The Environmental Protection Agency recently published a final rule enabling the agency to establish methodology the Agency will use to determine and revise the user fees applicable to the electronic and paper manifests to be submitted to the national electronic manifest system (e-Manifest system) that EPA is developing under the Hazardous Waste Electronic Manifest Establishment Act. This final rule is effective on June 30.
After the e-Manifest system's implementation date, certain users of the hazardous waste manifest will be required to pay a prescribed fee for each electronic and paper manifest they use and submit to the national system so that EPA can recover the costs of developing and operating the national e-Manifest system.
This final rule also announces the date when EPA expects the system to be operational and available to users. EPA will begin accepting manifest submissions and collecting the corresponding manifest submission fees on this date.
In addition, this action announces final decisions and regulations relating to several non-fee related matters that were included in the proposed rule. This includes modifying the existing regulations to: allow changes to the transporters designated on a manifest while the shipment is en route; describe how data corrections may be made to existing manifest records in the system; and amend the previous e-Manifest regulation (the One Year Rule) to allow the use, in certain instances, of a mixed paper and electronic manifest to track a hazardous waste shipment.
June 30 is the date on which EPA plans to launch and begin the operation of the e-Manifest system. This is the date when EPA will implement all e-Manifest Act regulations, including the requirements of this final rule, and the requirements of the One Year Rule that EPA issued on February 7, 2014.
This final rule is being published with an accelerated effective date to coincide with the launch of the e-Manifest system on June 30, at which time EPA will begin collecting fees to recover the costs of developing and operating the system.