EPA maintains a list of significant guidance documents as called for by the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Final Bulletin for Agency Good Guidance Practices (PDF) (GGP Bulletin) (23 pp, 158K, About PDF). Please be aware that the lists do not include every guidance document issued by EPA. They only encompass those documents that are "significant" as defined by the GGP Bulletin.

View or Comment on Significant Guidance Documents

You may browse the list of EPA's significant guidance documents by environmental topic. You can access each document's docket on Regulations.gov, where you may read and comment on the guidance.

EPA's Procedures for Significant Guidance Documents

OMB established good guidance practices to ensure that guidance documents of executive branch departments and agencies are:

• developed with appropriate review and public participation,
• accessible and transparent to the public,
• of high quality, and
• not improperly treated as legally binding requirements.

In keeping with these goals, OMB has directed agencies to develop procedures for creating, issuing, and using significant guidance documents and economically significant guidance documents.

Among other things, EPA's procedures include:

• Posting a list of significant guidance documents currently in effect on our website - Our list is available sorted by environmental topic.
• Establishing and clearly advertising on our website a way for the public to comment electronically on significant guidance documents. We use the interagency Web portal Regulations.gov for public comments. Instructions for commenting are provided with our significant guidance list.
• Providing a means for the public to comment about how well we are complying with the GGP Bulletin. As explained in the next section, we have established a significant guidance comment page that offers several ways to submit your comments.
• For the subset of significant guidance documents that 1) qualify as "economically significant" and 2) were begun after January 25, 2007, EPA also:
  • announces that such a document is being drafted,
  • accepts comments on the draft, and
  • posts a response-to-comments document. (See section IV(1) of the GGP Bulletin for details.)

Currently, there are no EPA guidance documents in this subset. When EPA develops such documents, we plan to announce that they are open for comment by publishing a notice in the Federal Register. The notice will generally include instructions for providing comments, including how to find and comment on the document at Regulations.gov. Additionally, we plan to post our response-to-comments documents at Regulations.gov.

Note that we do not intend to post draft economically significant guidance documents on this site. You will need to consult the Federal Register to read and comment on such drafts.

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Send Us Your Comments

To comment on a document, please click the "Comment" link next to the relevant document. You will be directed to Regulations.gov, where you can submit comments via an electronic form.

You may use our significant guidance comment page to tell us how well we're complying with OMB's Good Guidance Bulletin. You may also use this form to tell us if you think a document is missing from the significant guidance list. You might not receive a formal response to your specific comments; however, your input is important for the continual improvement of our guidance.

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