43964 Federal Register / Vol. 82, No. 181 / Wednesday, September 20, 2017 / Notices 

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION 

AGENCY 

[EPA–HQ–OW–2017–0518] 

Notice of Intent To Prepare a 

Programmatic Environmental 

Assessment (PEA) for Financing Water 

and Wastewater Infrastructure Projects 

Pursuant to the Water Infrastructure 

Finance and Innovation Act 

AGENCY: Environmental Protection 

Agency (EPA). 

ACTION: Initiation of scoping. 

SUMMARY: Consistent with the National 

Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the 

Council on Environmental Quality’s 

NEPA regulations, and EPA’s 

regulations for implementing NEPA, 

EPA will prepare a Programmatic 

Environmental Assessment (PEA) to 

analyze the potential environmental 

impacts related to providing individual 

long-term, low-cost supplemental loans 

or loan guarantees for regionally and 

nationally significant eligible water and 

wastewater infrastructure projects under 

the Water Infrastructure Finance and 

Innovation Act (WIFIA) Program. EPA 

will use the information in the PEA to 

determine whether to prepare an 

Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). 

Future proposed actions under WIFIA 

that have potential impacts not 

sufficiently addressed by this PEA may 

require consideration in a separate 

NEPA document. 

This notice initiates the scoping 

process by inviting comments from 

Federal, State, and local agencies, 

Indian tribes, and the public to help 

identify the environmental issues and 

reasonable alternatives to be examined 

in the PEA. The scoping process will 

inform the preparation and issuance of 

the PEA, which will be made available 

for public comment. 

DATES: Comments must be received on 

or before October 20th, 2017. 

ADDRESSES: Submit your comments, 

identified by Docket ID No. EPA–HQ– 

OW–2017–0518 to the Federal 

eRulemaking Portal: https://

www.regulations.gov/. Please follow the 

online instructions for submitting 

comments. Once submitted, comments 

cannot be edited or withdrawn. The 

EPA may publish public comments 

received to its public docket. Do not 

submit electronically any information 

you consider to be Confidential 

Business Information (CBI) or other 

information whose disclosure is 

restricted by statute. Multimedia 

submissions (audio, video, etc.) must be 

accompanied by a written comment. 

The written comment is considered the 

official comment and should include 

discussion of all points you wish to 

make. The EPA will generally not 

consider comments or comment 

contents located outside of the primary 

submission (i.e. on the web, cloud, or 

other file sharing system). For 

additional submission methods, the full 

EPA public comment policy, 

information about CBI or multimedia 

submissions, and general guidance on 

making effective comments, please visit 

https://www.epa.gov/dockets/ 

commenting-epa-dockets. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: 

Alejandro Escobar, Water Infrastructure 

Division, WIFIA Program, Mail Code: 

4201T, Environmental Protection 

Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue 

NW., Washington, DC 20460; telephone 

number: 202–564–9047; email address 

escobar.alejandro@epa.gov. 

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: EPA is 

seeking public comment to determine 

the scope of projects, environmental 

issues and reasonable alternatives to be 

addressed in the PEA on providing 

loans or loan guarantees for water and 

wastewater infrastructure projects under 

the Water Infrastructure Finance and 

Innovation Act (WIFIA) Program. 

The Water Infrastructure Finance and 

Innovation Act of 2014 (WIFIA) 

established the WIFIA program, a 

federal credit program administered by 

EPA for eligible water and wastewater 

infrastructure projects. WIFIA and the 

WIFIA implementation rule (see 81 FR 

91822) outline the eligibility and other 

requirements for prospective borrowers. 

Eligible borrowers are: Local, State, 

Tribal, and Federal government entities; 

partnerships and joint ventures; 

corporations and trusts; and Clean 

Water and Drinking Water State 

Revolving Fund (SRF) programs. 

The WIFIA program can finance 

development and implementation 

activities for the following eligible 

projects: Wastewater conveyance and 

treatment projects that are eligible for 

the Clean Water SRF; drinking water 

treatment and distribution projects that 

are eligible for the Drinking Water SRF; 

enhanced energy efficiency projects at 

drinking water and wastewater 

facilities; brackish or seawater 

desalination, aquifer recharge, 

alternative water supply, and water 

recycling projects; drought prevention, 

reduction, or mitigation projects; 

acquisition of property if it is integral to 

the project or will mitigate the 

environmental impact of a project; and 

a combination of projects secured by a 

common security pledge or submitted 

under one application by an SRF 

program. 

Eligible development and 

implementation activities are: 

Development phase activities, including 

planning, preliminary engineering, 

design, environmental review, revenue 

forecasting, and other pre-construction 

activities; construction, reconstruction, 

rehabilitation, and replacement 

activities; acquisition of real property or 

an interest in real property, 

environmental mitigation, construction 

contingencies, and acquisition of 

equipment; capitalized interest 

necessary to meet market requirements, 

reasonably required reserve funds, 

capital issuance expenses and other 

carrying costs during construction. 

EPA is currently planning to analyze 

two alternatives in the PEA: No Action, 

that is not providing financing; and the 

proposed action, which is providing 

financing to individual selected 

applicants. The PEA will focus its 

analysis on the potential environmental 

impacts of both alternatives. Subject 

areas to be addressed include, but are 

not limited to: Public health, water 

quality and quantity (surface and 

groundwater), historic properties, and 

threatened and endangered species. 

Dated: September 14, 2017. 

Kelly Knight, 

Director, NEPA Compliance Division, Office 

of Federal Activities. 

[FR Doc. 2017–19956 Filed 9–19–17; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 6560–50–P 

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION 

AGENCY 

[EPA–HQ–OPPT–2017–0026; FRL–9968–03] 

Compliance Date Extension; Statutory 

Requirements for Substantiation of 

Confidential Business Information 

(CBI) Claims Under the Toxic 

Substances Control Act (TSCA) 

AGENCY: Environmental Protection 

Agency (EPA). 

ACTION: Notice. 

SUMMARY: EPA is extending the 

compliance dates published in the 

Federal Register on January 19, 2017 

and previously extended in the Federal 

Register on February 21, 2017. 

Specifically, the Agency set September 

19, 2017 as the deadline by which 

submitters of TSCA submissions 

containing information claimed as CBI 

and filed between June 22, 2016 and 

March 21, 2017 had to submit to EPA 

the substantiation required by TSCA 

section 14(c)(3) for all information 

claimed as confidential, other than 

information exempt from substantiation 

pursuant to TSCA section 14(c)(2). The 


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