Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.
Yesterday Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) sent a letter to the Assistant Administrator of EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention in follow-up to last month’s decision by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in EDF’s challenge to EPA’s Inventory Notification Rule (EDF v. EPA, 17-1201).
The letter identifies “immediate, time-sensitive implications [of the decision] for EPA’s ongoing rulemaking for” EPA’s proposed Confidential Business Information (CBI) Claim Review Rule, which is currently undergoing public comment. EDF noted that, in addition to addressing problems the Court identified in EPA’s regulations promulgated pursuant to its Inventory Notification Rule, EPA will need to modify the current proposed rule to ensure it is consistent with the Court’s Opinion, and accept comments on the modified proposal.
This is because the proposed rule explicitly references and applies regulatory provisions that the Court found were unlawful. Specifically, the Court found that EPA’s CBI claim substantiation questions were flawed because they failed to inquire into “a chemical identity’s susceptibility to reverse engineering” and “effectively excised a statutorily required criterion from the substantiation process.” Hence, to align the proposed rule with the Court’s ruling and the representations that EPA made to the Court in its briefing and at argument, EPA will need to revise the substantiation questions and the substantive standard that EPA plans to use when reviewing claims under the CBI Claim Review Rule.
EDFs letter also notes that the proposed rule allows persons to rely on the voluntary substantiations they submitted as part of the Inventory notification process. But the Court’s Opinion establishes that these substantiations are inadequate because they fail to address a chemical’s susceptibility to reverse engineering, and EPA will need to modify the proposed rule to require companies to provide substantiations that address this statutory factor for confidentiality claims.
See EDF’s letter for more details.