Thanks to the infamous “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) rule from EPA, regulatory costs increased by more than $500 million. Annualized burdens were $497 million, with no benefit figures, and just 707 paperwork burden hours.                        

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 34
• New Final Rules: 90
• 2015 Total Pages of Regulation: 38,390
• 2015 Proposed Rules: $36.1 Billion
• 2015 Final Rules: $59.8 Billion

AAF has catalogued regulations according to their codification in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). The CFR is organized into 50 titles, with each title corresponding to an industry or part of government. This snapshot will help to determine which sectors of the economy receive the highest number of regulatory actions.

EPA’s WOTUS rule was officially published this week, imposing roughly $463 million in costs, in addition to the higher administrative burdens that EPA must carry. AAF reviewed the final rule here. It’s important to note that despite the barrage of comments, there are likely to be more waters subject to federal permitting. As a result, costs from the rule increased from $166 million to $463 million, compared to the proposed rule.

EPA also published a final rule regulating Ferroalloys production. The measure, which is expected to cost $7.8 million annually, would likely just control two facilities: Eramet and Felman Production LLC. The rule aims to limit particulate matter emissions from electric arc furnaces and control fugitive emissions.

Affordable Care Act

Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed costs of $44 billion in state and private-sector burdens and 164.8 million annual paperwork hours.

Dodd-Frank

Click here to view the total estimated revised costs from Dodd-Frank; since passage, the legislation has produced more than 65.8 million paperwork burden hours and imposed $33.4 billion in direct compliance costs. Based on calculations assuming a 2,000-hour work year, Dodd-Frank regulations would require 32,900 employees to file federal paperwork annually.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $96 billion in compliance costs ($59.88 billion in final rules) and has imposed 31.2 million in net paperwork burden hours (6.3 million from final rules). Click below for the latest Reg Rodeo findings.