Air Plan Approval; Kentucky; Revisions to Jefferson County Emissions Monitoring and Reporting

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R04-OAR-2023-0097; FRL-11564-04-R4]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Kentucky; Revisions to Jefferson County Emissions Monitoring and Reporting</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is approving changes to the Jefferson County portion of the Kentucky State Implementation Plan (SIP), submitted by the Commonwealth of Kentucky, through the Energy and Environment Cabinet (Cabinet), via a letter dated June 15, 2022. The changes were submitted by the Cabinet on behalf of the Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control District (District) and amend the District's stationary source emissions monitoring and reporting requirements. EPA is approving the changes because they are consistent with the Clean Air Act (CAA or Act). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective February 9, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket Identification No. EPA-R04-OAR-2023-0097. All documents in the docket are listed on the <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> website. Although listed in the index, some information may not be publicly available, <E T="03">i.e.,</E> Confidential Business Information or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Certain other material, such as copyrighted material, is not placed on the internet and will be publicly available only in hard copy form. Publicly available docket materials are available either electronically through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> or in hard copy at the Air Regulatory Management Section, Air Planning and Implementation Branch, Air and Radiation Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 4, 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, Georgia 30303-8960. EPA requests that, if at all possible, you contact the person listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section to schedule your inspection. The Regional Office's official hours of business are Monday through Friday 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., excluding Federal holidays. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Tiereny Bell, Air Regulatory Management Section, Air Planning and Implementation Branch, Air and Radiation Division, Region 4, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, Georgia 30303-8960. The telephone number is (404) 562-9088. Ms. Bell can also be reached via electronic mail at <E T="03">bell.tiereny@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> On June 15, 2022, <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> the Commonwealth of Kentucky submitted changes to the Jefferson County portion of the Kentucky SIP for EPA approval. <E T="51">2 3</E> <FTREF/> In this rulemaking, EPA is approving changes to Regulation 1.06, <E T="03">Stationary Source Self-Monitoring, Emissions Inventory Development, and Reporting</E> submitted on June 15, 2022. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  On June 15, 2022, Kentucky provided multiple SIP revisions that are not addressed in this rulemaking. One of the June 15, 2022, submittals contains changes to District Regulation 2.04, <E T="03">Construction or Modification of Major Sources in or Impacting upon Non-Attainment Areas (Emission Offset Requirements)</E> in the Kentucky SIP. These changes are not addressed in this notice. EPA will act on these changes in a separate rulemaking. Another June 15, 2022, SIP revision contained changes to District Regulation 2.17, <E T="03">Federally Enforceable District Origin Operating Permits,</E> in the Kentucky SIP. EPA finalized its approval of changes to Regulation 2.17 on March 1, 2023. <E T="03">See</E> 88 FR 12831. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  EPA received this submission on June 13, 2022, via a letter dated June 15, 2022. Throughout this final rule, this submission will be referred to as the June 15, 2022, submission. <SU>3</SU>  In 2003, the City of Louisville and Jefferson County governments merged, and the “Jefferson County Air Pollution Control District” was renamed the “Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control District.” However, to be consistent with the terminology used in the subheading in Table 2 of 40 CFR 52.920(c), throughout this notice we refer to the District regulations contained in the Jefferson County portion of the Kentucky SIP as the “Jefferson County” regulations. </FTNT> Through a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) published on November 20, 2023 (88 FR 80680), EPA proposed to approve these changes to Regulation 1.06. Section 6, <E T="03">Emissions Statements for Ozone Precursors,</E> of Regulation 1.06 requires that on or before April 15 of each year, all stationary sources of NO <E T="52">X</E> or VOC shall submit to the District a statement of actual emissions of those compounds. In this rulemaking, EPA is finalizing its approval of the District's June 15, 2022, request to incorporate Version 11 of Regulation 1.06 into the SIP, replacing Version 10. Version 10 of Regulation 1.06 at Section 6.2.1 states that facilities with less than 25 tons per year (tpy) of plant-wide actual VOC emissions or less than 25 tpy of plant-wide actual NO <E T="52">X</E> emissions are exempted from the emissions statement requirements in Section 6, unless emissions of the other pollutant (VOC or NO <E T="52">X</E> ) are at or above 25 tpy. Version 11 revises Section 6.2.1 to instead exempt facilities with less than 25 tpy of plant-wide <E T="03">potential</E> VOC <E T="03">and</E> less than 25 tpy of plant-wide <E T="03">potential</E> NO <E T="52">X</E> emissions from the Section 6 emissions statement requirement. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> The contents of the District's submission, as well as EPA's rationale for approving changes to this regulation, are described in more detail in EPA's November 20, 2023, NPRM. Comments on the November 20, 2023, NPRM were due on or before December 20, 2023. EPA received one comment and responds to this comment in the next section of this rulemaking notice. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  Section 6.2.1 continues to allow the District to require sources claiming the exemption to provide adequate information to verify actual emissions for the previous year. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Response to Comment</HD> EPA received one comment on the November 20, 2023, NPRM. The comment expresses both support for and concern about EPA's proposed action to approve the amendments to Jefferson County's emissions reporting requirements. <E T="03">Comment:</E> The commenter stated that changing the way emissions are reported could be “very beneficial and more organized,” which the commenter finds “especially important if it would help benefit Kentucky residents.” The commenter's “only concern is how it would be ensured” that the changes to the emissions reporting requirements would not “decrease the amount of emissions reported.” The commenter asks if there are measures put in place to keep plants accountable, noting that “[c]limate change is a very real concern and it is important to hold the power plants that are contributing to change accountable.” <E T="03">Response:</E> CAA section 182(a)(3)(B)(i) requires States to submit to EPA a SIP revision requiring the owner or operator of each stationary source of NO <E T="52">X</E> or VOC in an ozone nonattainment area to report its NO <E T="52">X</E> and VOC emissions to the State and to certify the accuracy of these reported emissions. Section 182(a)(3)(B)(ii) allows States to waive the requirements under subsection (i) for stationary sources emitting less than 25 tpy of VOC or NO <E T="52">X</E> if the State provides an inventory of emissions from such class or category of sources. Jefferson County is subject to the requirements of CAA section 182(a) because it is part of the Louisville, KY-IN moderate nonattainment area for the 2015 8-Hour Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). Regulation 1.06, <E T="03">Stationary Source Self-Monitoring, Emissions Inventory Development, and Reporting,</E> in the Jefferson County portion of the Kentucky SIP, provides the District with the authority to require emissions monitoring at stationary sources and requires certain sources to maintain emissions records and to provide annual emissions statements to the District. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> Section 6, <E T="03">Emissions Statements for Ozone Precursors,</E> requires that on or before April 15 of each year, all stationary sources of NO <E T="52">X</E> or VOC shall submit to the District a statement of actual emissions of those compounds. As discussed above, Version 10 of Regulation 1.06 at Section 6.2.1 states that facilities with less than 25 tpy of plant-wide actual VOC emissions or less than 25 tpy of plant-wide actual NO <E T="52">X</E> emissions are exempted from the emissions statement requirements in Section 6, unless emissions of the other pollutant (VOC or NO <E T="52">X</E> ) are at or above 25 tpy. In this action, EPA is approving Version 11 into the SIP which revises Section 6.2.1 to instead exempt facilities with less than 25 tpy of plant-wide <E T="03">potential</E> VOC <E T="03">and</E> less than 25 tpy of plant-wide <E T="03">potential</E> NO <E T="52">X</E> emissions from the Section 6 emissions statement requirement. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  On March 9, 2022, EPA determined that Regulation 1.06 met the requirements for the 2015 ozone NAAQS for the Jefferson County Area. <E T="03">See</E> 87 FR 13177. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  As discussed in the NPRM, section 6 continues to satisfy the emissions statement requirements in CAA secti ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 19k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━