US EPA Issues First Year Implementation Plan for New Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued a “First Year Implementation Plan” outlining the steps it will take over the next year (and beyond) toward implementing the requirements of the new Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, the legislation signed into law by President Obama on June 22 to modernize the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The Lautenberg Act imposes a number of new requirements and responsibilities on US EPA, with several major tasks that must be completed within the first 12 months after the law’s enactment, including promulgating several significant rulemakings, initiating risk evaluations on 10 Work Plan chemicals and other efforts.

In announcing the Implementation Plan, US EPA underscored its commitment “to engage partners and stakeholders early in the process, and to be as transparent as possible.” The agency emphasized that the Plan “is not intended to be a comprehensive listing of all requirements in the new law,” but instead “is intended to be a roadmap of major activities EPA will focus on during the initial year of implementation.” US EPA also stated that the Plan is a “living document” that will be “further developed over time.”

The Implementation Plan is organized into four broad categories of tasks that US EPA must fulfill: (i) Immediate Actions, (ii) Framework Actions, (iii) Early Mandatory Actions and (iv) Later Mandatory Actions