The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is today revising the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) regulations. This revision is part of an Agency-wide effort to respond to a directive issued by the President on February 21, 1995, which directed Federal agencies to review their regulatory programs to eliminate any obsolete, ineffective, or unduly burdensome regulations. In response to that directive, EPA initiated a detailed review of its regulations to determine which provisions were obsolete, duplicative, or unduly burdensome. On June 29, 1995, EPA issued a rule (60 FR 33926) which removed some regulatory provisions in the Office of Water program regulations (including certain NPDES provisions) that were clearly obsolete. Today's revision is intended to further streamline NPDES, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD), and Underground Injection Control (UIC) permitting procedures, and CWA 301(h) variance request procedures, by revising requirements to eliminate redundant regulatory language, provide clarification, and remove or streamline unnecessary procedures which do not provide any environmental benefits. Conforming changes to other requirements are also made in today's rule. These revisions are identified and discussed in the Supplementary Information section below.