EPA No-Migration Variance Rule: A Construction Firm Guide

The Environmental Protection Agency has finalized a site-specific variance affecting how one commercial hazardous-waste facility handles treated waste while it awaits final disposal clearance. Published as 91 FR 37319 and effective July 23, 2026, the rule is narrow on its face but touches a question every construction, demolition, and remediation firm eventually has to answer: what actually happens to hazardous waste after it leaves the jobsite and reaches a commercial disposal facility.

This guide walks through what the variance changes, who it reaches beyond the named facility, and what a construction or remediation firm's environmental compliance team should do with that information before and after the effective date.

Key Takeaways

• The EPA has approved, with conditions, a no-migration variance for Clean Harbors' Grassy Mountain facility in Tooele County, Utah, published at 91 FR 37319 and effective July 23, 2026.

• The variance covers four categories of waste and allows up to 250 temporary "put piles" combined at the site at any one time, under 40 CFR Part 268, the Land Disposal Restrictions part of the RCRA regulations.

• This is a facility-specific approval, not a new blanket duty on every generator — but construction and remediation firms that generate RCRA hazardous waste and rely on commercial disposal facilities have a new operating detail to understand.

• Once land disposal restriction (LDR) compliance is verified, the put piles are disposed of within the facility's onsite RCRA hazardous waste landfill cell, under conditions set out in a Compliance Monitoring Plan.

• This post is informational only and is not legal or tax advice; consult a qualified attorney or environmental compliance professional before treating any of this as a specific instruction for your operations.

What this rule actually does

A "no-migration variance" is a facility-specific approval under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Land Disposal Restrictions program. It lets a treatment, storage, and disposal facility (TSDF) hold certain treated hazardous wastes outside the standard disposal timing once the facility has demonstrated — to a reasonable degree of certainty — that hazardous constituents will not migrate from where the waste is held for as long as it remains hazardous. That is exactly what EPA approved here: a variance for Clean Harbors' Grassy Mountain commercial TSDF, published at 91 FR 37319 and effective July 23, 2026.

The approval is bounded in scope. It covers four categories or groups of waste and permits up to 250 temporary disposal units — the rule calls them "put piles" — combined at the site at any one time. The wastes involved are treated hazardous wastes that are awaiting verification that they meet the LDR treatment standards at 40 CFR Part 268 before they can go to final land disposal. In the interim, the put piles sit within the facility's Subtitle C hazardous waste landfill rather than in a separate holding area, which is the arrangement the petitioner had to justify to EPA's satisfaction.

The table below summarizes the approval's key parameters, paraphrased from the rule; every figure traces to the Federal Register notice linked throughout this section.

Once LDR compliance is verified for a given put pile, the material is disposed of within the onsite RCRA hazardous waste landfill cell, subject to the conditions in the facility's Compliance Monitoring Plan. This is a final approval — EPA's own description of the action is "Final approval," not a proposal open for further comment — and it does not carry an assigned Regulatory Identifier Number (RIN), which is common for a site-specific variance of this kind rather than a rule of broader applicability.

Who is affected

The variance's conditions run directly to one facility: Clean Harbors' Grassy Mountain TSDF, its put-pile handling procedures, and its Compliance Monitoring Plan. But "directly regulated" and "the only audience that should pay attention" are not the same thing here. Construction, demolition, and site-remediation work routinely generates RCRA hazardous waste — contaminated soil, treatment residuals, debris from remediation projects — and firms doing that work rely on commercial TSDFs like Clean Harbors' Grassy Mountain facility to accept and dispose of it under 40 CFR Part 268. Understanding how a receiving facility is authorized to handle waste in the gap between treatment and verified LDR compliance is ordinary vendor due diligence for a generator, even though the rule itself does not create a new duty for the generator. That distinction — who the rule binds versus who has a practical reason to read it — is worth holding onto through the rest of this guide.

What Construction Firms should do before the date

Because the obligations here run to Clean Harbors' facility rather than to generators broadly — a distinction firms already working with US Tech Automations on other compliance monitoring will recognize from similar site-specific EPA actions — the sensible response for a construction or remediation firm is due diligence, not a compliance project. A short, practical sequence:

• Confirm the receiving facility. Check which TSDF or TSDFs your hazardous-waste manifests currently route to, and whether Clean Harbors' Grassy Mountain facility is one of them.

• If it is, read the source document. Review 91 FR 37319 directly with your environmental compliance lead rather than relying on a secondhand summary of the put-pile handling method.

• If it is not, treat this as a preview. No-migration variance petitions are how EPA authorizes site-specific handling changes at TSDFs; a facility your firm already uses could file a similar petition.

• Keep manifests and LDR paperwork organized. Clean recordkeeping is what lets a firm answer a question about a receiving facility's operating conditions without reconstructing records after the fact.

• Loop in counsel before treating anything as settled. The rule speaks in the facility's Compliance Monitoring Plan, not in generator-facing directives, so a firm-specific read should come from a qualified attorney or environmental compliance professional.

Operationalizing the monitoring at volume

The practical challenge for a construction, demolition, or remediation firm is rarely reading this one variance — it is noticing the next one, at the next facility, before a shipment goes out under outdated assumptions. That is a monitoring problem, and it is where US Tech Automations fits: configured against the Federal Register feed, an agent can watch for new no-migration variance petitions, modifications, and related EPA actions tied to the TSDFs a firm actually uses, extract the citation, effective date, and CFR reference from a matching document, and route a flagged item to a named EHS reviewer instead of leaving it to surface during a routine manifest review. The workflow's job is to surface the document on time; every compliance conclusion still belongs to a qualified reviewer.

How this fits the broader regulatory window

This variance is one entry in a point-in-time index of 259 U.S. federal rules published July 1, 2024 – July 5, 2026 by 10 agencies governing the industries covered in this compliance series, including construction. A single facility-specific variance is easy to read in isolation; the harder problem for a construction or environmental compliance team is that EPA, OSHA, and other agencies issue site-specific approvals, standard revisions, and reporting changes on an ongoing basis, each with its own citation, CFR part, and effective date. A firm that tracks only the rules it already knows about will eventually be surprised by one it did not. That is the structural case for treating Federal Register and eCFR monitoring as a standing function for any firm that generates or manages hazardous waste, not a one-time read of this variance. Construction and remediation firms in particular tend to interact with several EPA and OSHA programs on the same project, which compounds the value of a single, current view of what has changed and when.

Firms already using US Tech Automations to monitor other compliance deadlines can extend the same workflow to track EPA variance petitions, RCRA LDR updates, and related filings without standing up a separate process; see the pricing overview for how the monitoring tiers are packaged.

Frequently asked questions

What does the EPA's no-migration variance actually approve?

It approves, with conditions, a facility-specific method for Clean Harbors' Grassy Mountain TSDF to temporarily store treated hazardous waste in "put piles" — up to 250 combined at any one time, across four categories of waste — while the waste awaits verification that it meets LDR treatment standards, as published at 91 FR 37319. After that verification, the material moves to the facility's onsite RCRA hazardous waste landfill cell under the conditions in its Compliance Monitoring Plan.

When does the rule take effect?

The final approval is effective July 23, 2026. It was published June 23, 2026, as stated in 91 FR 37319.

Which facility does this variance cover?

Clean Harbors' Grassy Mountain commercial treatment, storage, and disposal facility in Tooele County, Utah. The variance governs how that specific facility may store treated hazardous waste in its Subtitle C landfill while awaiting LDR compliance verification, per 91 FR 37319.

Does this rule create new obligations for construction firms directly?

No. The variance's conditions run to Clean Harbors' Grassy Mountain facility and its Compliance Monitoring Plan, not to generators. Construction, demolition, and remediation firms are affected indirectly, as businesses that may generate RCRA hazardous waste and rely on this facility, or a similarly situated one, for disposal under 40 CFR Part 268. A qualified environmental compliance professional can confirm how it applies to a specific firm's waste streams.

Which CFR part governs this variance?

40 CFR Part 268, the Land Disposal Restrictions part of the RCRA hazardous waste regulations, as cited in 91 FR 37319.

Does this rulemaking carry a RIN?

No. Unlike many EPA rulemakings, this final approval does not carry an assigned Regulatory Identifier Number, which is consistent with its nature as a site-specific variance rather than a rule of general applicability.

Related guidance

For adjacent EPA compliance reading, see our notes on the hazardous air pollutant standards for waste combustors, the HFC phasedown rule for HVAC and refrigeration contractors, and the emission standards for large municipal waste combustors.

Disclaimer

This article is provided for informational purposes only and is not legal or tax advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Regulatory obligations are fact-specific, and their application depends on circumstances this article cannot assess; consult a qualified attorney or environmental compliance professional before acting on a specific waste-disposal or compliance decision.

Every date, citation, RIN, CFR reference, and figure in this post is copied verbatim from the Federal Register and eCFR as of the snapshot date. Nothing is estimated, modeled, or extrapolated. This is not legal or tax advice.

Last reviewed: July 5, 2026.

Source: U.S. Federal Register (91 FR 37319); current text via eCFR, 40 CFR Part 268.