Environmental Protection Agency September 29, 2016 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA or Agency) Science Advisory Board (SAB) Staff Office announces two meetings of the Chemical Assessment Advisory Committee Augmented for the Review of the Draft Hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine (RDX) IRIS Assessment (CAAC Augmented for RDX). A public teleconference will be held to learn about the development of the Agency's draft IRIS Toxicological Review of RDX (September, 2016) and to discuss draft charge questions for the peer review of the document. A face-to-face meeting will be held in the Washington, DC metro area to conduct a peer review of the agency's draft IRIS Toxicological Review of RDX (External Review Draft September 2016).

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is considering establishing federal baseline water quality standards (WQS) for certain Indian reservation waters to narrow a long-standing gap in coverage of Clean Water Act (CWA) protections. Currently, fewer than 50 of over 300 tribes with reservations have WQS effective under the CWA; most of the reservations with existing CWA-effective WQS have obtained the coverage through treatment in a manner similar to a state (TAS) under CWA section 518. In advance of any potential rulemaking to address this gap of CWA coverage, EPA specifically invites comments on whether to establish such federal baseline WQS for Indian reservation waters that do not yet have WQS under the CWA and, if so, what those WQS should be and how they should be implemented. Federal baseline WQS would define water quality goals for unprotected reservation waters and serve as the foundation for CWA actions to protect human health and the environment. Such WQS, if established, would apply only to those waters not already covered by existing CWA-effective WQS and would be superseded by any WQS subsequently adopted by an authorized tribe and approved by EPA under CWA section 303(c).

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is approving a State Implementation Plan (SIP) revision submitted by the State of Tennessee, through the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC), on September 25, 2013. The SIP submittal includes a change to the TDEC regulation ``Logs and Reports.'' EPA is approving this SIP revision because it is consistent with the Clean Air Act (CAA or Act) and federal regulations governing SIPs.

In reviewing past State Implementation Plan (SIP) actions, the Washington Department of Ecology (Ecology) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) discovered minor typographical errors related to the EPA's previous approvals of Chapter 173-400 Washington Administrative Code, General Regulations for Air Pollution Sources. The EPA is proposing to correct these errors. The proposed corrections make no substantive changes to the SIP and impose no new requirements. In the Final Rules section of this Federal Register, the EPA is approving these corrections as a direct final rule without prior proposal because the Agency views this as a noncontroversial action and anticipates no adverse comments. A detailed rationale for the approval is set forth in the direct final rule. If no adverse comments are received in response to this action, no further activity is contemplated. If the EPA receives adverse comments, the direct final rule will be withdrawn and all public comments received will be addressed in a subsequent final rule based on this proposed rule. The EPA will not institute a second comment period. Any parties interested in commenting on this action should do so at this time.