New regs for Wednesday: lamps, fungicide residue and dropped rulemaking

Wednesday’s edition of the Federal Register contains a decision from the Department of Energy to not move forward with energy conservation standards for high-intensity lamps, new standards from the Environmental Protections Agency for the amount of fungicide residue that can be left on quinoa and an abandoned rulemaking from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Here’s what to look for:

Lamps: The Department of Energy has decided not to move forward with energy conservation standards for high-intensity discharge (HID) lamps.

Under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, the agency is required to determine if created standards to conserve energy would be technologically feasible, economically justified and would result in significant energy savings. The Department of Energy said HID lamps do not meet the statutory requirements for the establishment of standards

This final determination will take effect immediately.

Pesticide: The Environmental Protection Agency will propose new standards for the amount of residue from the pesticide azoxystrobin that’s safe to be on raw quinoa grain, ti leaves and ti roots. The agency also wants to modify how much residue it tolerable for stone fruit group tree nuts, with the exception of pistachios.

Azoxystrobin is a commonly used fungicide.

The agency has proposed setting the tolerable level at 3.0 parts per million (ppm) for quinoa, 50 ppm for ti palm, 0.5 pp, for ti palm roots, 2.0 ppm for stone fruit and 0.02 ppm for tree nuts.

The public has 60 days to comment on the proposed rule.  

Discontinued rulemaking: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has decided to abandon a rulemaking that would have amended its regulations governing fatigue management programs for nuclear power plant workers.

The agency said the NRC issued a final rule in March 2008 that substantially revised its regulations for fitness-for-duty programs.

Because the NRC staff determined that including the quality control/quality verification provision would require re-noticing of the rule to provide a new opportunity for public comment, the NRC issued the final rule without imposing work hour controls on individuals performing quality control/quality verification activities.

The rulemaking will be discontinued immediately.