Air Quality Plans; Approvals and Promulgations: California; Amador Air District; New Source Review

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R09-OAR-2023-0355; FRL-11176-02-R9]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Quality Plans; Approvals and Promulgations: California; Amador Air District; New Source Review</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 taking final action to approve a permitting rule submitted as a revision to the Amador Air District (AAD or “District”) portion of the California State Implementation Plan (SIP). This revision concerns the District's New Source Review (NSR) permitting program for new and modified sources of air pollution under part D of Title I of the Clean Air Act (CAA or “Act”). This action will update the District's applicable SIP with a rule revised to address deficiencies identified in a previous limited disapproval action by the EPA related to the District's NSR permitting program under Part D. This final approval action permanently terminates all sanctions, sanctions clocks, and federal implementation plan clocks triggered by our January 12, 2022 limited disapproval action. This action also finalizes regulatory text to clarify that Amador County is not subject to the Federal Implementation Plan related to protection of visibility. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule will be effective March 7, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket No. EPA-R09-OAR-2023-0355. All documents in the docket are listed on the <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> website. Although listed in the index, some information is not publicly available, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> Confidential Business Information (CBI) 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 through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> or please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. If you need assistance in a language other than English or if you are a person with disabilities who needs a reasonable accommodation at no cost to you, please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Karima Zulfo, EPA Region IX, 75 Hawthorne St., San Francisco, CA 94105. By phone: (415) 972-3953 or by email at <E T="03">zulfo.karima@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. Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Public Comments and EPA Responses</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. EPA Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Proposed Action</HD> On September 25, 2023, the EPA proposed to approve the rule listed in Table 1 into the California SIP. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The rule revisions that are the subject of this action represent an update to the District's preconstruction review and permitting program and are intended to satisfy the requirements under part D of title I of the Act (“Nonattainment NSR” or “NNSR”). <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> We proposed to approve this rule because we determined that it complies with the relevant CAA requirements. Our proposed action contains more information on the rule and our evaluation. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  88 FR 65647. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  As discussed in Section 2.2 of the Technical Support Document (TSD) for this action, dated August 2023, Amador County was designated as a Moderate nonattainment area for the 1997 ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) at the time that standard was revoked, and is currently designated as a Marginal nonattainment area for the 2015 ozone NAAQS. See 40 CFR 81.305. On October 7, 2022, the EPA determined that Amador County attained the 2015 ozone NAAQS by the applicable attainment date. 87 FR 60897. </FTNT> <GPOTABLE COLS="4" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s60,r100,10,10"> <TTITLE>Table 1—Submitted Rule</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Rule No.</CHED> <CHED H="1">Rule title</CHED> <CHED H="1">Amended date</CHED> <CHED H="1">Submitted date</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">400</ENT> <ENT>NSR Requirements for New and Modified Major Sources in Nonattainment Areas</ENT> <ENT>1/17/2023</ENT> <ENT>3/3/2023</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> The current SIP-approved version of the submitted rule is identified below in Table 2. <GPOTABLE COLS="4" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s60,r100,12,15"> <TTITLE>Table 2—SIP-Approved Rule</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Rule No.</CHED> <CHED H="1">Rule title</CHED> <CHED H="1">SIP approval date</CHED> <CHED H="1"> <E T="02">Federal Register</E> citation </CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">400</ENT> <ENT>NSR Requirements for New and Modified Major Sources in Nonattainment Areas</ENT> <ENT>1/12/2022</ENT> <ENT>87 FR 1683</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> As discussed in our proposal, the rule listed in Table 2 will be replaced in the SIP by the submitted rule listed in Table 1 upon our final approval. As described in our proposal, the EPA's final approval of Rule 400 will resolve all deficiencies forming the basis for our previous limited disapproval of the prior version of Rule 400, adopted by the District on August 20, 2019, which is listed in Table 2. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  87 FR 1683 (“2022 NSR Action”). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Public Comments and EPA Responses</HD> The EPA's proposed action provided a 30-day public comment period. During this period, one non-germane comment was submitted on our proposal. A copy of the comment is included in the docket for this action. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. EPA Action</HD> No germane comments were submitted on our proposal. Therefore, as authorized in section 110(k)(3) of the Act, the EPA is approving the submitted rule. This action incorporates the submitted rule into the California SIP and replaces the previously submitted rule listed in Table 2. This approval resolves all deficiencies forming the basis for our previous limited disapproval in 2022 of the prior version of Rule 400, as we find that submitted Rule 400 fully satisfies the relevant requirements for preconstruction review and permitting under section 110 and part D of the Act. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> This action also permanently terminates all sanctions, sanctions clocks, and federal implementation plan clocks triggered by our January 12, 2022 limited disapproval action. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  These requirements include all relevant NNSR requirements for the 1997 and 2015 ozone NAAQS for areas classified as Moderate or Marginal. </FTNT> As noted in our proposal, this action also revises the regulatory provisions at 40 CFR 52.281(d) concerning the applicability of the visibility federal implementation plan (FIP) at 40 CFR 52.28 as it pertains to California, to provide that this FIP does not apply to sources subject to review under the District's SIP-approved NNSR program. The EPA has previously found Rule 400 acceptable to meet the visibility provisions for sources subject to the NNSR program at 40 CFR 51.307, and the EPA finds that revised Rule 400 continues to satisfy those requirements. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  See TSD for our 2022 NSR Action, dated July 20, 2021, Sections 1, 4.3, 6, and 9. As we noted in our TSD for the current action, the submitted revised Rule 400 adds a provision that more clearly provides the District the authority to require monitoring in Federal Class I areas if deemed necessary, consistent with a recommendation by the EPA in our 2022 NSR Action. We find this new provision consistent with the EPA's visibility requirements in 40 CFR 51.307(d). See TSD dated August 2023, Section 3.2. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Incorporation by Reference</HD> In this rule, the EPA is finalizing regulatory text that includes incorporation by reference. In accordance with requirements of 1 CFR 51.5, the EPA is finalizing the incorporation by reference of Rule 400 NSR Requirements for New and Modified Major Sources in Nonattainment Areas, amended 1/17/2023, which implements a nonattainment NSR permit program. The EPA has made, and will continue to make, these documents available through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and at the EPA Region IX Office (please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section of this preamble for more information). <HD SOURCE="HD1">V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</HD> Under the Clean Air Act, the Administrator is required to approve a SIP submission that complies with the provisions of the Act and applicable federal regulations. 42 U.S.C. 7410(k); 40 CFR 52.02(a). Thus, in reviewing SIP submissions, the EPA's role is to approve state choices, provided that they meet the criteria of the Clean Air Act. Accordingly, this action merely approves state law as meeting federal requirements and does not impose additional requirements beyond those imposed by state law. For that reason, this action: • Is not a significant regulatory action subject to review by the Office of Management and Budget under Executive Orders 12866 (58 FR 51735, October 4, 1993) and 14094 (88 FR 21879, April 11, 2023); • Does not impose an information collection burden under the provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act (44 U.S.C. 3501 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ); • Is certified as not havi ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 16k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━