EPA Announces Relaunch of Comprehensive Guidance Document Website, Advances Total Transparency of Trump Administration
WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is announcing the relaunch of EPA’s Guidance Portal, a streamlined website for accessing important guidance documents related to air quality, water protection, hazardous waste management, and more. Launched in President Trump’s first term to promote transparency, it was abruptly shuttered and removed from public view during the Biden-Harris Administration. The website serves as a resource for all guidance documents managed across EPA's headquarters environmental programs. It is designed to be a one-stop shop to help users and small businesses easily and quickly locate and follow EPA’s active guidance documents on topics of interest.
“This guidance portal will ensure that we reduce bureaucratic hurdles and increase transparency for everyone seeking information about EPA’s programs by providing centralized access to guidance documents,” said Deputy Administrator David Fotouhi. “This will bring much-needed clarity to small business owners, farmers, and everyday Americans, and it reinforces our commitment to following the law and upholding fundamental fairness. The days of EPA relying on obscure and non-public guidance documents are over.”
EPA guidance documents inform the public how the agency interprets an underlying statute and its regulations, and take the form of memoranda, policy statements, handbooks, manuals, and other documents formally titled as guidance. Guidance documents that have been superseded with newer guidance are not included in the updated website.
The launch of the Guidance Portal is the next step in the ongoing overall review of reducing unnecessary regulatory burdens.
Please see EPA’s Guidance Portal for additional information.
Background
Guidance documents are agency statements of general applicability, intended to have future effects on the behavior of regulated parties, that set forth a policy on a statutory, regulatory, or technical issue, or an interpretation of a statute or regulation, with some exceptions.
The portal does not contain documents that are excluded from this definition, such as internal guidance directed to EPA or other federal agencies that is not intended to have future effect on the behavior of regulated parties, rules of agency organization, procedure, or practice, and internal executive branch legal advice or legal opinions addressed to executive branch officials, among others. EPA's guidance documents generally lack the force and effect of law.