Air Plan Approval; New Hampshire; Amendments to Motor Vehicle Inspection and Maintenance Program Regulation

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R01-OAR-2024-0018; FRL-11714-01-R1]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; New Hampshire; Amendments to Motor Vehicle Inspection and Maintenance Program Regulation</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 approve a State Implementation Plan (SIP) revision submitted by the State of New Hampshire. This revision includes an amended regulation for the Enhanced Motor Vehicle Inspection and Maintenance (I/M) program in New Hampshire. Overall, the submittal updates and clarifies the implementation of the New Hampshire I/M program. The intended effect of this action is to propose approval of the updated I/M program regulation into the New Hampshire SIP. This action is being taken under the Clean Air Act. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before March 1, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R01-OAR-2024-0018 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> or via email to <E T="03">martinelli.ayla@epa.gov.</E> For comments submitted at <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> , follow the online instructions for submitting comments. Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> . For either manner of submission, 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, please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. For 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> Publicly available docket materials are available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Region 1 Regional Office, Air and Radiation Division, 5 Post Office Square—Suite 100, Boston, MA. EPA requests that if at all possible, you contact the contact 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 legal holidays and facility closures due to COVID-19. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Ayla Martinelli, Air Quality Branch, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Region 1, 5 Post Office Square—Suite 100, (Mail code 5-MI), Boston, MA 02109-3912, tel. (617) 918-1057, email: <E T="03">martinelli.ayla@epa.gov</E> . </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document whenever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background and Purpose</FP> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Summary of New Hampshire's Regulatory Changes</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. New Hampshire Satisfying Clean Air Act Requirements for I/M Programs</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background and Purpose</HD> On September 22, 2022, the State of New Hampshire submitted a formal revision to its State Implementation Plan (SIP). The submitted SIP revision included amendments to the New Hampshire Code of Administrative Rules Chapter Saf-C 3200 entitled, “Official Motor Vehicle Inspection Requirements,” which update the Enhanced Motor Vehicle Inspection and Maintenance (I/M) program in New Hampshire. New Hampshire first submitted an I/M program SIP revision on November 17, 2011, which EPA approved into the New Hampshire SIP on January 25, 2013 (78 FR 5292). New Hampshire's November 17, 2011 revision included all the regulatory and technical documentation required in an I/M SIP submittal to address the requirements of EPA's I/M regulations at 40 CFR 51 subpart S. The emissions modeling, I/M SIP narrative, and other technical documentation, included in New Hampshire's November 17, 2011 submittal continue to be applicable as the technical demonstration that New Hampshire's implemented I/M program meets the requirements of EPA's I/M regulations at 40 CFR 51 subpart S. More recently, the State of New Hampshire submitted a formal revision to its SIP on June 7, 2016, which included amendments to the New Hampshire Code of Administrative Rules Chapter Saf-C 3200. This revision updated several regulatory provisions by adding language to clarify the I/M program requirements in New Hampshire. These updates did not reflect any changes to the technical implementation characteristics of the New Hampshire I/M program and thus resulted in no changes to the EPA-approved emissions modeling analysis. EPA approved this revision into the New Hampshire SIP on September 25, 2018 (83 FR 48385). <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Summary of New Hampshire's Regulatory Changes</HD> New Hampshire's amended Saf-C 3200 regulation, submitted as a SIP revision on September 22, 2022, updates a number of regulatory provisions by adding language to clarify the I/M program requirements in New Hampshire. A summary of the most substantial changes made to New Hampshire's SIP-approved regulation follows. New Hampshire (1) added clarifying definitions to Saf-C 3202; (2) amended Saf-C 3204.02 to update the required information for an application to become a fleet inspection station; (3) amended 3205.8 to extend the expiration date of inspection station certificates from once a year to biennially; (4) revised 3209.01 to reflect the updated sticker order form and respective revision date; (5) made multiple amendments to Saf-C 3209 regarding obtaining inspection stickers; (6) made multiple amendments to Saf-C 3222.08 to clarify criteria for an economic hardship waiver; and (7) amended Saf-C 3222.09 to replace exemption from visual inspection requirements with application requirements for a low mileage waiver. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. New Hampshire Satisfying Clean Air Act Requirements for I/M Programs</HD> In this document, EPA is only proposing to update New Hampshire's I/M regulation by revising subsections or provisions of the regulation as it currently exists in the New Hampshire SIP. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> As stated earlier in this document, the remaining technical aspects ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> I/M SIP narrative, the emissions modeling, and other technical documentation) included in New Hampshire's November 17, 2011 SIP revision, as approved by EPA on January 25, 2013 (78 FR 5292) continue to be applicable as the technical demonstration that New Hampshire's implemented I/M program meets the requirements of EPA's I/M regulations at 40 CFR 51 Subpart S. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  EPA's January 25, 2013 (78 FR 5292) approval of New Hampshire's November 17, 2011 I/M SIP submittal describes how New Hampshire's I/M program satisfies the OBD2 and other I/M regulatory requirements established by the Clean Air Act and EPA's I/M regulations at 40 CFR 51 Subpart S. In addition, EPA's January 25, 2013 (78 FR 5292) approval contains a detailed discussion of EPA's rationale for approving New Hampshire's November 17, 2011 I/M SIP revision and will not be restated in this document. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Proposed Action</HD> EPA is proposing to approve New Hampshire's September 22, 2022 SIP revision request. This SIP revision request contains New Hampshire's revised motor vehicle I/M program regulation. Specifically, EPA is proposing to approve amendments to the following New Hampshire Department of Safety Regulation Saf-C 3200 subsections or provisions as they currently exist in the New Hampshire SIP: amendments to Saf-C 3202, Saf-C 3203, Saf-C 3204, Saf-C 3205, Saf-C 3206.04, Saf-C 3207.01, Saf-C 3209, Saf-C 3210.02, and Saf-C 3222. EPA is proposing to approve New Hampshire's September 22, 2022 SIP revision, containing New Hampshire's updated I/M program regulation, because it is consistent with the CAA's I/M requirements and EPA's I/M regulations at 40 CFR 51 Subpart S, and will strengthen the SIP. The New Hampshire September 22, 2022 SIP that EPA is proposing to approve did not reflect any changes to the technical implementation characteristics of the New Hampshire I/M program and thus resulted in no changes to the EPA-approved emissions modeling analysis. EPA is soliciting public comments on the issues discussed in this notice or on other relevant matters. These comments will be considered before taking final action. Interested parties may participate in the Federal rulemaking procedure by submitting written comments to this proposed rule by following the instructions listed in the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section of this <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . <HD SOURCE="HD1">V. Incorporation by Reference</HD> In this rule, the EPA is proposing to include in a final EPA rule regulatory text that includes incorporation by reference. In accordance with requirements of 1 CFR 51.5, the EPA is proposing to incorporate by reference the aforementioned New Hampshi ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 17k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━