Authorization of State Hazardous Waste Management Program Revisions: California

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 271</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R09-RCRA-2024-0298; FRL-12239-02-R9]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Authorization of State Hazardous Waste Management Program Revisions: California</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final action. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking direct final action to authorize changes California has made to its hazardous waste program under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, as amended. The Agency has reviewed California's application for authorization of these changes and determined that the changes satisfy all requirements. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This authorization is effective on November 10, 2025 without further notice, unless the EPA receives adverse comment by October 14, 2025. If the EPA receives adverse comment, we will publish a timely withdrawal in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> informing the public that the authorization will not take effect. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> All documents in the docket are listed in the <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> index. Publicly available docket materials are available either electronically in <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> or in hard copy. You may also view California's application at: California Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Toxic Substances Control, 1001 “I” Street, 11th floor, Sacramento, CA 95814, Attention: Carmela Torres, Phone (916) 322-7893, from 8 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday (appointment preferred but not required). <E T="03">Instructions:</E> Submit your comments to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R09-RCRA-2024-0298, 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">Regulations.gov</E> . 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. 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). The <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> website is an “anonymous access” system, which means EPA will not know your identity or contact information unless you provide it in the body of your comment. If you send an email comment directly to EPA without going through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> your email address will be automatically captured and included as part of the comment that is placed in the public docket and made available on the internet. If you submit an electronic comment, EPA recommends that you include your name and other contact information in the body of your comment. If EPA cannot read your comment due to technical difficulties and cannot contact you for clarification, EPA may not be able to consider your comment. Electronic files should avoid the use of special characters, any form of encryption, and be free of any defects or viruses. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Naimah Ali, EPA Region 9, 75 Hawthorne St, San Francisco, CA 94105. By phone: (619) 849-1319 or by email at <E T="03">ali.naimah@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 EPA under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) section 3006(b), 42 United States Code (U.S.C.) section 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 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 EPA's regulations in 40 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) parts 124, 260 through 268, 270, 273, and 279. Many of the new federal requirements and prohibitions imposed by federal regulations that 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, EPA, where necessary, will implement those requirements and prohibitions in California, 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 EPA made in this action?</HD> On September 30, 2022, California submitted a program revision application to EPA seeking authorization of changes to its hazardous waste management program that correspond to the following EPA rules (and corresponding RCRA rule checklists): <FP SOURCE="FP-1">—The Hazardous Waste Electronic Manifest Rules (Special Consolidated Checklist for the Hazardous Waste Electronic Manifest Rules [EM]);</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">—Change of Official EPA Mailing Address, (Checklist 193).</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">—The Uniform Hazardous Waste Manifest Rule (Checklist 207);</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">—The Rule Regarding Removal of Saccharin and Its Salts from the Lists of Hazardous Constituents, Hazardous Wastes, and Hazardous Substances, (Checklist 225);</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">—Land Disposal Treatment Standards for Carbamate Wastes, (Checklist 227).</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">—Imports and Exports of Hazardous Waste, (Checklist 236); and</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">—The Hazardous Waste Electronic Manifest User Fee Rule, (Checklist 239).</FP> EPA concludes that California's application to revise its authorized program meets all 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, EPA proposes to grant California final authorization to operate its hazardous waste program with the changes described in the authorization application dated September 30, 2022, and as outlined below in Section F of this document. California has responsibility for permitting treatment, storage, and disposal facilities within its borders (except in Indian country) and for carrying out the aspects of the RCRA program described in its revised program application, subject to the limitations of HSWA, as discussed above. <HD SOURCE="HD1">C. What is the effect of today's authorization decision?</HD> If California is authorized for the changes described in the State's authorization application, these changes would become part of the authorized State hazardous waste program and would therefore be federally enforceable. California will continue to have primary enforcement authority and responsibility for its State hazardous waste program. EPA would retain its authorities under RCRA sections 3007, 3008, 3013, and 7003, including its authority to: • Conduct inspections, and require monitoring, tests, analyses or reports; • Enforce RCRA requirements, including authorized California program requirements, and suspend or revoke permits; and • Take enforcement actions regardless of whether the State has taken its own actions. This action does not impose additional requirements on the regulated community because the regulations for which California is being authorized by today's action are already effective and are not changed by today's action. <HD SOURCE="HD1">D. Why is EPA using a direct final action?</HD> The EPA is publishing this action without a prior proposed action because we view this as a noncontroversial action and anticipate no adverse comment. This action is a routine program change. However, in the “Proposed Rules” section of this issue of the <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. We will not institute a second comment period on this action. Any parties interested in commenting must do so at this time. For further information about commenting on this action, see the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section of this document. EPA will consider all comments received during the comment period and address them in a final action. You may not have another opportunity to comment. If you want to comment on this proposed authorization, you must do so at this time. <HD SOURCE="HD1">E. What has California previously been authorized for?</HD> California initially received final RCRA authorization for the State's hazardous waste management program on July 23, 1992 (57 FR 32726), effective August 1, 1992. EPA granted final authorization for changes to California's program on the following dates: September 26, 2001 (66 FR 49118), October 7, 2011 (76 FR 62303), and January 14, 2020 (85 FR 2038), revised June 01, 2021 (86 FR 29207). <HD SOURCE="HD1">F. What changes is EPA authorizing with today's action?</HD> EPA proposes to determine, subject to our consideration of any adverse written comments, that California's hazardous waste program revisions are equivalent to, consistent with and no less stringent than the federal program and therefore satisfy all the requirements necessary to qualify for final authorization. 1. EPA is proposing to authorize California's program changes as outlined in the following t ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 37k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━