On August 13, 2025, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced 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.” According to EPA, the website serves as a resource for all guidance documents managed across EPA’s headquarters environmental programs. EPA designed the website 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.” EPA notes that 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.” According to EPA, the portal does not contain documents 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.
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