Rural Housing Service August 2015 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

Vitol Inc. (Applicant or Vitol)) has applied to renew its authority to transmit electric energy from the United States to Canada pursuant to section 202(e) of the Federal Power Act.

On August 5, 2015, the U.S. Department of Energy published a final rule amending the test procedures for clothes washers. This correction addresses a numbering error in the regulatory text, by which two provisions were inadvertently assigned the same section number. Neither the error nor the correction in this document affects the substance of the rulemaking or any of the conclusions reached in support of the final rule.

This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB), Oak Ridge Reservation. The Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of this meeting be announced in the Federal Register.

This notice announces the availability of the ROD to fund implementation of Crooked River Valley Rehabilitation Project in Idaho County, Idaho. BPA has decided to fund implementation of Alternative 2 identified in the Crooked River Valley Rehabilitation Project Final Environmental Impact Statement (DOE/EIS-0506, June 2015). Alternative 2 consists of: (1) Constructing a 6,000 foot temporary bypass channel and temporary access road/levee and, following construction of the channel, removing and decommissioning these structures; (2) regrading approximately 115 acres of floodplain by moving dredge tailings; (3) filling in approximately 10,960 feet of the current channel, reconstructing approximately 7,400 feet of new channel, and constructing more than 2,700 feet of side channels; (4) replanting the valley bottom with native and approved non-native plant species; (5) staging materials and equipment at campgrounds; and (6) monitoring project activities and effectiveness. All mitigation measures identified in the environmental impact statement (EIS) are adopted.

This document contains corrections to the final rule (RM12-11- 003) which was published in the Federal Register of Friday, July 24, 2015 (80 FR 43944). The final rule amended regulations to: provide pre- granted authority under a new paragraph to abandon or replace auxiliary facilities, subject to certain conditions; permit auxiliary facilities that cannot meet the conditions for the pre-granted abandonment authority in the new paragraph to be abandoned under the blanket certificate regulations, subject to those regulations' requirements; and permit replacement facilities constructed under the regulations to be abandoned under the blanket certificate regulations, subject to those regulations' requirements.

The Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 (EPCA), as amended, prescribes energy conservation standards for various consumer products and certain commercial and industrial equipment, including refrigerated bottled or canned beverage vending machines (beverage vending machine). EPCA also requires the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to periodically determine whether more-stringent, amended standards would be technologically feasible and economically justified, and would save a significant amount of energy. In this NOPR, DOE proposes amended energy conservation standards for Class A and Class B beverage vending machines. DOE is also proposing to amend the definition for Class A equipment to more clearly differentiate Class A and Class B equipment, as well as to amend the definition of combination vending machine. In addition, DOE proposes to establish definitions and new energy conservations standards for Combination A and Combination B classes of beverage vending machines. This NOPR also announces a public meeting to receive comment on these proposed standards and associated analyses and results, and announces the availability of the NOPR technical support document (TSD).

On June 19, 2015 the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program (NNPP) published in the Federal Register, a notice of availability for the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Recapitalization of Infrastructure Supporting Naval Spent Nuclear Fuel Handling at the Idaho National Laboratory (DOE/EIS-0453-D) for public review and comment. That notice stated that the public comment period would continue through August 10, 2015. Based on a request received on August 6, 2015, the NNPP is reopening the public comment period through August 31, 2015.