[Federal Register: December 4, 2002 (Volume 67, Number 233)]
[Notices]
[Page 72168-72170]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr04de02-70]
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ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
[OEI-2002-0003; FRL-7417-3]
Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission of EPA ICR
No. 1363.12 (OMB No. 2070-0093) to OMB for Review and Approval; Comment
Request; Toxic Chemical Release Reporting
AGENCY: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
ACTION: Notice.
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SUMMARY: In compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) (44
U.S.C. 3501 et seq.), this notice announces that the Information
Collection Request (ICR) (EPA ICR No. 1363.12; OMB Control No. 2070-
0093) for the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Form R has been forwarded
to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and approval
pursuant to the OMB procedures in 5 CFR 1320.12. The ICR, which is
summarized below, describes the nature of the information collection
and its estimated burden and cost, and it includes the actual data
collection instrument where appropriate.
The Agency is requesting that OMB renew for three years the
existing approval for this ICR, which is scheduled to expire on January
31, 2003. A Federal Register notice announcing the Agency's intent to
seek the renewal of this ICR and the 60-day public comment opportunity,
requesting comments on the request and the contents of the ICR, was
issued on July 1, 2002 (67 FR 44213). A Federal Register correction
notice, correcting the address for submission of comments in person,
was issued on July 15, 2002 (67 FR 46502). EPA received a number of
comments on this ICR during the comment period, and EPA has developed
responses to those comments. The comments and EPA's responses are
included in an attachment to the ICR Supporting Statement that is being
submitted to OMB with this ICR renewal request, and will be made
available in the docket for OEI-2002-0003 and on the EPA TRI Web site
at http://www.epa.gov/tri.
DATES: Additional comments may be submitted on or before January 3,
2003.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Judith Kendall, TRI Program Division,
Office of Environmental Information, Mailcode 2844, Environmental
Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW., Washington, DC 20460;
telephone number: (202)566-0750; e-mail address:
kendall.judith@epa.gov; fax number: (202)566-0741.
ADDRESSES: Follow the detailed instructions in SUPPLEMENTARY
INFORMATION.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
Review Requested: This is a request to renew a currently approved
information collection pursuant to 5 CFR 1320.12.
ICR Numbers: EPA ICR 1363.12; OMB Control No. 2070-0093.
Current Expiration Date: Current OMB approval expires on January
31, 2003.
EPA has established a public docket for this ICR under Docket ID
No. OEI-2002-0003, which is available for public viewing at the OEI
Docket in the EPA Docket Center (EPA/DC), EPA West, Room B102, 1301
Constitution Ave., NW., Washington, DC. The EPA Docket Center Public
Reading Room is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through
Friday, excluding legal holidays. The telephone number for the Reading
Room is (202) 566-1744, and the telephone number for the OEI Docket is
(202) 566-1752. An electronic version of the public docket is available
through EPA Dockets (EDOCKET) at http://www.epa.gov/edocket. Use
EDOCKET to submit or view public comments, access the index listing of
the contents of the public docket, and to access those documents in the
public docket that are available electronically. Once in the system,
select ``search,'' then key in the docket ID number identified above.
Any comments related to this ICR should be submitted to EPA and OMB
within 30 days of this notice, and according to the following detailed
instructions: (1) Submit your comments to EPA online using EDOCKET (our
preferred method), by e-mail to oei.docket@epa.gov or by mail to: EPA
Docket Center, Environmental Protection Agency, Mailcode: 2844, 1200
Pennsylvania Ave., NW., Washington, DC 20460, and (2) Mail your
comments to OMB at: Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs,
Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Attention: Desk Officer for EPA,
725 17th Street, NW., Washington, DC 20503.
EPA's policy is those public comments, whether submitted
electronically or in paper, will be made available for public viewing
in EDOCKET as EPA receives them and without change, unless the comment
contains copyrighted material, CBI, or other information whose public
disclosure is restricted by statute. When EPA identifies a comment
containing copyrighted material, EPA will provide a reference to that
material in the version of the comment that is placed in EDOCKET. The
entire printed comment, including the copyrighted material, will be
available in the public docket. Although identified as an item in the
official docket, information claimed as CBI, or whose disclosure is
otherwise restricted by statute, is not included in the official public
docket, and will not be available for public viewing in EDOCKET. For
further information about the electronic docket, see EPA's Federal
Register notice describing the electronic docket at 67 FR 38102 (May
31, 2002), or go to http://www.epa.gov/edocket.
Title: Toxic Chemical Release Reporting, Recordkeeping, Supplier
Notification and Petitions under Section 313 of the Emergency Planning
and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA).
Background: EPCRA section 313 requires owners and operators of
certain facilities that manufacture, process, or otherwise use any of
the more than 650 listed toxic chemicals and chemical categories in
excess of applicable threshold quantities to report annually to the
Environmental Protection Agency and to the states in which such
facilities are located on their environmental releases and other waste
management quantities of such chemicals. In addition, section 6607 of
the Pollution Prevention Act (PPA) requires that facilities provide
information on the quantities of the toxic chemicals in waste streams
and the efforts made to reduce or eliminate those quantities.
Annual reporting of toxic chemical releases and other waste
management information under EPCRA section 313 provides citizens with a
more complete picture of the total disposition of chemicals in their
communities and helps focus industries' attention on pollution
prevention and source reduction opportunities. EPA believes that the
public has a right to know about the disposition of chemicals within
communities and the management of such chemicals by facilities in
industries subject to EPCRA section 313 reporting. This reporting has
been successful in providing communities with important information
regarding
[[Page 72169]]
the disposition of toxic chemicals and other waste management
information of toxic chemicals from manufacturing facilities in their
areas.
EPA collects, processes, and makes available to the public all of
the information collected. The information gathered under these
authorities is stored in a database maintained at EPA and is available
through the Internet. This information, commonly known as the Toxics
Release Inventory (TRI), is used extensively by both EPA and the public
sector. Program offices within EPA use TRI data, along with other
sources of data, to establish priorities, evaluate potential exposure
scenarios, and undertake enforcement activities. Environmental and
public interest groups use the data in studies and reports, making the
public more aware of releases of chemicals in their communities.
Comprehensive publicly-available data about releases, transfers,
and other waste management activities of toxic chemicals at the
community level are generally not available, other than under the
reporting requirements of EPCRA section 313. Permit data are often
difficult to obtain, are not cross-media and present only a limited
perspective on a facility's overall performance. With TRI data, and the
real gains in understanding it has produced, communities and
governments know what toxic chemicals are released, transferred, or
otherwise managed as a waste in their area by industrial facilities. In
addition, industries have an additional tool for evaluating efficiency
and progress on their pollution prevention goals.
Responses to the collection of information are mandatory (see 40
CFR part 372). Respondents may claim all or part of a notice
confidential. EPA will disclose information that is covered by a claim
of confidentiality only to the extent permitted by, and in accordance
with, the procedures in TSCA section 14 and 40 CFR part 2.
An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required
to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a
currently valid OMB control number. The OMB control numbers for EPA's
regulations are listed in 40 CFR part 9 and 48 CFR Chapter 15.
Burden Statement: Under the PRA, ``burden'' means the total time,
effort, or financial resources expended by persons to generate,
maintain, retain, or disclose or provide information to or for a
federal agency. For this collection, it includes the time needed to
review instructions; develop, acquire, install, and utilize technology
and systems for the purposes of collecting, validating, and verifying
information, processing and maintaining information, and disclosing and
providing information; adjust the existing ways to comply with any
previously applicable instructions and requirements; train personnel to
be able to respond to a collection of information; search data sources;
complete and review the collection of information; and transmit or
otherwise disclose the information.
The ICR supporting statement provides a detailed explanation of
this estimate, which is only briefly summarized in this notice. The
annual public burden for this collection of information is estimated to
average 19.5 hours per response. The following is a summary of the
estimates taken from the ICR:
Respondents/affected entities: Entities potentially affected by
this action are owners or operators of certain facilities that
manufacture, process, or otherwise use certain specified toxic
chemicals and chemical categories and are required to report annually
on the environmental releases and transfers of waste management
activities for such chemicals.
Estimated total number of potential responses: 88,117.
Frequency of response: Annual.
Estimated total annual burden hours: 2,477,952.
Estimated total annual burden costs: $107.4 million.
Changes in Burden Estimates: As a result of OMB's March 7, 2002
approval of an information correction worksheet, OMB's inventory
reflects 145,972 responses and 9,612,104 hours for this information
collection. This ICR supporting statement is for 88,117 responses and
2,477,952 hours. The reduction in burden of approximately 7.1 million
hours is the result of five adjustments.
The first adjustment is to the number of responses. The estimate of
145,972 responses in the existing OMB approval incorporated predicted
reporting increases from economic analyses for several final rules. In
all cases, these predictions have overestimated actual reporting
levels, resulting in a cumulative overestimate of the number of
responses. For example, the 1997 program change for industry expansion
estimated 39,033 responses would be submitted, but only 12,567
responses were actually submitted. Likewise, the 1999 program change
for PBT chemical thresholds estimated 19,990 responses would be
submitted, but only about 6,600 responses per year were actually
submitted. The number of responses in this ICR supporting statement
have been adjusted to accurately reflect actual subsequent year
reporting levels, with the exception of predicted additional responses
from the rule lowering reporting thresholds for lead and lead
compounds. The prediction of 9,813 additional reports for lead and lead
compounds may prove to be an overestimate, as with EPA predictions for
past rules. Adjusting the number of responses to accurately reflect
actual subsequent year reporting levels (where available) results in a
decrease of 59,617 responses from subsequent year filers and
approximately 3.1 million burden hours (at 52.1 hours per response).
The second adjustment is to the unit burden hours. EPA has adjusted
the estimate of unit burden hours for Form R completion in subsequent
years from 47.1 hours to 14.5 hours based on responses from actual TRI
reporting facilities. The adjustment to unit burden hours does not
affect the number of responses, but reduces total burden by
approximately 2.8 million burden hours (using the number of subsequent
year responses for this ICR).
The third adjustment relates to first-year reporting burden. In
previous ICRs, the renewal period has coincided with programmatic
changes in one or more years. Previous ICRs have been based on
annualized estimates of burden (including time for rule familiarization
and higher first year reporting burdens for facilities affected by
programmatic changes). Since there are no final rules pending at this
time, this ICR renewal does not require annualized burden estimates
that account for first-year reporting burden by facilities affected by
programmatic changes. However, the ICR does account for a baseline
level of first-time filers that are new to TRI reporting each year.
This accounts for a reduction of about 900,000 burden hours.
The fourth adjustment relates to the adoption of TRI-ME, an
automated reporting software package. EPA has reduced the burden
estimates related to Form R Completion and Recordkeeping/Submission by
25 percent for the reports filed using TRI-ME. On an annualized basis,
an estimated 60 percent of reports are expected to be filed using TRI-
ME over the three years of the ICR. This results in a reduction of
approximately 270,000 hours.
The fifth adjustment relates to the number of petitions. In
previous ICRs, EPA has estimated 11 petitions per year. Since the
actual number has been 1 to 2 per year, this ICR renewal has reduced
the expected number of petitions to 5. This adjustment has a very minor
impact on total burden.
[[Page 72170]]
The sum of these adjustments is a decrease of 57,855 responses and
7,134,152 burden hours from the current approved total. According to
the procedures prescribed in 5 CFR 1320.12, EPA has submitted this ICR
to OMB for review and approval. Any comments related to the renewal of
this ICR should be submitted within 30 days of this notice, as
described above.
Dated: November 22, 2002.
Oscar Morales,
Director, Collection Strategies Division, Office of Environmental
Information.
[FR Doc. 02-30762 Filed 12-3-02; 8:45 am]
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