NOTICES

INDEPENDENT REGULATORY REVIEW COMMISSION

Notice of Comments Issued

[53 Pa.B. 5351]
[Saturday, August 26, 2023]

 Section 5(g) of the Regulatory Review Act (71 P.S. § 745.5(g)) provides that the Independent Regulatory Review Commission (Commission) may issue comments within 30 days of the close of the public comment period. The Commission comments are based upon the criteria contained in section 5.2 of the Regulatory Review Act (71 P.S. § 745.5b).

 The Commission has issued comments on the following proposed regulation. The agency must consider these comments in preparing the final-form regulation. The final-form regulation must be submitted within 2 years of the close of the public comment period or it will be deemed withdrawn.

Reg. No.	Agency/Title	Close of the Public Comment Period	IRRC Comments Issued
106-14	Environmental Hearing Board Practice and Procedure 53 Pa.B. 3193 (June 17, 2023)	07/17/23	08/16/23

Environmental Hearing Board
Regulation # 106-14 (IRRC # 3377)

Practice and Procedure

August 16, 2023

 We submit for your consideration the following comments on the proposed rulemaking published in the June 17, 2023 Pennsylvania Bulletin. Our comments are based on criteria in Section 5.2 of the Regulatory Review Act (Act) (71 P.S. § 745.5b). Section 5.1(a) of the Act (71 P.S. § 745.5a(a)) directs the Environmental Hearing Board (Board) to respond to all comments received from us or any other source.

Section 1021.51. Commencement, form and content.— Implementation procedures; Clarity.

Subsection (f)

 Subsection (f)(1)(iv) and (2)(vi)(C), regarding electronic and conventional filing, respectively, provide for an appellant to serve a copy of a notice of appeal on any potentially adversely affected person in accordance with the Pennsylvania Rules of Civil Procedure or a document evidencing the action by the Department of Environmental Protection. The general citation to the Pennsylvania Rules of Civil Procedure is vague and does not provide clear guidance to an appellant. We ask the Board to clarify these provisions by citing specific Pennsylvania Rules of Civil Procedure regarding service.

Subsection (j)

 Subsection (j) outlines the procedures to intervene in an appeal. Interested persons identified under subsection (h)(4) who wish to intervene are required to file under Section 1021.81 ''unless otherwise specified in the order of the Board.'' The comment to Section 1021.81 states that subsection (j) allows persons to intervene ''by simply filing an entry of appearance.'' However, this subsection only provides this method of filing for persons identified under subsection (h)(2) and (3). We have two questions regarding implementation. First, is an interested person identified by the Board under subsection (h)(4) required to file a petition to intervene or an entry of appearance? Second, what intervention procedure is typically included in the previously-referenced order? We ask the Board to respond to these questions in the Preamble to the final-form regulation. Further, we ask the Board to consider clarify-ing this subsection so that it is consistent with the comment to Section 1021.81.

GEORGE D. BEDWICK, 
Chairperson

[Pa.B. Doc. No. 23-1156. Filed for public inspection August 25, 2023, 9:00 a.m.]

---

No part of the information on this site may be reproduced for profit or sold for profit.

This material has been drawn directly from the official Pennsylvania Bulletin full text database. Due to the limitations of HTML or differences in display capabilities of different browsers, this version may differ slightly from the official printed version.

---