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®: CRE Regulatory Action of the Week

EPA Suspends TSCA Submission Period
On May 11, 2011, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency published Federal Register notice that EPA is amending the Toxic Substances Control Act section 8(a) Inventory Update Reporting regulations by suspending the next IUR submission period. This action is in part the result of disagreements between the Office of Management and Budget and EPA over the IUR rules. EPA proposed the rule last August and submitted a draft final version to the White House Office of Management & Budget (OMB) for review in January. OMB has yet to release the rule.

The IUR requires manufacturers (including importers) of certain chemical substances included on the TSCA Chemical Substance Inventory (TSCA Inventory) to report current data on the manufacturing, processing, and use of the chemical substances. In the Federal Register of August 13, 2010, EPA published proposed modifications to the IUR regulations. EPA is suspending the next submission period to allow additional time to finalize the proposed modifications to the IUR regulations, and to avoid finalizing changes to the reporting requirements in the midst of the 2011 submission period. EPA expects to finalize, in the near future, changes to the IUR reporting requirements which will supersede this action.

EPA's Federal register notice of the suspension attributes it in part to many comments from the regulated community on the proposed rules:

    "This action also addresses, in part, concerns raised by the regulated community (in their comments on the August 13, 2010 proposed rule) about the span of time between the issuance of a final rule modifying the IUR and the close of the next submission period. EPA received numerous comments requesting that the span be sufficient to accommodate the commenters' adjustments to their internal information collection procedures."
EPA is not allowing public comment on the suspension of the next submission period because
    "If EPA were to delay this action pending further opportunity for public comment, the action to suspend the next submission period would itself be postponed, and likely could not be finalized until the latter part of the submission period, by which point it would be too late to avoid the confusion and duplication of effort that EPA anticipates would likely occur if this submission period were to open prior to the completion of work on the proposed modifications of the submission."
  • Click here to read EPA's Federal Register notice of the suspension