Air Plan Disapproval; Kansas; Regional Haze

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R07-OAR-2023-0582; FRL-11576-01-R7]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Disapproval; Kansas; Regional Haze</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to disapprove a revision to Kansas's State Implementation Plan (SIP) submitted on July 28, 2021, to satisfy applicable requirements under the Clean Air Act (CAA) and EPA's Regional Haze Rule (RHR) for the program's second planning period. As required by section 169A of the Clean Air Act, the federal Regional Haze Rule calls for state and federal agencies to work together to improve visibility, including Regional Haze, in 156 national parks and wilderness areas. The rule requires the states, in coordination with the EPA, the National Park Service (NPS), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the U.S. Forest Service (FS), and other interested parties, to develop and implement air quality protection plans in which states revise their long-term strategies (LTS) for making reasonable progress towards the national goal of preventing any future, and remedying any existing, anthropogenic impairment of visibility in these mandatory Class I Federal Areas. Disapproval does not start a mandatory sanctions clock. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before February 1, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R07-OAR-2023-0582 to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions received must include the Docket ID No. for this rulemaking. Comments received will be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/,</E> including any personal information provided. For detailed instructions on sending comments and additional information on the rulemaking process, see the “Written Comments” heading of the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Jed D. Wolkins, Environmental Protection Agency, Region 7 Office, Air Permitting and Planning Branch, 11201 Renner Boulevard, Lenexa, Kansas 66219; telephone number: (913) 551-7588; email address: <E T="03">wolkins.jed@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Written Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. What is being addressed in this document?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Background and Requirements for Regional Haze Plans</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Regional Haze Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Roles of Agencies in Addressing Regional Haze</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Requirements for Regional Haze Plans for the Second Implementation Period</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Identification of Class I Areas</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Calculations of Baseline, Current, and Natural Visibility Conditions; Progress to Date; and the Uniform Rate of Progress</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Long-Term Strategy for Regional Haze</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Reasonable Progress Goals</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Monitoring Strategy and Other State Implementation Plan Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. Requirements for Periodic Reports Describing Progress Towards the Reasonable Progress Goals</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">G. Requirements for State and Federal Land Manager Coordination</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. The EPA's Evaluation of Kansas's Regional Haze Submission for the Second Implementation Period</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Background on Kansas's First Implementation Period SIP Submission</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Kansas's Second Implementation Period SIP Submission and the EPA's Evaluation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Identification of Class I Areas</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Regional Haze Rule Provisions That Do Not Apply to States With No Class I Areas</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Calculations of Baseline, Current, and Natural Visibility Conditions; Progress to Date; and the Uniform Rate of Progress</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. Long-Term Strategy for Regional Haze</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">a. Four-Factor Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">b. Additional Long-Term Strategy Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">G. Reasonable Progress Goals</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">H. Monitoring Strategy and Other Implementation Plan Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">I. Requirements for Periodic Reports Describing Progress Towards the Reasonable Progress Goals</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">J. Requirements for State and Federal Land Manager Coordination</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. What action is the EPA taking?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VII. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Written Comments</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R07-OAR-2023-0582, at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> . The EPA may publish any comment received to its public docket. Do not submit electronically any information you consider to be Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Multimedia submissions (audio, video, etc.) must be accompanied by a written comment. The written comment is considered the official comment and should include discussion of all points you wish to make. The EPA will generally not consider comments or comment contents located outside of the primary submission ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> on the web, cloud, or other file sharing system). For additional submission methods, the full EPA public comment policy, information about CBI or multimedia submissions, and general guidance on making effective comments, please visit <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. What is being addressed in this document?</HD> The EPA is proposing to disapprove Kansas's Regional Haze plan for the second planning period. As required by section 169A of the CAA, the federal RHR calls for state and federal agencies to work together to improve visibility in 156 national parks and wilderness areas. The rule requires the states, in coordination with the EPA, the NPS, FWS, the FS, and other interested parties, to develop and implement air quality protection plans to reduce the pollution that causes visibility impairment in mandatory Class I Federal areas. Visibility impairing pollutants include fine and coarse particulate matter (PM) ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> sulfates, nitrates, organic carbon, elemental carbon, and soil dust) and their precursors ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> sulfur dioxide (SO <E T="52">2</E> ), oxides of nitrogen (NO <E T="52">X</E> ), and, in some cases, volatile organic compounds (VOC) and ammonia (NH <E T="52">3</E> )). As discussed in further detail below, the EPA is proposing to find that Kansas has submitted a Regional Haze plan that does not meet the Regional Haze requirements for the second planning period. The State's submission can be found in the docket for this action. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Background and Requirements for Regional Haze Plans</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Regional Haze Background</HD> In the 1977 CAA Amendments, Congress created a program for protecting visibility in the nation's mandatory Class I Federal areas, which include certain national parks and wilderness areas. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> CAA section 169A. The CAA establishes as a national goal the “prevention of any future, and the remedying of any existing, impairment of visibility in mandatory class I Federal areas which impairment results from manmade air pollution.” CAA section 169A(a)(1). The CAA further directs the EPA to promulgate regulations to assure reasonable progress toward meeting this national goal. CAA section 169A(a)(4). On December 2, 1980, the EPA promulgated regulations to address visibility impairment in mandatory Class I Federal Areas (hereinafter referred to as “Class I Areas”) that is “reasonably attributable” to a single source or small group of sources. (45 FR 80084, December 2, 1980). These regulations, codified at 40 CFR 51.300 through 51.307, represented the first phase of the EPA's efforts to address visibility impairment. In 1990, Congress added section 169B to the CAA to further address visibility impairment, specifically, impairment from Regional Haze. CAA 169B. The EPA promulgated the RHR, codified at 40 CFR 51.308, <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> on July 1, 1999. (64 FR 35714, July 1, 1999). These Regional Haze regulations are a central component of the EPA's comprehensive visibility protection program for Class I Areas. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Areas statutorily designated as mandatory Class I Federal Areas consist of national parks exceeding 6,000 acres, wilderness areas and national memorial parks exceeding 5,000 acres, and all international parks that were in existence on August 7, 1977. CAA 162(a). There are 156 mandatory Class I Areas. The list of areas to which the requirements of the visibility protection program apply is in 40 CFR part 81, subpart D. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  In addition to the generally applicable Regional Haze provisions at 40 CFR 51.308, the EPA also promulgated regulations specific to addressing Regional Haze visibility impairment in Class I Areas on the Colorado Plateau at 40 CFR 51.309. The latter regulations are applicable only for specific jurisdictions' Regional Haze plans submitted no later than December 17, 2007, and thus are not relevant here. </FTNT> Regional Haze is visibili ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 123k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━