No-Migration Variance From Land Disposal Restrictions for Clean Harbors Lone Mountain, Oklahoma

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 248</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R06-RCRA-2025-3129; FRL-13097-01-R6]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>No-Migration Variance From Land Disposal Restrictions for Clean Harbors Lone Mountain, Oklahoma</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposal to grant. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to grant, with conditions, no-migration variances for nine categories/groups of wastes, containing up to a combined 100 temporary disposal units (“put piles”) at any one time, from the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Land Disposal Restrictions (LDR) standards at Clean Harbors' Lone Mountain (Clean Harbors) commercial treatment, storage and disposal facility (TSDF) in Waynoka, Oklahoma. These variances will allow Clean Harbors to temporarily store treated hazardous wastes that are awaiting LDR compliance verification in put piles within its Subtitle C (hazardous waste) landfill. The petitioner demonstrated, to a reasonable degree of certainty, that there will be no migration of hazardous constituents from the put piles for as long as the wastes remain hazardous. Additionally, once LDR compliance is verified, the put piles will be disposed within the onsite RCRA hazardous waste landfill area and will be subject to the conditions set out in the Compliance Monitoring Plan section of this document. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before January 12, 2026. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R06-RCRA-2025-3129, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> (our preferred method). Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Email:</E> <E T="03">Mustafa.golam@epa.gov.</E> Include Docket ID No. EPA-R06-RCRA-2025-3129 in the subject line of the message. • <E T="03">Courier/Hand Delivery:</E> Golam Mustafa, Land, Chemicals and Redevelopment Division, EPA Region 6, 1201 Elm Street, Dallas, Texas 75270, Mail Code: R6LCR-RP, telephone number: (214) 665-6576. Courier or hand deliveries are only accepted during the Regional Office's normal hours of operation. The public is advised to call in advance to verify the business hours. Special arrangements should be made of deliveries of boxed information. • <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions must include the Docket ID No. EPA-R06-RCRA-2025-3129 for this proposed approval. Comments received may be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. For detailed instructions on sending comments and additional information, see the “Public Participation” heading of the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Golam Mustafa, Land, Chemicals and Redevelopment Division, EPA Region 6, 1201 Elm Street, Dallas, Texas 75270, Mail Code: R6LCR-RP, telephone number: (214) 665-6576; and email: <E T="03">Mustafa.golam@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Public Participation</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Docket</HD> EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-R06-RCRA-2025-3129. All documents in the docket are listed in the <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> index. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Written Comments</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R06-RCRA-2025-3129, at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> (our preferred method), or the other methods identified in the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section. Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from the docket. 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). 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> <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Submitting CBI</HD> Do not submit information that you consider to be CBI electronically through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or email. Send or deliver information identified as CBI to only the following address: RCRA Document Control Officer, La Gayla Johnson, Office of Regional Counsel, EPA Region 6, 1201 Elm Street, Dallas, Texas 75270, Mail Code: R06-ORC-DRCGLCB-FIAB; telephone number: (214) 665-7517; and email: <E T="03">Johnson.lagayla@epa.gov.</E> Attn: Docket ID No. EPA-R06-RCRA-2025-3129. Clearly mark the part or all of the information that you claim to be CBI. For CBI information on a disk or CD-ROM that you mail to EPA, mark the outside of the disk or CD-ROM as CBI and then identify electronically within the disk or CD-ROM the specific information that is claimed as CBI. In addition to one complete version of the comment that includes information claimed as CBI, a copy of the comment that does not contain the information claimed as CBI must be submitted for inclusion in the public docket. If you submit a CD-ROM or disk that does not contain CBI, mark the outside of the disk or CD-ROM to clearly indicate that it does not contain CBI. Information marked as CBI will not be disclosed except in accordance with procedures set forth in 40 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 2. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. General Information</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Does this document apply to me?</HD> This action applies only to Clean Harbors' Lone Mountain facility (Clean Harbors) located in Waynoka, Oklahoma. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. What action is the Agency taking?</HD> On November 29, 2023, Clean Harbors submitted a no-migration variance (NMV) petition, in accordance with 40 CFR 268.6, seeking an exemption from the Land Disposal Restrictions (LDR) prohibition on land placement of hazardous waste that does not meet the prescribed LDR standards of 40 CFR 268.40 for temporary piles of treated waste, referred to as put piles, placed within the boundary of a RCRA-permitted hazardous waste landfill. Because the petition demonstrated to a reasonable degree of certainty that, for as long as the wastes remain hazardous, there will be no migration of hazardous constituents from the put piles, EPA proposes to grant, with conditions, Clean Harbors' variance from the LDR prohibition for up to a combined 100 put piles at any one time for the nine categories/groups of wastes identified in the Waste Characterization section of this proposal. If granted, the term of this NMV shall be no longer than the term of the RCRA Subtitle C permit for the permitted landfill. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. What is the Agency's authority for taking this action?</HD> Sections 3004(d) through (g) of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), 42 U.S.C. 6294(d)-(g), prohibit the land disposal of hazardous wastes unless such wastes meet the LDR treatment standards (“treatment standards”) established by EPA (“Agency”). However, RCRA 3004(d)(1), <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> and its implementing regulations found at 40 CFR 268.6, provide an option for land disposal of hazardous waste that does not meet the applicable treatment standards where EPA has approved an NMV petition. Specifically, 40 CFR 268.6(a) describes the components that a demonstration of no migration must address; 268.6(b) specifies certain criteria that must be satisfied for that demonstration, and 268.6(c) describes the monitoring program that will be used to verify that the conditions of the NMV are being met. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  RCRA 3004(d)(1)(c) states: “. . . For the purposes of this paragraph, a method of land disposal may not be determined to be protective of human health and the environment for a hazardous waste referred to in paragraph (2) . . . unless, upon application by an interested person, it has been demonstrated to the Administrator, to a reasonable degree of certainty, that there will be no migration of hazardous constituents from the disposal unit or injection zone for as long as the wastes remain hazardous.” </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. No-Migration Variances and Guidance</HD> An NMV is a formal decision that can be rendered by the EPA in response to a petition filed with the Agency to allow land disposal within a particular disposal unit of specific prohibited waste when it has been demonstrated, “to a reasonable degree of certainty, that there will be no migration of hazardous constituents from the disposal unit . . . for as long as the wastes remain hazardous.”  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> It must be demonstrated, to a reasonable degree of certainty, that hazardous constituents will not exceed Agency-approved human health-based levels (or environmentally protective levels, if they are appropriate) beyond the boundary of the disposal unit. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> In most cases, the disposal unit boundary is defined as the outermost limit of engineered components. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 51 FR at 40578, November 7, 1986. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  57 FR 35941, August 11, ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 47k characters. 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