US Ecology Nevada, Inc. High Mercury Subcategory Wastes Land Disposal Restrictions Variance

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 268</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OLEM-2025-2038; FRL-8504-02-OLEM]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2050-AH21</RIN> <SUBJECT>US Ecology Nevada, Inc. High Mercury Subcategory Wastes Land Disposal Restrictions Variance</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to grant, with conditions, US Ecology Nevada Inc.'s (USE) petition for a site-specific treatability variance from the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Land Disposal Restrictions (LDR) treatment standards. USE's petition is for treatment and disposal of elemental mercury waste generated from retorting high mercury waste in accordance with the LDR technology-based standard of RMERC. The EPA believes that the petition demonstrates that the LDR standard for placing elemental mercury generated from RMERC back into commerce for reuse is inappropriate and the treatment variance is sufficient to minimize threats to human health and the environment posed by land disposal of the waste. If the variance is granted, the existing LDR treatment standard of RMERC will continue to apply to high mercury hazardous wastes, but the elemental mercury generated from this process will be treated and land disposed subject to specified conditions at both Bethlehem Apparatus in Hellertown, Pennsylvania and USE's Beatty, Nevada, Subtitle C treatment, storage, and disposal (TSD) facility where treated mercury wastes will be disposed in a designated monofill. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before March 9, 2026. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OLEM-2025-2038, 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">Mail:</E> U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Docket Center, Office of Land and Emergency Management Docket, 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.-4:30 p.m. Eastern time, Monday-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. For detailed instructions on sending comments and additional information on the rulemaking process, 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> Bethany Russell, Waste Characterization Branch, Waste Identification, Notice, and Generators Division, Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery (5304P), Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20460; telephone number: (202) 566-2233; email address: <E T="03">russell.bethany@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-HQ-OLEM-2025-2038. All documents in the docket are listed in the <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> index. Publicly available docket materials are available either electronically at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or in hard copy at the EPA Docket Center. The Public Reading Room for the docket is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Eastern, Monday through Friday, excluding holidays. The telephone number for the Public Reading Room and Docket Center is (202) 566-1744. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Written Comments</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OLEM-2025-2038, 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. The 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. 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). 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: ORCR Document Control Officer, Mail Code 5305-P, Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20460; Attn: Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OLEM-2025-2038. Clearly mark the part or all the information that you claim to be CBI. For CBI information in a disk or CD-ROM that you mail to the 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 elemental mercury treated at Bethlehem Apparatus Hellertown, Pennsylvania and land disposed at USE's facility located at Highway 95, 11 Miles South of Beatty, Beatty, Nevada 98003. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. What action is the Agency taking?</HD> On September 22, 2025, the EPA received a complete petition from USE requesting a variance from the existing prohibition on land disposal of elemental mercury (metallic mercury, Hg(0)) generated from the treatment of waste codes D009 and U151 high mercury subcategory (high mercury wastes) within the United States. High mercury wastes are those containing a concentration of greater than 260 mg/kg mercury. The LDR of 40 CFR 268.40 requires RMERC for treatment of waste codes D009 and U151 high mercury wastes. RMERC is the technology code for retorting or roasting in a thermal processing unit capable of volatilizing mercury for recovery/reclamation (see 40 CFR 268.42). The regulations do not authorize the land disposal of the elemental mercury reclaimed from the RMERC process. Instead, the LDR treatment standard requires elemental mercury reclaimed from these wastes be legitimately recycled (see 40 CFR 260.43) by placing the elemental mercury into commerce for use or reuse as an effective substitute for a commercial chemical product (see 261.1(c)(5)). When the recyling requirement for elemental mercury was established, there was a balanced market for elemental mercury. However, the supply of reclaimed elemental mercury presently exceeds the market demand and will continue to exceed market demand for the foreseeable future, and, for that reason, excess elemental mercury generated from RMERC is being stored at authorized sites across the country. In this action, the EPA is proposing to provide USE for their Beatty, Nevada facility, a variance from the requirement that elemental mercury reclaimed from RMERC of D009, U151, or Bevill-exempt high mercury wastes generated in the U.S. gold mining industry  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> be placed into commerce. Specifically, the EPA is proposing to grant, with conditions, USE's petition for a variance pursuant to 40 CFR 268.44 to allow land disposal of elemental mercury converted to mercury sulfide powder that is then blended with linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) and extruded as a monolith into an impermeable/non-reactive container that is placed into a future permitted monofill located at USE's facility in Beatty, Nevada. At the time of this proposed approval, USE has an agreement with Bethlehem Apparatus to perform the treatment portion of this process. See section VII., Future Amendments to this Variance, for procedures that may allow USE to retain this variance if USE moves any portion of the treatment process from Bethlehem Apparatus's Hellertown, Pennsylvania location. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  The issue has arisen that U.S. gold mining Bevill-exempt high mercury waste does not carry a waste code because of the Bevill exemption. Although exempt, Bevill waste is like D009/U151 wastes in that it must be retorted to extract the elemental mercury to meet DOE's acceptance criteria. After retorting, the prohibition on land disposal of elemental mercury remains and is unaffected by the Bevill exemption. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. What is the Age ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 62k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━