Petition To Revise the Non-Hazardous Secondary Material Standard: Proposed Response

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA or “the Agency”) is responding to a rulemaking petition from American Forest and Paper Association et al. (“the petition”) requesting amendments to the Non- Hazardous Secondary Materials (NHSM) regulations, initially promulgated on March 21, 2011, and amended on February 7, 2013, February 8, 2016, and February 7, 2018 under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). The NHSM regulations establish standards and procedures for identifying whether non-hazardous secondary materials are solid wastes when legitimately used as fuels or ingredients in combustion units. The petition requested the following amendments: Change the legitimacy criterion for comparison of contaminants in the NHSM to the traditional fuel the unit is designed to burn from mandatory to “should consider”; remove associated designed to burn and other limitations for creosote-treated railroad ties (CTRT); and revise the definition of “paper recycling residuals” (PRR) to remove the limit on non-fiber materials in PRR that can be burned as a non-waste fuel. The EPA is proposing to deny the requested amendments. In addition, as an alternative to granting the third request, EPA is proposing a change to the definition of PRR to set a numerical limit on the amount of non- fiber materials that may be included for the residuals to be considered a non-waste fuel.