Wheel News, Trends & Reports from the Automotive Recyclers Association

IMPORTANT UPDATE FOR ALL ARA MEMBERS Automaker Recalls and Your Business

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ARA Executive Committee Launches Monthly Live Virtual Town Halls

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he ARA Executive Committee held its first of ARA’s regularly scheduled monthly live, virtual

Town Hall meeting on February 7. The meetings are scheduled for the first Thursday of every month and are opportunities for ARA members to interact directly with fellow recyclers and Association leaders, ask questions, and raise any issues that are impacting member businesses. Topics discussed on previous Town Halls have included upcoming continuing education opportunities for recyclers, automotive recalls, Association and industry events, information about the new ARA FLARES program, OEM repair standards legislation, and the 76th Annual ARA Convention taking place in October.

Please join us on the first Thursday of the month!

new tool is available to the industry through The National Salvage Vehicle Reporting Program (NSVRP), which has offered an API to allow recyclers’ inven- tory systems to query the NSVRP database in real time to check for automotive man- ufacturer safety recalls, and is provided free of charge. Earlier this year, ARA worked hard to connect management systems with NSVRP in the absence of regulatory action. For over three years, ARA has regularly met with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to discuss implementation of federal law passed in December 2015 that provides recyclers with recalled parts data. ARA is committed to the belief that the solution must be fully-integrated into each industry inventory management system in order to capture active recalls at the point of inventory and the point of sale. ARA believes that the NSVRP tool is a good solution for automotive recyclers based upon the information available and the challenges facing the industry to keep up with automotive safety recalls. With the NSVRP tool, recyclers should have the ability to check for recalls during routine, full-inventory spot checks as well as prior to pur- chasing vehicles. ARA encourages members to continue to implement and refine oper- ational procedures within their business to check for automotive recalls and to contact individual management systems for details about NSVRP integration.

Update on “Waters of the U.S.” A

RA is watching federal action on the “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) rule, which the Trump Administration has tasked the Environmental Protection Agency

(EPA) with rescinding and rewriting. ARA is working with the Federal Stormwater Associ- ation (FSWA, of which ARA is a member) and others to make sure that new federal regula- tions do not impose serious regulatory burdens on auto recyclers’ grounds and properties. The challenge relates to defining what is absolutely, federally mandated. Eastern versus western states have very different views and policy issues regarding water policies and issues. The FSWA has started drafting comments identifying significant issues, such as the six dif- ferent categories of waters, ephemeral versus intermittent waters and also issues associated with ditches. WOTUS is controversial for many reasons. The 2015 rule was purported to provide clarity to the definitions of what are considered “navigable rivers and interstate water- ways,” but a number of court decisions have left the rule ambiguous. The federal govern- ment, through EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers, would have had jurisdiction over reg- ulating a broad spectrum of tributaries and wetlands. The industrial, farming, rural electric cooperative and real estate sectors have been objecting to the broad and questionable defi- nitions. As Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), former Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee stated, “The WOTUS rule would have put backyard ponds, puddles, and prairie pot holes under Washington’s control.”

10 // March-April 2019 Automotive Recycling

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