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[Federal Register Volume 65, Number 109 (Tuesday, June 6, 2000)]
[Notices]
[Pages 35929-35931]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 00-14183]

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ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

[FRL-6709-6]

Policy or Regulatory Flexibility as Incentive for Improved 
Environmental Performance at Laboratories

AGENCY: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

ACTION: Notice; request for information under Project XL and Labs21-- 
Flexibility needs under environmental policies or regulations that 
affect laboratories.

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SUMMARY: EPA solicits information from laboratories on cases where 
flexibility under environmental policies or regulations could result in 
improved environmental performance. The Agency will use this 
information in an assessment of whether to provide flexibility through 
Project XL to laboratories who participate in the emerging Labs21 
program. EPA also seeks candidate laboratories to participate in a 
pilot project connected with this effort.

DATES: The period for the solicitation is open-ended, although 
responders are requested to reply by July 6, 2000.

ADDRESSES: Responders to Section IV of this Federal Register Notice 
should

[[Page 35930]]

address correspondence to: Nina Bonnelycke, Mail Code 1802, U.S. EPA, 
Ariel Rios Building, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 
20460. Responders may also send information via email to 
[email protected].

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For specific information on regulatory 
relief for laboratories under Project XL or for general information on 
Project XL, please contact Nina Bonnelycke at the above addresses or at 
202-260-3344. For more information on EPA's Labs21 program, please 
contact Phil Wirdzek at Mail Code 3204, U.S. EPA, Ariel Rios Building, 
1200 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20460, phone: 202-564-
2094, email: [email protected].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

I. Background

    Through its Office of Administration and Resources Management, EPA 
is planning to establish a voluntary initiative to improve laboratory 
environmental performance through energy- and water-efficiency. This 
initiative, named Laboratories for the 21st century or Labs21, evolved 
from the Agency's recent efforts to improve the environmental 
performance of its own laboratories. As part of developing the Labs21 
program, the Agency is exploring what incentives, if any, might prompt 
laboratories to participate in the new program. Preliminary contacts 
with industry representatives indicate that regulatory relief from 
environmental regulations might be one such incentive. Other examples 
include awards and recognition or data sharing on environmental 
management practices. Since Project XL is an existing EPA program for 
providing relief from environmental regulations or programmatic 
requirements, the Agency is exploring using XL as a way to offer this 
type of flexibility to Labs21 participants.

II. Labs21 and Project XL

A. Labs21 Overview

    EPA recently implemented changes at its Ann Arbor, Michigan, 
laboratory that will accomplish the following: Reduce annual 
electricity demand by 68 percent, reduce annual water consumption by 80 
percent, produce energy and water savings that will reduce the 
laboratory's annual utility bill by 74 percent, and recoup the cost of 
the associated equipment upgrades within 8 years.
    The Agency is currently implementing comparable modifications at 
many of its other laboratories and is expecting similar results. Based 
on its experience with its own facilities, EPA is exploring whether to 
develop a national voluntary initiative, referred to as Labs21, to 
encourage similar improvements at laboratories throughout the U.S.
    As part of developing Labs21, EPA held an initial planning meeting 
on September 9, 1999, to discuss the emerging program with interested 
parties. (Conference information is available at http://www.epa.gov/labs21 century.) At this meeting, EPA presented its first-year 
objectives for Labs21, which are to: Establish procedures laboratory 
owners and operators can use to evaluate the energy- and water-
efficiency of their laboratories, define the participation requirements 
for a Labs21 laboratory, provide opportunities to exchange information 
on laboratory energy- and water-efficiency (e.g., conferences, 
newsletters, or websites), identify, promote, and replicate 
demonstration projects to facilitate market acceptance of advanced 
energy-and water-efficient technologies, and establish award criteria 
for recognizing Labs21 participants.
    EPA is continuing to work with a group of laboratories, including 
the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Lawrence Berkeley 
National Laboratory to flesh out the program further. Interested 
parties should contact EPA as indicated above.

B. Project XL Overview

    One possible means of adding a flexibility component to Labs21 
might be Project XL. Project XL is an existing EPA program specifically 
designed to offer flexibility on an experimental basis, and it has both 
a continuing mission and experience in granting flexibility from 
environmental regulations, including regulations that affect 
laboratories.
    EPA launched Project XL --``eXcellence and Leadership''--on March 
16, 1995, as a central part of its effort to reinvent environmental 
protection. (See 60 FR 27282; May 23, 1995.) Project XL gives 
individual private and public regulated entities the opportunity to 
develop their own pilot projects wherein the Agency provides targeted 
flexibility in exchange for improved environmental performance. EPA 
intends to use Project XL and other related efforts to test innovative 
strategies for reducing the regulatory burden and promoting economic 
growth while achieving better environmental and public health 
protection. Through this testing, EPA can investigate approaches or 
legal interpretations that depart from or are even inconsistent with 
longstanding Agency practices, as long as those interpretations meet 
the general mandate of the statutes the Agency is charged with 
implementing.
    To participate in XL, interested parties must develop a proposal 
that satisfies a number of criteria, including criteria for superior 
environmental performance, transferability, and stakeholder 
involvement. In the evaluation of environmental performance under XL, 
EPA seeks superior performance both in areas under existing EPA 
jurisdiction such as waste handling, air emissions, or effluent 
treatment, as well as through environmental innovations in fields as 
diverse as data monitoring and reporting or product stewardship.
    As of December 1999, 31 projects have met the XL criteria and are 
in various stages of development and implementation. Sixteen (16) new 
proposals are in review. For more information about the XL program, XL 
criteria, or about specific XL projects underway, please refer to 
http://www.epa.gov/projectxl or contact EPA as indicated above under 
For Further Information Contact.

C. Existing XL Project Investigates Regulatory Flexibility for 
Laboratories

    The XL program has an existing project, the New England 
Universities Laboratories XL Project (NE Labs), to replace certain 
federal and state hazardous waste regulations with an Environmental 
Management Plan tailored to university labs. (This project is described 
in more detail on the XL website at http://www.epa.gov/projectxl/nelabs/index.htm.)
    The conflict for universities that this project works to address is 
that while hazardous waste regulations are typically directed toward 
large-scale industrial processes, academic and teaching laboratories 
typically use only small amounts of hazardous chemicals. This XL 
project focuses on two specific environmental management problems 
caused by application of the waste management regulations to university 
settings: premature hazardous waste determination and inefficient 
collection of wastes from satellite locations. Premature hazardous 
waste determination occurs when university workers, in an attempt to 
adhere to hazardous waste regulations, discard used materials as 
``hazardous wastes'' without knowledge of the university's options for 
recycling and reuse. The result is that the university must dispose of 
an unnecessarily large volume of reusable materials each year, meaning 
that the regulations in effect curb the effectiveness of the 
university's

[[Page 35931]]

recycling program. In a similar vein, the 3-day satellite accumulation 
requirements under hazardous waste management regulations force 
university environmental managers to pick up and transport wastes on a 
frequent but unpredictable basis. The XL project gives participating 
universities the latitude to explore how to replace the broad-brush 
hazardous waste regulations that cause these inefficiencies with a more 
targeted, effective environmental management system.
    It is this type of tradeoff between regulatory relief and improved 
environmental performance that the Agency hopes to capture in the 
Labs21 program, and EPA's expectation is that the experience the XL 
program has gained through running the NE Labs XL project and other 
similar projects can assist EPA in structuring a flexibility component 
for Labs21.

III. Definition of ``Laboratory''

    For purposes of this Federal Register notice, the term 
``laboratory'' includes research, academic or industrial laboratories. 
This definition extends to facilities that generate product in 
commercial quantities in addition to facilities whose principal output 
is research, analysis, or products manufactured for R&D or other 
investigatory purposes.

IV. Information Sought By EPA

A. Types of Flexibility Needed By Laboratories

    In today's notice, EPA is asking laboratories to identify specific 
examples of environmental regulations or policies under which the 
benefit to the environment appears to be small compared to the 
implementation burden faced by the affected lab. The previous section 
describes a case where university laboratories felt they could obtain 
superior environmental performance by implementing their own 
environmental control plan instead of continuing compliance with 
existing hazardous waste regulations. Other examples may exist, for 
instance, there may be air emission or water treatment standards that, 
for whatever reason, fail to achieve their environmental objectives 
when applied to laboratory settings. The Agency will use feedback 
received through this Notice to guide its assessment of whether to 
offer a flexibility component in the new Labs21 program.
    In addition, the Agency today is asking laboratories to identify 
any regulations or policies issued by other federal agencies where the 
benefit to the environment appears to be small compared to the 
implementation burden faced by the affected lab. Examples of federal 
agencies with jurisdiction over laboratories' environmental performance 
include the Food and Drug Administration or the Department of 
Transportation. The feedback EPA receives will help the Agency assess 
the need to coordinate with other federal agencies regarding 
flexibility for laboratories.

B. Laboratories Interested in Participating in a Pilot Project

    Through today's notice, EPA requests contact with laboratories that 
want to participate in an XL project to grant flexibility as part of 
the Labs21 program. These candidates, referred to as ``sponsors'' under 
XL, should be interested in obtaining regulatory or programmatic 
flexibility for their lab, should have some specific ideas concerning 
requirements that EPA should consider waiving, or should have broad 
knowledge of the regulatory obstacles to environmental performance that 
laboratories face.
    Through participating, sponsors will not only have a chance to 
secure regulatory or programmatic relief for their facilities, but will 
also have an opportunity to shape the dialogue between laboratories and 
EPA on how to maximize environmental performance at labs.

    Dated: May 22, 2000.
Jay Benforado,
Acting Associate Administrator, Office of Policy and Reinvention.
[FR Doc. 00-14183 Filed 6-5-00; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6560-50-P
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