Environmental Protection Agency December 8, 2005 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

EPA is taking direct final action to make changes to certain provisions of the evaporative and refueling emission regulations for light-duty vehicles, light-duty trucks and heavy-duty vehicles up to 14,000 pounds GVWR, the four-wheel drive dynamometer test provisions, and the vehicle labeling regulations. The evaporative changes are intended to: reduce manufacturers' certification evaporative/refueling test burden; clarify existing evaporative/refueling requirements; and better harmonize federal evaporative/refueling test procedures with California evaporative/refueling test procedures. The dynamometer changes are intended to amend outdated regulations to now include four-wheel drive provisions. The labeling changes are intended to amend regulations to remove outdated information. Today's action does not change the stringency of these existing programs.

On November 10, 2003, EPA promulgated national emission standards for hazardous air pollutants (NESHAP) for miscellaneous organic chemical manufacturing. Several petitions for judicial review of the final rule were filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Petitioners expressed concern with various requirements in the final rule, including applicability of specific operations and processes, the leak detection and repair requirements for connectors, criteria to define affected wastewater streams requiring control, control requirements for wastewater streams that contain only soluble HAP (SHAP), the definition of process condensers, and recordkeeping requirements for Group 2 batch process vents. In this action, EPA proposes amendments to the final rule to address these issues and to correct inconsistencies that have been discovered during the review process.