Yesterday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory
Affairs (OIRA) announced
that it had received a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) from the EPA on
preventing spills of hazardous substances. This rulemaking is being undertaken
in response to a consent
decree entered into in February 2016. That decree requires the EPA to issue
an NPRM on or before June 16th, 2018 and a final rule by August 29th,
2019.
The listing for this
rulemaking in the Fall 2017 Unified Agenda makes it clear that the Trump Administration
is still looking for ways to circumvent this consent decree, which is not
unexpected given its publicly professed point of view on government
regulations.
The simplest way to comply with this requirement would be
for the EPA to amend the current spill prevention, control and countermeasures
(SPCC) regulations under 44
USC 112 to add hazardous substances to the oil spill regulations. While
simple from a rule writing perspective this would certainly affect a large
portion of the economy (see the listing of potentially effected sectors in the
rulemaking description) and would be very costly. We might, however, see the
Trump Administration do this to demonstrate a strongly negative cost-benefit
relationship.
It could take some time for OIRA to approve this NPRM. I do
not expect to see this rulemaking published before the mandated date.
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