Ohio: Proposed Authorization of State Hazardous Waste Management Program Revisions

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 271</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R05-RCRA-2025-1675; FRL-12244-01-R5]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Ohio: Proposed Authorization of State Hazardous Waste Management Program Revisions</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> Ohio has applied to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for final authorization of changes to its hazardous waste program under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), as amended. The EPA has reviewed Ohio's application and has determined that these changes satisfy all requirements needed to qualify for final authorization. Therefore, we are proposing to authorize the State's changes. The EPA seeks public comment prior to taking final action. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before December 18, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID Number EPA-R05-RCRA-2025-1675, by the following method: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Email:</E> Daniel Leonard, <E T="03">leonard.daniel@epa.gov.</E> <E T="03">Instructions:</E> EPA must receive your comments by December 18, 2025. <E T="03">Docket:</E> All documents in the docket are listed in the <E T="03"> https:// </E> index. 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, will be publicly available only in hard copy. Publicly available docket materials are available either electronically at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> or in hard copy. <E T="03">Written comments:</E> EPA's policy is that all comments received will be included in the public docket without change and may be made available online at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. 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). Do not submit electronically any information you consider to be Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. The Federal <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 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. (For additional information about EPA's public docket, visit the EPA Docket Center homepage at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets</E> ). <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Daniel Leonard, Waste Management Permitting Section, Land, Chemicals, and Redevelopment Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 5, 77 West Jackson Boulevard, LL-17J, Chicago, IL 60604. Daniel Leonard can be reached by telephone at (312) 886-7089 or via email at <E T="03">leonard.daniel@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 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 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 Title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) parts 124, 260 through 268, 270, 273, and 279. 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 will implement those requirements and prohibitions in Ohio, 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 proposed rule?</HD> On June 27, 2023, Ohio submitted a program revision application seeking authorization of changes to its hazardous waste program that correspond to certain Federal rules promulgated between June 21, 1990 and July 7, 2020 (also known as RCRA Clusters II through XXIX). On January 15, 2024, EPA requested further information from the Ohio Attorney General, including information regarding the State's issuance of exemptions that appeared in conflict with a previous statement from the Ohio Attorney General and which might make Ohio's program less stringent than the Federal program. On October 24, 2024, Ohio submitted a response clarifying the Ohio Attorney General's position on these exemptions. On January 17, 2025, EPA responded to Ohio EPA with a letter stating in order to complete the process for authorizing Ohio's application, Ohio should address the existing exemptions by continuing to work with EPA to make final permit decisions on permit applications under review. In addition, EPA requested that Ohio EPA memorialize its commitments to make these permit decisions and to ensure common understanding and efficient coordination for any future proposal to issue an exemption or variance. Ohio EPA has made commitments to EPA and agreed to revise its Memorandum of Agreement required under 40 CFR 271.8 with formal commitments to this effect. The EPA concludes that Ohio's application to revise its authorized program now meets all of the statutory and regulatory requirements established under 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 Ohio final authorization to operate its hazardous waste program with the changes described in the authorization application, and as outlined below in Section F of this document. Ohio 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. <HD SOURCE="HD1">C. What is the effect of this proposed authorization decision?</HD> If Ohio is authorized for the changes described in Ohio's authorization application, these changes will become part of the authorized State hazardous waste program, and will therefore be federally enforceable. Ohio 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 which EPA is proposing to authorize in Ohio are already effective under State law and are not changed by this proposed action. <HD SOURCE="HD1">D. What happens if EPA receives comments that oppose this action?</HD> If EPA receives oppositional comments on this proposed action, we will address all such comments in a later final rule. You may not have another opportunity to comment. If you want to comment on this authorization, you should do so at this time. <HD SOURCE="HD1">E. What has Ohio previously been authorized for?</HD> Ohio initially received final authorization on June 28, 1989, effective June 30, 1989 (54 FR 27170, June 28, 1989) to implement the RCRA hazardous waste management program. Subsequently, the EPA granted authorization for changes to the Ohio program effective June 7, 1991 (56 FR 14203, April 8, 1991) as corrected June 19, 1991, effective August 19, 1991 (56 FR 28088); effective September 25, 1995 (60 FR 38502. July 27, 1995); effective December 23, 1996 (61 FR 54950, October 23, 1996); effective January 24, 2003 (68 FR 3429, January 24, 2003); effective January 20, 2006 (71 FR 3220, January 20, 2006); effective October 29, 2007 (72 FR 61063, October 29, 2007); effective March 19, 2012 (77 FR 25966, March 19, 2012); effective February 12, 2018 (83 FR 5948, February 12, 2018); and effective September 26, 2019 (84 FR 50766, September 26, 2019). <HD SOURCE="HD1">F. What changes are we proposing with today's action?</HD> On June 27, 2023, Ohio submitted a final complete program revision application, seeking authorization of changes to its hazardous waste management program in accordance with 40 CFR 271.21. The EPA proposes to determine, subject to receipt of written comments that oppose this action, that Ohio's hazardous waste program revisions are equivalent to, consistent with, and no le ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 33k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━