No-Migration Variance From Land Disposal Restrictions for Clean Harbors Grassy Mountain, Utah

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 268</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R08-RCRA-2025-0420; FRL-12863-01-R8]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>No-Migration Variance From Land Disposal Restrictions for Clean Harbors Grassy Mountain, Utah</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 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to grant, with conditions, no-migration variances for four categories/groups of wastes, containing up to 250 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' Grassy Mountain (Clean Harbors) commercial treatment, storage and disposal facility (TSDF) in Tooele County, UT. These variances will allow Clean Harbors to temporarily store treated hazardous wastes that are awaiting LDR compliance verification in put piles within their 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 disposal units 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 30, 2026. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments, identified by EPA-R08-RCRA-2025-0420, 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">Email: newland.jesse@epa.gov.</E> • <E T="03">Mail, hand delivery or courier:</E> Deliver your comments to Jesse Newland, Land, Chemicals and Redevelopment Division, EPA Region 8, 1595 Wynkoop Street, Denver, Colorado 80202-1129, Mail Code: 8LCR-RC-P, telephone number: (303) 312-6353. 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 received must include the Docket ID No. EPA-R08-RCRA-2025-0420 for this rulemaking. 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> Jesse Newland, Land, Chemicals and Redevelopment Division, EPA Region 8, 1595 Wynkoop Street, Denver, Colorado 80202-1129, mail code: 8LCR-RC-P, telephone number: (303) 312-6353, email address: <E T="03">newland.jesse@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-R08-RCRA-2025-0420. 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-R08-RCRA-2025-0420, 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 Andy Woodward, 1595 Wynkoop Street, Denver, CO 80202-1129, Mail Code: 8ECA-RO-E, Email: <E T="03">woodward.andy@epa.gov,</E> Attn: Docket ID No. EPA-R08-RCRA-2025-0420. Clearly mark the part or all of the information that you claim to be CBI. For CBI information in 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 clearly 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' Grassy Mountain facility (Clean Harbors) located in Tooele County, Utah. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. What action is the Agency taking?</HD> On July 16, 2024, Clean Harbors submitted to EPA 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. 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 disposal units, EPA proposes to grant, with conditions, Clean Harbors' variance from the LDR prohibition for up to 250 put piles at any one time. 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, the regulations in 40 CFR 268.6(a) describe the components that a demonstration must address; 40 CFR 268.6(b) specifies certain criteria that must be satisfied for that demonstration, and 40 CFR 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, 1992. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> The regulatory requirements for an NMV under the RCRA LDRs were codified in 40 CFR 268.6 in 1986, <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> and EPA issued guidance on these requirements in 1992. The 1992 guidance is applicable to landfills, surface impoundments, and waste piles. While the 1992 guidance acknowledged temporary pla ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 44k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━