Yesterday the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) web site announced that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had submitted for approval the final rule for their 2012 Critical Use Exemption From the Phaseout of Methyl Bromide.
As has been the general practice at EPA for some time now, internal delays have pushed the publication of this rule past the time when it needs to be published to allow for industry to properly plan their production and importation requirements. One would assume that once again the EPA has notified by letter the producers and importers of methyl bromide of the actual amounts that will be authorized regardless of the outcome of the rulemaking process. EPA estimates that the final rule will be published in March; I predict after June.
[Insert standard complaint about DHS not including methyl bromide in the CFATS list of chemicals of interest (COI) because EPA was supposedly phasing out the use of this chemical in 2005]
More interesting is the fact that the OMB web site provides information on this rule making progress based upon the Fall 2011 Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions. Typically OMB and the various Executive Branch Departments provides notices in the Federal Register when this updated agenda is published; hasn’t been done yet. I will be looking at the Unified Agenda items for DHS that affect chemical and cyber security in more detail in a future blog.
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