Withdrawal of Direct Final Rule; National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System-Amendment of Final Regulations Addressing Cooling Water Intake Structures for New Facilities

Because EPA received adverse comment, we are withdrawing the direct final rule for "National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System--Amendment of Final Regulations Addressing Cooling Water Intake Structures for New Facilities; Direct Final Rule." We published the direct final rule on December 26, 2002 (67 FR 78948), to make three minor technical corrections to the final regulations implementing section 316(b) of the Clean Water Act for new facilities. We stated in the direct final rule that if we received adverse comment by January 27, 2003, we would publish a timely notice of withdrawal in the Federal Register. We subsequently received adverse comment on the direct final rule. We will address those comments in a subsequent final action based on the parallel proposal also published on December 26, 2002 (67 FR 78956). As stated in the parallel proposal, we will not institute a second comment period on this action.