, including authorized State program requirements, and suspend or revoke permits; and • Take enforcement actions regardless of whether the State has taken its own actions. This action will not impose additional requirements on the regulated community because the regulations for which the EPA is authorizing Massachusetts are already effective under state law and are not changed by this action. <HD SOURCE="HD1">D. Why is the EPA using a direct final action?</HD> The EPA is publishing this action without prior proposal because the EPA views this as a noncontroversial action and anticipates no adverse comment. This action is a routine program change. However, in the “Proposed Rules” section of this <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , we are publishing a separate document that will serve as the proposed action allowing the public an opportunity to comment. For further information about commenting on this action, please refer to the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section and Section E of the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section. <HD SOURCE="HD1">E. What happens if the EPA receives comments that oppose this action?</HD> If the EPA receives comments that oppose this authorization, we will either withdraw this action by publishing a document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> before the action becomes effective, or we will publish a notice containing a response to comments that either reverses the decision or affirms that the final action will take effect. In the event that the final action is withdrawn, the EPA will base any further decision on the authorization of the State's program revisions on the proposal mentioned in the previous section, after considering all comments received during the comment period. The EPA will then address all such comments in a later final action. If EPA receives comments that oppose only the authorization of a particular revision to the State's hazardous waste program, EPA will withdraw that part of this action, but the authorization of the program revisions that the comments do not oppose will become effective on the date specified above. The <E T="04">Federal Register</E> withdrawal document will specify which part of the authorization will become effective, and which part is being withdrawn. <HD SOURCE="HD1">F. What has Massachusetts previously been authorized for?</HD> The Commonwealth of Massachusetts initially received final authorization effective February 7, 1985 (50 FR 3344, January 24, 1985) to implement its base hazardous waste management program. The EPA granted authorization for revisions to Massachusetts' regulatory program on the following dates: September 30, 1998, effective November 30, 1998 (63 FR 52180); October 12, 1999, effective immediately (64 FR 55153); March 12, 2004, effective immediately (69 FR 11801); January 31, 2008, effective March 31, 2008 (73 FR 5753); June 23, 2010, effective August 23, 2010 (75 FR 35660); and January 4, 2022, effective March 7, 2022 (87 FR 194). Additionally, on November 15, 2000, the EPA granted interim authorization for Massachusetts to regulate Cathode Ray Tubes under the Toxicity Characteristics rule through January 1, 2003, effective immediately (65 FR 68915). This interim authorization was subsequently extended to run through January 1, ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 24k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━