August 29, 2011 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

NMFS is prohibiting directed fishing for pollock in Statistical Area 630 in the Gulf of Alaska (GOA). This action is necessary to prevent exceeding the C season allowance of the 2011 total allowable catch (TAC) of pollock for Statistical Area 630 in the GOA.

This document denies a petition for rulemaking submitted by Mr. Michael R. Schramm, to amend the Federal motor vehicle safety standard on seat belt assemblies, to include a requirement that seat belts be releasable without unbuckling. We are denying the petition because the petitioner did not demonstrate a safety need for such a requirement or show how such a requirement could be implemented without increasing inadvertent release of seat belts during normal vehicle operation and certain crash scenarios, resulting in increased risk to vehicle occupants.

This final rule amends the Federal motor vehicle safety standard (FMVSS) on occupant crash protection to remove the sunset of a requirement that a vehicle's lap belt must be lockable, without the use of special tools, to tightly secure a child restraint system (CRS). We refer to this as the ``lockability'' requirement. Under the current standard, the lockability requirement ceases to apply to seating positions that are equipped with a child restraint anchorage system (commonly referred to as a ``LATCH'' system) on vehicles manufactured on or after September 1, 2012. Because data indicate that motorists are still using lockable belts to install CRSs even in seating positions with LATCH, there is a continuing need for the lockability requirement even in seating positions with LATCH. Thus, this final rule ensures that the lockability requirement continues in effect for all seating positions past September 1, 2012.

EPA is approving a State Implementation Plan (SIP) revision submitted by the State of Delaware on September 16, 2009, as supplemented on April 27, 2011. The revision satisfies the Clean Air Act (CAA) infrastructure requirement that each State's plan contain adequate provisions prohibiting its emissions from contributing significantly to nonattainment in, or interfering with maintenance by, any other state with respect to the 2006 24-hour fine particulate matter (PM2.5) national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS). EPA is approving this revision in accordance with the requirements of the CAA.

We are superseding an existing airworthiness directive (AD) for all Viking Air Limited (type certificate No. A-815 formerly held by Bombardier Inc. and de Havilland, Inc.) Model DHC-3 airplanes. That AD currently requires repetitively inspecting the elevator control tabs for discrepancies, taking necessary corrective actions to bring all discrepancies within acceptable tolerances, and reporting certain inspection results to the FAA. This new AD retains the actions currently required in AD 2011-05-02 and removes the Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) SA01059SE condition in the Applicability section. This AD was prompted by our determination that we inadvertently omitted certain airplanes from the Applicability section. We are issuing this AD to correct the unsafe condition on these products.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is taking direct final action to relocate the BioPreferred Program, established under the authority of section 9002 of the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 (FSRIA), as amended by the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (FCEA), 7 U.S.C. 81027, from chapter XXIX of title 7 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) to chapter XXXII of title 7 of the CFR.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is amending its regulations to enable U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to migrate from a paper file-based, non-integrated systems environment to an electronic customer-focused, centralized case management environment for benefit processing. This transformation process will allow USCIS to streamline benefit processing, eliminate the capture and processing of redundant data, and reduce the number of and automate its forms. This transformation process will be a phased multi-year initiative to restructure USCIS business processes and related information technology systems. DHS is removing references to form numbers, form titles, expired regulatory provisions, and descriptions of internal procedures, many of which will change during transformation. DHS is also finalizing interim rules that permitted submission of benefit requests with an electronic signature when such requests are submitted in an electronic format rather than on a paper form and that removed references to filing locations for immigration benefits. In addition, in this rule DHS is publishing the final rule for six other interim rules published during the past several years, most of which received no public comments.