Public Comment Process

The public has the opportunity to comment on the EPA's proposed addition of sites (Current NPL Updates: New Proposed NPL Sites & New NPL Sites) to the National Priorities List (NPL). The EPA publishes notices in the Federal Register, listing which sites are being proposed to the NPL. The documents that form the basis for the agency's evaluation and scoring of the sites in this rule are contained in public Dockets located at the EPA Headquarters in Washington, DC, in the Regional offices and by electronic access at Regulations.gov (https://www.regulations.gov).

The EPA considers all comments received during a 60-day comment period following the publication date in the Federal Register. During the comment period, comments are placed in the Headquarters Docket and are available to the public on an "as received" basis. A complete set of comments will be available for viewing in the regional dockets approximately one week after the formal comment period closes. All public comments, whether submitted electronically or in paper form, will be made available for public viewing in the electronic public docket at Regulations.gov (https://www.regulations.gov) as the EPA receives them and without change, unless the comment contains copyrighted material, confidential business information (CBI) or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Once in the public dockets system, select "search," then key in the appropriate docket ID number. 

Comments that include complex or voluminous reports, or materials prepared for purposes other than HRS scoring, should point out the specific information that the EPA should consider and how it affects individual HRS factor values or other listing criteria. The EPA will not address voluminous comments that are not referenced to the HRS or other listing criteria. The EPA will not address comments unless they indicate which component of the HRS documentation record or what particular point in the EPA's stated eligibility criteria is at issue. Significant comments are typically addressed in a support document that the EPA will publish concurrently with the Federal Register document if, and when, the site is listed on the NPL.

The Headquarters docket contains the following for the sites proposed in the rule:

• HRS score sheets;
• documentation records describing the information used to compute the score;
• information for any sites affected by particular statutory requirements or the EPA listing policies; and
• a list of documents referenced in the documentation record.

The regional dockets for the proposed rules contain all of the information in the Headquarters docket plus the actual reference documents containing the data principally relied upon and cited by the EPA in calculating or evaluating the HRS score for the sites. These reference documents are available only in the regional dockets.

The hours of operation for the Headquarters docket are from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday, excluding federal holidays.

Submit your comments, identified by the appropriate docket ID number, at Regulations.gov (https://www.regulations.gov). Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from Regulations.gov (https://www.regulations.gov). The EPA may publish any comment received to its public docket. Do not submit electronically any information that you consider to be 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 Commenting on EPA Dockets (https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets).