Hawaii: Amendment to Approval of State Underground Storage Tank Program Revisions, Codification, and Incorporation by Reference

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 282</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R09-UST-2025-0035; FRL-12586-02-R9]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Hawaii: Amendment to Approval of State Underground Storage Tank Program Revisions, Codification, and Incorporation by Reference</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Direct final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> On March 7, 2022, the State of Hawaii (Hawaii or State) received final approval, from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), of revisions to its Underground Storage Tank Program (UST Program) under subtitle I of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Pursuant to RCRA, the EPA is taking direct final action, subject to public comment, to amend its final approval of the UST Program. The amendment clarifies the statutory provisions that are part of the approved UST Program and identifies some additional statutory provisions that are broader in scope and not part of the approved UST Program. This action also codifies the EPA's approval of Hawaii's revised UST Program and incorporates by reference those provisions of the State statutes and regulations that the EPA has determined meet the requirements for approval. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective November 17, 2025, unless the EPA receives adverse comment by October 20, 2025. If the EPA receives adverse comment, it will publish a timely withdrawal in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> informing the public that the rule will not take effect. The incorporation by reference of certain publications listed in the regulations is approved by the Director of the Federal Register as of November 17, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments by one 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">Email: cosson.michael@epa.gov.</E> Include the Docket ID No. [EPA-R09-UST-2025-0035] in the subject line of the message. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> The EPA's policy is that all comments received through email will be included in the public docket without change and may be available online at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided, unless the comment includes information claimed to be Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other information for which disclosure is restricted by statute. Do not submit information that you consider to be CBI or otherwise protected through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> or email. The Federal <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> website is an “anonymous access” system, which means the 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 the 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, the EPA recommends that you include your name and other contact information in the body of your comment. If the EPA cannot read your comment due to technical difficulties, and cannot contact you for clarification, the 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. The EPA encourages electronic comment submittals, but if you are unable to submit electronically or need other assistance, please contact Michael Cosson, the contact listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> provision below. The index to the docket for this action and all documents that form the basis of this action and associated publicly available docket materials are available electronically at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> For the documents that the EPA is incorporating by reference, use the search function to perform a search on the Docket ID number, EPA-R09-UST-2025-0035. For additional materials related to Hawaii's UST Program revisions, search on EPA-R09-UST-2020-0258, a related Docket ID number. The EPA encourages electronic reviewing of these documents, but if you are unable to review these documents electronically, please contact Michael Cosson for alternative access to docket materials. Please also contact Michael Cosson if you need assistance in a language other than English or if you are a person with disabilities who needs a reasonable accommodation at no cost to you. For further information on EPA Docket Center services, please visit us online at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Michael Cosson, RCRA Programs and Cleanup Branch, Land, Chemicals, and Redevelopment Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 9, 75 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, California 94105; Phone number: (415) 972-3652; email address: <E T="03">cosson.michael@epa.gov.</E> Please contact Michael Cosson by phone or email for further information. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Amended Approval of Revisions to Hawaii's Underground Storage Tank Program</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Why are revisions to state UST programs necessary?</HD> States that have received final approval from the EPA under section 9004(b) of RCRA, 42 U.S.C. 6991c(b), must maintain a UST program that is no less stringent than the Federal program. When the EPA revises the regulations that govern the UST program, states must revise their programs to comply with the updated regulations and submit these revisions to the EPA for approval. Most commonly, states must change their programs because of changes to the EPA's regulations in title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) part 280. States can also initiate changes on their own to their UST programs. To become federally enforceable, the EPA must then approve the changes. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. What is the history of the EPA's approval of Hawaii's UST Program?</HD> The EPA first granted Hawaii final authorization to implement a UST program on September 25, 2002, effective September 30, 2002 (67 FR 60161). The EPA incorporated by reference and codified the approved Hawaii program on September 17, 2008 (73 FR 53742). As a result of the EPA's approval, these provisions became subject to the EPA's corrective action, inspection, and enforcement authorities under RCRA sections 9003(h), 9005, and 9006, 42 U.S.C. 6991b(h), 6991d, and 6991e, and other applicable statutory and regulatory provisions. On July 15, 2015 (80 FR 41566), the EPA published a final rule which finalized revisions to the 1988 UST regulations and to the 1988 state program approval regulations (2015 Federal Revisions). On October 8, 2018, in accordance with 40 CFR 281.51(a), Hawaii submitted a complete program revision application (State Application) seeking approval for its UST Program revisions corresponding to the 2015 Federal Revisions. On August 14, 2020 (85 FR 49611), the EPA issued a tentative determination that the revisions to Hawaii's UST Program are equivalent to, consistent with, and no less stringent than the corresponding Federal requirements in subpart C of 40 CFR part 281, and that the Hawaii program continues to provide for adequate enforcement of compliance (40 CFR 281.11(b)). On March 7, 2022 (87 FR 12593), the EPA granted Hawaii final approval to operate its updated UST Program. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. What decision has the EPA made in this rule?</HD> As stated, the EPA tentatively approved Hawaii's revised UST Program on August 14, 2020 (85 FR 49611) and granted final approval on March 7, 2022 (87 FR 12593). The EPA is not revising its determination to approve Hawaii's revised UST Program. Rather, the EPA is amending aspects of its final approval to clarify the Hawaii statutes that are part of the approved program and those that are broader in scope and not part of the approved program. <HD SOURCE="HD2">D. What is the effect of this amended approval on the regulated community?</HD> Section 9004 of RCRA, 42 U.S.C. 6991c, as amended, allows the EPA to approve state UST programs to operate in lieu of the Federal program. The EPA's approval of Hawaii's revised UST Program on March 7, 2022 (87 FR 12593), did not impose additional requirements on the regulated community because the requirements were already in effect in Hawaii. The action approved existing state requirements as meeting Federal requirements and rendered them federally enforceable. With this amended final approval, the EPA clarifies the Hawaii statutes that are part of the approved program and that are federally enforceable and identifies some additional statutory provisions that are broader in scope and not part of the approved UST Program. This minor revision to the scope of its approval, like the EPA's final approval on March 7, 2022, does not impose additional requirements on the regulated community. <HD SOURCE="HD2">E. Why is the EPA using a direct final rule?</HD> The EPA is publishing this direct final rule without a prior proposed rulemaking because we view this as a noncontroversial action and anticipate no adverse comment. The EPA already accepted public comment on its approval of Hawaii's revised UST Program. During the public comment period, the EPA did not receive any adverse comment on its approval decision and received only one comment pertaining to an incorrectly cited regulation (87 FR 12593, March 7, 2022). Because the EPA has already approved the revised UST Program, the EPA does not expect to receive adverse public comment o ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 53k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━