Environmental Protection Agency April 26, 2007 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

On June 4, 2007, a general permit regulating the activities of small suction dredge mining for gold placer mining operations in the State of Alaska expires. On January 16, 2007, EPA proposed to reissue this GP. There was a 45 day comment period. On April 4, 2007, the Department of Natural Resources, Office of Project Management and Permitting agreed with EPA's consistency determination under the Alaska Coastal Management Act. The Department of Environmental Conservation certified the GP under section 401 of the Clean Water Act on April 16, 2007. EPA received several comments on the GP and has prepared a Response to Comments. EPA has determined that each facility submitting a new Notice of Intent (NOI) prior to the expiration date of the current permit will be automatically covered by the reissued GP.

The EPA is approving revisions to the State Implementation Plan (SIP) for the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County, New Mexico, area that were adopted on December 14, 2005, and submitted to EPA by the Governor of New Mexico on May 24, 2006. The SIP revisions modify the PSD and Nonattainment New Source Review (NNSR) regulations in the SIP. They were submitted to make the area's PSD and NNSR rules consistent with the Federal PSD and NNSR revised regulations, which were promulgated by EPA on December 31, 2002, (67 FR 80186), and reconsidered with minor changes on November 7, 2003, (68 FR 63021), (collectively, the ``2002 New Source Review (NSR) Reform rules''). The revisions include provisions for baseline emissions calculations, an actual-to-projected- actual methodology for calculating emissions changes, options for plantwide applicability limits, and recordkeeping and reporting requirements. The EPA is approving these revisions pursuant to section 110, part C, and part D of the Federal Clean Air Act.

In a rule published November 8, 2002, EPA promulgated new emission standards for recreational vehicles beginning in model year 2006. This included a newly regulated class of nonroad vehicles/engines commonly referred to as all-terrain vehicles. In that rulemaking, a temporary provision was included allowing manufacturers to certify all- terrain vehicles over a steady-state, engine-based, duty cycle for exhaust emissions prior to the 2009 model year in lieu of the transient, chassis-based, Federal Test Procedure which was effective for 2006 and later model years. In this rulemaking we are proposing to extend the availability of this temporary provision for in some cases up to an additional six model years, after which the chassis-based Federal Test Procedure would become the only available test cycle. More specifically, manufacturers would have to certify exhaust emission engine families representing not less than 50 percent of their U.S.- directed production on the Federal Test Procedure in model year 2014 and 100 percent in 2015. Manufacturers with only one all-terrain vehicle exhaust emission engine engine family would not be required to use the Federal Test Procedure until the 2015 model year. For those manufacturers who have not yet done so, this will allow additional time to certify to the previously promulgated Federal Test Procedure-based emission standards using either contract facilities or by obtaining in- house capability.