Approval and Promulgation of State Air Quality Plans for Designated Facilities and Pollutants; Arkansas; Negative Declaration for Existing Sulfuric Acid Plants; Plan Revision for Existing Kraft Pulp Mills

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 62</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R06-OAR-2022-0984; FRL-11401-02-R6]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Approval and Promulgation of State Air Quality Plans for Designated Facilities and Pollutants; Arkansas; Negative Declaration for Existing Sulfuric Acid Plants; Plan Revision for Existing Kraft Pulp Mills</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> Pursuant to the Federal Clean Air Act (CAA or the Act), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is approving the CAA section 111(d) State plan revision submitted by the State of Arkansas for existing kraft pulp mills subject to the Kraft Pulp Mills Emission Guidelines (EG). The Arkansas section 111(d) plan revision for kraft pulp mills contains administrative changes to the State regulations and also aligns compliance testing requirements to make it consistent with EPA's kraft pulp mills new source performance standards. EPA is also notifying the public that we have received a CAA section 111(d) negative declaration from Arkansas for existing sulfuric acid plants subject to the Sulfuric Acid Plants EG. This negative declaration certifies that existing sulfuric acid plants subject to the Sulfuric Acid Plants EG and the requirements of sections 111(d) of the CAA do not exist within Arkansas. The EPA is approving the State plan revision for existing kraft pulp mills, accepting the negative declaration for existing sulfuric acid plants, withdrawing its approval of the Arkansas State plan for existing sulfuric acid plants, and amending the agency regulations in accordance with the requirements of the CAA. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective on April 1, 2024. The incorporation by reference of certain material listed in the rule is approved by the Director of the Federal Register April 1, 2024. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-R06-OAR-2022-0984. 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 or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Certain other material, such as copyrighted material, is not placed on the internet. Publicly available docket materials are available electronically through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Karolina Ruan Lei, EPA Region 6 Office, Air and Radiation Division—State Planning and Implementation Branch, (214) 665-7346, <E T="03">ruan-lei.karolina@epa.gov.</E> Please call or email the contact listed above if you need alternative access to material indexed but not provided in the docket. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document “we,” “us,” and “our” means the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> The background for this action is discussed in detail in our October 23, 2023 proposal (88 FR 72723). In that document we proposed to approve the Arkansas State plan revision for existing kraft pulp mills, accept the negative declaration for existing sulfuric acid plants and withdraw approval of the Arkansas State plan for existing sulfuric acid plants, and amend the agency regulations at 40 CFR part 62, subpart E, in accordance with the requirements of the CAA. EPA proposed to find that Arkansas' submittal, submitted by Arkansas Department of Energy and Environment, Division of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) on June 20, 2022, and supplemented on August 24, 2022, and August 31, 2022, meets the CAA section 111(d) requirements for plan revisions, negative declarations, and plan approval withdrawals in accordance with 40 CFR part 60, subpart B, 40 CFR part 62, subpart A, and the applicable EG requirements. We did not receive any comments regarding our proposal. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Final Action</HD> In this final action, the EPA is amending 40 CFR part 62, subpart E, to reflect EPA's approval of the Arkansas plan revision for existing kraft pulp mills, acceptance of the Arkansas negative declaration for existing sulfuric acid plants, and the withdrawal of EPA's approval of the Arkansas State plan for existing sulfuric acid plants. EPA takes this action in accordance with the requirements under section 111(d) of the CAA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Environmental Justice Considerations</HD> Information on Executive Order 12898 (Federal Actions To Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations, 59 FR 7629, February 16, 1994) and how EPA defines environmental justice can be found in the section titled “Statutory and Executive Order Reviews” in this final rule. EPA provided additional analysis of environmental justice associated with this action in our October 23, 2023 proposal (88 FR 72723) for the purpose of providing additional context and information about this rulemaking to the public, not as a basis of the action. This final action is approving Arkansas's June 20, 2022, CAA section 111(d) plan revision for kraft pulp mills and accepting Arkansas's negative declaration for existing sulfuric acid plants; changes from the previously approved Arkansas plan for kraft pulp mills are discussed under the section titled “The EPA's Evaluation” in the proposed rule for this action (88 FR 72723, October 23, 2023). Total reduced sulfur (TRS) is considered a welfare-related pollutant. Information on TRS and its relationship to negative health impacts can be found at the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> document titled “Kraft Pulp Mills, Notice of Availability of Final Guideline Document” (44 FR 29828, May 22, 1979). We expect that this action will generally have neutral environmental and health impacts on all populations, including people of color and low-income populations, in Arkansas that are located near an existing kraft pulp mill. At a minimum, this action would not worsen any existing air quality and is expected to ensure the area is meeting requirements to attain air quality standards. Further, there is no information in the record indicating that this action is expected to have disproportionately high or adverse human health or environmental effects on a particular group of people. <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 Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission (APC & EC) Rule 19, Chapter 8, approved January 28, 2022, which is part of the CAA section 111(d) Plan applicable to existing kraft pulp mills subject to the Kraft Pulp Mills Emission Guidelines within ADEQ's jurisdiction in the State of Arkansas. The regulatory provisions of APC & EC Rule 19, Chapter 8, incorporate the Kraft Pulp Mills Emission Guidelines promulgated by the EPA and provide emission standards for the control of existing kraft pulp mills, as defined in 40 CFR 60.281(a) and under the Kraft Pulp Mills Emission Guidelines, that commenced construction, modification, or reconstruction on or before September 24, 1976. The EPA has made, and will continue to make, these materials generally available through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> (please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section of this preamble for more information). This incorporation by reference has been approved by the Office of the Federal Register and the plan is federally enforceable under the CAA as of the effective date of this final rulemaking. <HD SOURCE="HD1">V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</HD> Under the CAA, the Administrator is required to approve a CAA section 111(d) submission that complies with the provisions of the Act and applicable Federal regulations. 42 U.S.C. 7411(d); 42 U.S.C. 7429; 40 CFR part 60, subparts B and Cf; and 40 CFR part 62, subpart A. Thus, in reviewing CAA section 111(d) State plan submissions and negative declarations, EPA's role is to approve State choices, provided that they meet the criteria of the Act and implementing regulations. 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: <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Executive Order 12866: Regulatory Planning and Review and Executive Order 14094: Modernizing Regulatory Review</HD> This action is not a significant regulatory action as defined in Executive Order 12866 (58 FR 51735, October 4, 1993), as amended by Executive Order 14094 (88 FR 21879, April 11, 2023), and was therefore not subject to a requirement for Executive Order 12866 review. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA)</HD> This action does not impose an information collection burden under the PRA (44 U.S.C. 3501 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) because it does not contain any information collection activities. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA)</HD> This action is certified to not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities under the RFA (5 U.S.C. 601 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ). This action will approve plan revisions and accept negative declarations pursuant to CAA section 111(d) and will therefore have no net regulatory burden for all directly regulated small entities. <HD SOURCE="HD2">D. Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA)</HD> This action does not contain any unfunded mandate as described in UMRA, 2 U.S.C. 1531-1538, and does not significantly or uniquely affect small governments. This action imposes no enforceable duty on ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 19k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━