Comments, please: EPA's "Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science" Proposed Rule

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Text of EPA's Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science Proposal

EPA's Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science Proposal

The office listed as the contact seems to be run by someone on the up-and-up. He might have had no input into this.

Thomas Sinks, Director, Office of the Science Advisor

Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science

Document Information

Date Posted: Apr 30, 2018

RIN: Not Assigned {It's RIN 2080-AA14}

CFR: 40 CFR Part 30

Federal Register Number: 2018-09078

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2018-04-30/pdf/2018-09078.pdf

This Proposed Rule document was issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

For related information, Open Docket Folder

Action

Proposed rule.

Summary
This document proposes a regulation intended to strengthen the transparency of EPA regulatory science. The proposed regulation provides that when EPA develops regulations, including regulations for which the public is likely to bear the cost of compliance, with regard to those scientific studies that are pivotal to the action being taken, EPA should ensure that the data underlying those are publicly available in a manner sufficient for independent validation. In this notice, EPA solicits comment on this proposal and how it can best be promulgated and implemented in light of existing law and prior Federal policies that already require increasing public access to data and influential scientific information used to inform federal regulation.

Dates

Comments must be received on or before May 30, 2018.

Addresses

Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OA-2018-0259, at https://www.regulations.gov. Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from Regulations.gov. EPA may publish any comment 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. 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

Tom Sinks, Office of the Science Advisor, Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20460; [phone]; email address: [e-mail].

The guy is career. He'll be around when Pruitt and Trump are long gone. Please don't call him up and leave insults in his voice mail.

Thank you.

[mackdaddy]

1. Just like anything the Trump Administration does, there are some dark motives too.

First this will make it harder for the EPA to make rules protecting the environment.

Second, some of the source data, such as individual persons medical records would have to be exposed.

Third, this could open up some preliminary notes and data that were private and could be used to discredit the final paper. An example of this would be when the email discussions and arguments were released on how to "normalize" older temperature readings were used to call all of climate change into question.

http://legal-planet.org/2018/04/26/pruitts-utterly-opaque-transparency-proposal/