National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan; Extension of Transition Period for New Product Schedule Listing

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <SUBAGY>40 CFR Part 300</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OPA-2006-0090; FRL-4526.2-01-OLEM]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2050-AH43</RIN> <SUBJECT>National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan; Extension of Transition Period for New Product Schedule Listing</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Interim final rule; request for comment. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking interim final action to revise the transition date in recent amendments to the requirements in Subpart J of the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan (NCP) that governs the use of dispersants, other chemicals, and other spill mitigating substances when responding to oil discharges into jurisdictional waters of the United States. Specifically, the EPA is revising the date until which products listed on the current NCP Product Schedule will remain conditionally listed and available for use from December 12, 2025, to June 10, 2026, for certain agent categories for which there are no new products listed as of December 12, 2025, in accordance with recently amended testing and listing criteria. This rule will become effective immediately while the Agency seeks comments on this targeted revision to the new NCP Product Schedule transition date. EPA will respond and update this interim final action as appropriate. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective on November 17, 2025. Comments must be received on or before December 17, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OPA-2006-0090, 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, Docket EPA-HQ-OPA-2006-0090, Mail Code 28221T, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20460. • <E T="03">Hand delivery or courier:</E> 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. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through 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. Although listed in the index, some information is not publicly available, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> CBI or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Certain other material, such as copyrighted material, is not placed on the internet and will be publicly available only in hard copy form. Publicly available docket materials are available electronically through <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Michael Beuthe, Office of Land and Emergency Management, Mail Code 5104A, Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20460; telephone number: 202-566-1499; email: <E T="03">beuthe.michael@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. General Information</HD> In 2015, EPA proposed amendments to 40 CFR 300.900 through 300.970: NCP Subpart J that sought to: (1) establish new monitoring requirements for certain atypical dispersant use situations; (2) revise the data and information requirements for chemical and biological agent products to be listed on the NCP Subpart J Product Schedule; and (3) revise the authorization of use of procedures for chemical and biological agents in response to an oil discharge to Clean Water Act (CWA) section 311 jurisdictional waters and adjoining shorelines. (80 FR 3380, January 22, 2015). In January 2020, environmental groups filed suit seeking to compel EPA to take final action on the 2015 proposed rulemaking. On July 6, 2021, EPA promulgated a final rule addressing one component of these revisions: monitoring requirements for dispersant use in atypical situations. (86 FR 40234, July 27, 2021). EPA did not issue a final rule on the other two components of the 2015 proposed rulemaking. On August 9, 2021, the court ordered EPA to take final action on the remaining listing and authorization of use provisions by May 31, 2023. <E T="03">Earth Island Inst.</E> v. <E T="03">Regan,</E> 553 F. Supp. 3d 737, 746 (N.D. Cal. 2021). On May 31, 2023, EPA promulgated a final rule on the remaining provisions. (88 FR 38280, June 12, 2023). The 2023 final rule amended Subpart J of the NCP by adding new listing criteria, revising the efficacy and toxicity testing protocols, and clarifying the evaluation criteria for removing products from the NCP Product Schedule, as well as amending requirements for the authorities, notifications, and data reporting when using chemical or biological agents. The final requirements specifically emphasized the development of safer and more effective spill mitigating products. The final amendments also underscored the need to better target the use of these products to reduce the potential risks presented to human health and the environment by not only the oil discharges, but also by the response technologies. Furthermore, the 2023 rule addressed recommendations from the National Commission on BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling Report  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> and EPA Inspector General Report. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> These recommendations include that EPA review and update product testing protocols. The 2023 final rule provided a process to transition listed products on the NCP Product Schedule based on the 1994 regulatory requirements to the new NCP Product Schedule, as well as for listing sorbent products on the new Sorbent Product List. A 24-month transition period was established to provide time to prepare and submit new product packages according to amended testing and listing requirements and for EPA to review and make listing determinations. The transition period was to also allow for the continued availability of previously listed products for planning and response activities. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-OILCOMMISSION/pdf/GPO-OILCOMMISSION.pdf.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/office-inspector-general/report-revisions-needed-national-contingency-plan-based-deepwater-horizon.</E> </FTNT> This action revises the transition date—the date until which certain products listed on the NCP Product Schedule as of December 11, 2023, will remain conditionally listed and available for use—from December 12, 2025, to June 10, 2026 provided that no products are listed on the new Product Schedule as of December 12, 2025, specifically for those agent categories for which no products have been added to the NCP Product Schedule under the revised regulation. At the time of this rule publication, those categories consist of Surface Washing Agents, Herding Agents, and Solidifiers. This rule will become effective immediately to ensure responders retain continued access to these response-critical agent categories while EPA concurrently seeks comments on this targeted revision to the new NCP Product Schedule transition date for the specific product categories. EPA will respond and update this interim final action as appropriate. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Potentially Affected Entities</HD> A list of NAICS codes at the three-digit level that could be affected by the amended transition date established in this action is provided in Table 1. <GPOTABLE COLS="2" OPTS="L2,nj,i1" CDEF="xs30,r50"> <TTITLE>Table 1—Sectors Potentially Affected by the Interim Final Rule</TTITLE> <CHED H="1"> NAICS code </CHED> <CHED H="1">Industrial category</CHED> <ENT>Support Activities for Mining.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">322</ENT> <ENT>Paper Manufacturing.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">325</ENT> <ENT>Chemical Manufacturing.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">326</ENT> <ENT> Plastics and Rubber Products Manufacturing. </ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">423</ENT> <ENT>Merchant Wholesalers, Durable Goods.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">424</ENT> <ENT>Merchant Wholesalers, Nondurable Goods.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">454</ENT> <ENT>Nonstore Retailers.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">493</ENT> <ENT>Warehousing and Storage.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">541</ENT> <ENT> Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services. </ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">561</ENT> <ENT> Administrative and Support Services. </ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">562</ENT> <ENT> Waste Management and Remediation Services. </ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">811</ENT> <ENT>Repair and Maintenance.</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> This table is not intended to be exhaustive but rather provides a guide for readers regarding affected entities potentially regulated by this action. This table includes the types of entities that EPA is aware could potentially be regulated by this action. Other types of entities not included in the table could also be regulated. If you have questions regarding the applicability of this action to a particular entity, consult the person listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Action the Agency is Taking</HD> EPA is extending by 180 days the transition date until which Surface Washing Agent products, Solidifier products, and Herding Agent products listed in the current NCP Product Schedule will remain conditionally listed and available for use, from December 12, ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 40k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━