                     Summary of e-Manifest Fee Rule Update
                       Environmental Technology Council
                               October 22, 2015
                                       
 On October 22, 2015, Rich LaShier, Scott Christian, and Mimi Guernica traveled to ETC's offices at 1112 16[th] St., NW.  EPA staff provided a demo to the ETC members of the results of the first phase of the 18F Group's system coding work for the September 2015 e-Manifest demo project.  We also updated ETC on the status of the e-Manifest Fee Rule.
 With respect to the Fee Rule, Rich explained that the Fee Rule Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPR) has entered Final Agency Review or FAR.  FAR is the final, internal development step in the Agency's regulation development process.  It is the step in which the EPA offices on the work group provide their last review of a regulatory action before the action is sent to OMB for its Executive Order 12866 review.
 The FAR meeting with the EPA work group offices is scheduled for Thursday, November 5, 2015.  At that meeting, each office will be asked whether it concurs with the NPR, non-concurs, or concurs with comment.  There is usually several days to a couple weeks after the FAR meeting when the lead office addresses comments and otherwise prepares the NPR and supporting documents for transmittal to OMB.
 Rich further reported that the NPR for the Fee Rule is still on track for completion and publication in May 2016.  The NPR will present the EPA's proposed fee methodology for public comment.  The fee schedules developed under the Rule's methodology will not be published as a regulation, but will be published to system users on the program's web site.
 Rich focused the Fee Rule presentation on changes to the NPR since the last quarterly briefing.  The points that were summarized as changes were:
 The User Fee formula used to determine fees now includes an indirect cost factor of 19.74%, as determined by the OCFO experts,
 Initial analysis of the cost of fee collections by the RTP Finance Center suggests that a monthly fixed payment approach might produce savings relative to monthly invoicing TSDFs, perhaps amounting to about 10 to 20 cents per manifest.
 The fee sanctions proposed now include: (1) Financial penalties; (2) Publication of Late Payors List; and (3) and civil enforcement remedies for accounts that are delinquent for 180 days.
 The sanctions ratchet up as the duration of the delinquency increases i.e., as delinquency reaches 30 days, 90 days, 120 days, and 180 days.
 The proposed fee approach imposes a differential fee based on the processing effort from each type of manifest submission, with mailed paper manifests bearing the highest fees.  We also ask for comment on restricting TSDFs to submitting their paper manifest data to us by digital means (scans, XML) rather than mail.
 On the issue of Payments and sanctions, we heard several comments from ETC members:
 A question was raised whether payments could be made company-wide, or would payments only be collected from each TSDF?
 While it may be possible for the corporate office to make payments for multiple sites, EPA's billing will likely differentiate by the site ID of each facility, so payments will more easily be made and collected by facility.
 On the fee sanctions, an ETC member suggested that the proposed rule should contain a dispute resolution process for those instances in which a TSDF wants to dispute the amount of their bill.  We should discuss with OGC.
 On the issue of paper manifest submissions, the ETC members said they have no interest in mailing manifests to the system, so would not object to a restriction that limited submissions to digital means.  But ETC does not speak for all TSDFs, and some smaller facilities may have a different view.  But it's worth putting it out for comment.
 We updated ETC on the NPR's inclusion of changes to the transporter regulation addressing when the routing of a waste shipment can be changed during transportation.
 Current regulation allows a transporter to be added or substituted when there is an emergency preventing delivery to the next designated transporter or TSDF, and only after the generator has been consulted on and approves the change.
 We have learned that the industry practice has been to make such changes for transporter convenience (transfer facility efficiency) and without explicit generator consultation.  Instead, some transporters rely on contracts with generators in which they can make a transporter change on behalf of the generator.
 We then discussed with ETC members the recent addition to the NPR under which we propose a formal process for TSDFs to make corrections to manifest data within 90 days of receipt of manifested wastes.  
 We did not hear any objections to the addition of a corrections process or to the requirement that the correction submission bear a CROMERR certification.
 We did hear the point raised that we should discuss how the corrections process will coordinate or dovetail with the existing process for discrepancy reporting.  
 In response to a question from an ETC member, we confirmed that under the proposal, generators would be notified of corrections and could object and be part of the process.  
 On the issue of the proposal to revisit the One Year Rule's ban of mixed paper/electronic manifests, there was strong support from ETC members for consideration of mixed manifest scenarios.
 ETC members agreed that allowing generators to complete and retain an ink signed generator copy could provide needed flexibility for overcoming the challenges of implementing electronic manifest processes at generator sites.
 It was suggested that a mixed manifest process could be useful at cleanup sites.
 It might also be helpful when there are multiple transporters, but one transporter does not support electronic manifests.
 One ETC member, Veolia, suggested that the mixed manifest program suggested by this new proposal may be sufficient for Veolia's purposes, as it would enable Veolia to submit its data electronically to e-Manifest.
