September 12, 2017 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

On January 23, 2017, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) published a final rule in the Federal Register amending the Agency's standards for the examination of working places in metal and nonmetal mines. MSHA is proposing to delay the effective date of the Agency's final rule to March 2, 2018. This extension would offer additional time for MSHA to provide stakeholders training and compliance assistance.

In the September 6, 2016 Federal Register (81 FR 61538), we published an interim final rule (IFR) issuing a new regulation to adjust for inflation the maximum civil monetary penalty amounts for the various civil monetary penalty authorities for all agencies within HHS. This correcting amendment corrects a limited number of technical and typographical errors identified in the CMS provisions of the September 6, 2016 IFR.

This final rule makes a non-substantive technical change to the U.S. Copyright Office's regulations governing the affixation and position of copyright notice on various types of works.

The Coast Guard has issued a temporary deviation from the operating schedule that governs the Union Pacific Railroad Drawbridge across the Carquinez Strait, mile 7.0, at Martinez, CA. The deviation is necessary to allow advance notification for openings due to mechanical issues at the bridge and to conduct repairs to resolve said issues. This deviation requires the bridge to open on signal if at least 30 minutes notice is given to the bridge operator from approaching vessels and allows the bridge to remain in the closed-to- navigation during operating equipment replacement.

We are amending the regulations concerning the importation of fruits and vegetables to allow the importation of fresh persimmon with calyxes from Japan into the United States. As a condition of entry, the persimmon must be produced in accordance with a systems approach that includes requirements for orchard certification, orchard pest control, post-harvest safeguards, fruit culling, traceback, and sampling. The persimmons will also have to be accompanied by a phytosanitary certificate with an additional declaration stating that they were produced under, and meet all the components of, the agreed upon systems approach and were inspected and found to be free of quarantine pests. This action will allow the importation of fresh persimmons with calyxes from Japan while continuing to protect against the introduction of plant pests into the United States.

In this document, the Commission announces that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has approved, for a period of three years, the information collection associated with the Commission's Noncommercial Educational Station Fundraising for Third-Party Non- Profit Organizations Report and Order's third-party fundraising rules. This document is consistent with the Report and Order, which stated that the Commission would publish a document in the Federal Register announcing the effective date of those rules.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to approve revisions to the Placer County Air Pollution Control District (PCAPCD) and Ventura County Air Pollution Control District (VCAPCD) portions of the California State Implementation Plan (SIP). These revisions concern emissions of oxides of nitrogen (NOX) from incinerators in the PCAPCD and previously unregulated types of fuel burning equipment in the VCAPCD. We are proposing to approve local rules to regulate these emission sources under the Clean Air Act (CAA or the Act). We are taking comments on this proposal and plan to follow with a final action.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is finalizing revisions pursuant to section 110 of the Clean Air Act (CAA) to the Federal Implementation Plan (FIP) addressing regional haze in the State of Montana. The EPA promulgated a FIP on September 18, 2012, in response to the State's decision in 2006 to not submit a regional haze State Implementation Plan (SIP). We proposed revisions to that FIP on April 14, 2017, and are now finalizing those revisions. Specifically, the EPA is finalizing revisions to the FIP's requirement for best available retrofit technology (BART) for the Trident cement kiln owned and operated by Oldcastle Materials Cement Holdings, Inc. (Oldcastle), located in Three Forks, Montana. In response to a request from Oldcastle, and in light of new information that was not available at the time we originally promulgated the FIP, we are revising the nitrogen oxides (NOX) emission limit for the Trident cement kiln. We are also correcting errors we made in our FIP regarding the reasonable progress determination for the Blaine County #1 Compressor Station and the instructions for compliance determinations for particulate matter (PM) BART emission limits at electrical generating units (EGUs) and cement kilns. This action does not address the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit's June 9, 2015 vacatur and remand of portions of the FIP regarding the Colstrip and Corette power plants; we plan to address the court's remand in a separate action.

The Board is adopting a final rule to promote U.S. financial stability by improving the resolvability and resilience of systemically important U.S. banking organizations and systemically important foreign banking organizations pursuant to section 165 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act). Under the final rule, any U.S. top-tier bank holding company identified by the Board as a global systemically important banking organization (GSIB), the subsidiaries of any U.S. GSIB (other than national banks, federal savings associations, state nonmember banks, and state savings associations), and the U.S. operations of any foreign GSIB (other than national banks, federal savings associations, state nonmember banks, and state savings associations) would be subjected to restrictions regarding the terms of their non-cleared qualified financial contracts (QFCs). First, a covered entity generally is required to ensure that QFCs to which it is party provide that any default rights and restrictions on the transfer of the QFCs are limited to the same extent as they would be under the Dodd-Frank Act and the Federal Deposit Insurance Act. Second, a covered entity generally is prohibited from being party to QFCs that would allow a QFC counterparty to exercise default rights against the covered entity, directly or indirectly, based on the entry into a resolution proceeding under the Dodd-Frank Act or Federal Deposit Insurance Act, or any other resolution proceeding, of an affiliate of the covered entity. The final rule also amends certain definitions in the Board's capital and liquidity rules; these amendments are intended to ensure that the regulatory capital and liquidity treatment of QFCs to which a covered entity is party is not affected by the final rule's restrictions on such QFCs. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) are expected to issue final rules that would subject GSIB subsidiaries for which the OCC and FDIC are the appropriate Federal banking agency to requirements substantively identical to those in this final rule.