Redesignation of Portions of Westmoreland and Cambria Counties, Pennsylvania for the 2010 Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS): Notification of Availability and Public Comment Period

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 81</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R03-OAR-2023-0419; FRL-11736-01-R3]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT> Redesignation of Portions of Westmoreland and Cambria Counties, Pennsylvania for the 2010 Sulfur Dioxide (SO <E T="0735">2</E> ) National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS): Notification of Availability and Public Comment Period </SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of availability and public comment period. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA or the Agency) is providing notice of our intent to redesignate portions of Westmoreland County and Cambria County, Pennsylvania, to “nonattainment” for the 2010 sulfur dioxide (SO <E T="52">2</E> ) national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS or standard). Westmoreland County is currently designated “attainment/unclassifiable,” and Cambria County is currently designated “unclassifiable.” EPA's intended redesignation of portions of these counties is based on modeled violations of the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS. If the redesignation to nonattainment is finalized, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania would be required to undertake certain planning requirements to reduce SO <E T="52">2</E> concentrations within this area, including, but not limited to, the requirement to submit within 18 months of redesignation a revision to the Pennsylvania state implementation plan (SIP) that provides for attainment of the SO <E T="52">2</E> standard as expeditiously as practicable, but no later than five years after the date of redesignation to nonattainment. Notice is hereby given that EPA has posted on our public electronic docket and internet website the intended redesignation for relevant portions of Westmoreland and Cambria counties, Pennsylvania under the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS. The Agency invites the public to review and provide input on our intended redesignation during the comment period specified in the <E T="02">DATES</E> section. EPA notified the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania of our intended redesignation action via a letter to the Governor on or about February 17, 2023, which is included in the docket for this notice of availability (NOA). </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before March 28, 2024. Please refer to the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section for additional information on the comment period. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R03-OAR-2023-0419 at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> or via email to <E T="03">gordon.mike@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, 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. 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">www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For general questions concerning this action, please contact Ellen Schmitt, Planning & Implementation Branch (3AD30), Air & Radiation Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region III, 1600 John F. Kennedy Boulevard, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103. The telephone number is (215) 814-5787. Ms. Schmitt can also be reached via electronic mail at <E T="03">schmitt.ellen@epa.gov.</E> EPA encourages the public to review our letter notifying Pennsylvania of our intended redesignation action, and the associated area-specific technical support information at <E T="03">www.epa.gov/sulfur-dioxide-designations/sulfur-dioxide-designations-regulatory-actions</E> or in the public docket for this intended redesignation at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> under Docket ID No. EPA-R03-OAR-2023-0419. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> The information in this document is organized as follows: <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Purpose of Action and Instructions for Submitting Public Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2"> II. The 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS </FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2"> III. Designations for the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS </FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2"> IV. SO <E T="52">2</E> Monitoring and Modeling Considerations </FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2"> V. Modeled SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS Violations in Westmoreland and Cambria Counties, Pennsylvania </FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2"> VI. EPA's Intended Decision To Address Modeled SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS Violations in Portions of Westmoreland and Cambria Counties, Pennsylvania Through Redesignation </FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Purpose of Action and Instructions for Submitting Public Comments</HD> The purpose of this NOA is to solicit input from interested parties on EPA's notification to the Governor of Pennsylvania about our intent and rationale for redesignating portions of Westmoreland and Cambria counties in Pennsylvania to nonattainment for the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS. EPA's notification letter and the supporting technical analysis can be found at <E T="03">www.epa.gov/sulfur-dioxide-designations/sulfur-dioxide-designations-regulatory-actions,</E> as well as in the public docket for this redesignation at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> under Docket ID No. EPA-R03-OAR-2023-0419. EPA invites public input regarding the redesignation of portions of Westmoreland and Cambria counties during the 45-day comment period provided in this document. To receive full consideration, input from the public must be submitted to the docket by March 28, 2024. This publication and opportunity for public comment does not affect any rights or obligations of any state, or tribe, or of EPA, which might otherwise exist pursuant to the Clean Air Act (CAA or Act) section 107(d). CAA section 107(d)(3) provides a process for air quality redesignations that involves recommendations by affected states, territories, and tribes to EPA and responses from the Agency to those parties, prior to EPA promulgating final area redesignation decisions. The Agency is not required under CAA section 107(d)(3) to seek public comment during the redesignations process, but we are electing to do so for these counties with respect to the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS to gather additional information for EPA to consider before making a final redesignation decision for these specific areas. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Submitting CBI</HD> Do not submit CBI information to EPA through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> or email. Clearly mark the part or all of the information that you claim to be CBI. For CBI on a disk or CD-ROM that you mail to EPA, mark the outside of the disk or CD-ROM as CBI and then identify electronically within the disk or CD-ROM the specific information that is claimed as CBI. In addition to one complete version of the comment that includes information claimed as CBI, a copy of the comment that does not contain the information claimed as CBI must be submitted for inclusion in the public docket. Information so marked will not be disclosed except in accordance with procedures set forth in 40 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) part 2. For additional directions on sending or delivering information identified as CBI, contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Tips for Preparing Your Comments</HD> When submitting comments, remember to: • Identify the rulemaking by docket number and other identifying information (subject heading, <E T="04">Federal Register</E> date and page number). • Follow directions. • Explain why you agree or disagree; suggest alternatives and substitute language for your requested changes. <HD SOURCE="HD1"> II. The 2010 SO <E T="0132">2</E> NAAQS </HD> Under section 109 of the CAA, EPA has established primary and secondary NAAQS for certain pervasive air pollutants (referred to as “criteria pollutants”) and conducts periodic reviews of the NAAQS to determine whether they should be revised or whether new NAAQS should be established. The primary NAAQS represent ambient air quality standards, the attainment and maintenance of which EPA has determined, including a margin of safety, are requisite to protect the public health. The secondary NAAQS represent ambient air quality standards, the attainment and maintenance of which EPA has determined are requisite to protect the public welfare from any known or anticipated adverse effects associated with the presence of such air pollutant in the ambient air. EPA revised the primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS in a final rule published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on June 22, 2010 (75 FR 35520), codified at 40 CFR 50.17, which became effective on August 23, 2010. Based on review of the air quality criteria for oxides of sulfur and the primary NAAQS for oxides of sulfur as measured by SO < ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 31k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━