Outer Continental Shelf Air Regulations; Consistency Update for North Carolina

[FR Doc No: 2024-06607] ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY 40 CFR Part 55 [EPA-R04-OAR-2023-0535; FRL-11589-02-R4] Outer Continental Shelf Air Regulations; Consistency Update for North Carolina AGENCY: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). ACTION: Final rule. SUMMARY: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is updating a portion of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Air Regulations. Requirements applying to OCS sources located within 25 miles of States' seaward boundaries must be updated periodically to remain consistent with the requirements of the corresponding onshore area (COA), as mandated by the Clean Air Act (CAA). The portion of the OCS air regulations that is being updated pertains to the requirements for OCS sources for which North Carolina is the designated COA. North Carolina's requirements discussed in this document will be incorporated by reference into the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) and listed in the appendix to the Federal OCS air regulations. DATES: This final rule is effective on April 29, 2024. The incorporation by reference of certain publications listed in this rule is approved by the Director of the Federal Register as of April 29, 2024. ADDRESSES: EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID Number EPA-R04-OAR-2023-0535. All documents in the docket are listed on the www.regulations.gov website. Although listed in the index, some information may not be publicly available, e.g., 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 through www.regulations.gov , or in hard copy at the Air Permits Section, Air Planning and Implementation Branch, Air and Radiation Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 4 Regional, 61 Forsyth St. SW, Atlanta, Georgia 30303-8960. EPA requests that, if at all possible, you contact the person listed in the FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT 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. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Kathleen Weil, Air Permits 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. The telephone number is (404) 562-9170. Ms. Weil can also be reached via electronic mail at [email] . SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: I. Background and Purpose On September 4, 1992, EPA promulgated 40 CFR part 55,\1\ which established requirements to control air pollution from OCS sources in order to attain and maintain Federal and State ambient air quality standards and to comply with the provisions of part C of title I of the CAA. The regulations at 40 CFR part 55 apply to all OCS sources offshore of the States except those located in the Gulf of Mexico west of 87.5 degrees longitude. Section 328 of the CAA requires that for such sources located within 25 miles of a State's seaward boundary, the requirements shall be the same as would be applicable if the sources were located in the COA. Because the OCS requirements are based on onshore requirements, and onshore requirements may change, section 328(a)(1) requires that EPA update the OCS requirements as necessary to maintain consistency with onshore requirements. \1\ The reader may refer to the notice of proposed rulemaking, December 5, 1991 (56 FR 63774), and the preamble to the final rule promulgated September 4, 1992 (57 FR 40792), for further background and information on the OCS regulations. On December 12, 2023 (88 FR 86094), EPA published a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) proposing to incorporate various North Carolina air pollution control requirements into 40 CFR part 55. Pursuant to 40 CFR 55.12, consistency reviews will occur: (1) At least annually where an OCS activity is occurring within 25 miles of a State seaward boundary; (2) upon receipt of a Notice of Intent (NOI) under 40 CFR 55.4; or (3) when a State or local agency submits a rule to EPA to be considered for incorporation by reference in 40 CFR part 55. EPA's NPRM was initiated in response to the submittal of an NOI for a potential upcoming OCS project. EPA reviewed the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (NCDEQ) rules for inclusion in 40 CFR part 55 in this action to ensure that they are rationally related to the attainment or maintenance of Federal or State ambient air quality standards and compliance with part C of title I of the CAA, that they are not designed expressly to prevent exploration and development of the OCS, and that they are potentially applicable to OCS sources. See 40 CFR 55.1. EPA has also evaluated the rules to ensure they are not arbitrary or capricious. See 40 CFR 55.12(e). In addition, EPA has excluded administrative or procedural rules \2\ and requirements that regulate toxics which are not related to the attainment and maintenance of Federal and State ambient air quality standards. \2\ Each COA which has been delegated the authority to implement and enforce part 55 will use its administrative and procedural rules as onshore. However, in those instances where EPA has not delegated authority to implement and enforce 40 CFR part 55, EPA will use its own administrative and procedural requirements to implement the substantive requirements. See 40 CFR 55.14(c)(4). Section 328(a) of the CAA requires that EPA establish requirements to control air pollution from OCS sources located within 25 miles of States' seaward boundaries that are the same as onshore requirements. To comply with this statutory mandate, EPA must incorporate applicable onshore rules into 40 CFR part 55 as they exist onshore. This limits EPA's flexibility in deciding which requirements will be incorporated into 40 CFR part 55 and prevents EPA from making substantive changes to the requirements it incorporates. As a result, EPA may be incorporating rules into 40 CFR part 55 that do not conform to all of EPA's State implementation plan (SIP) guidance or certain requirements of the CAA. Consistency updates may result in the inclusion of State or local rules or regulations into 40 CFR part 55, even though the same rules may ultimately be disapproved for inclusion as part of the SIP. Inclusion in the OCS rule does not imply that a rule meets the requirements of the CAA for SIP approval, nor does it imply that the rule will be approved by EPA for inclusion in the SIP. II. Public Comments and EPA Responses EPA did not receive any comments on the December 12, 2023, NPRM. III. Final Action EPA is taking final action to incorporate applicable provisions of the North Carolina Administrative Code (NCAC) into EPA's OCS regulations at 40 CFR part 55. The North Carolina rules that EPA is taking final action to incorporate are applicable provisions of 15A NCAC Subchapter 02D--Air Pollution Control Requirements and Subchapter 02Q--Air Quality Permits Procedures, as amended through November 8, 2023. The rules that EPA is incorporating are set out more fully below. IV. Incorporation by Reference In this rule, EPA is finalizing regulatory text that includes incorporation by reference. In accordance with the requirements of 1 CFR 51.5, and as discussed in Sections I and III of this preamble, EPA is finalizing the incorporation by reference of ``State of North Carolina Air Pollution Control Requirements Applicable to OCS Sources,'' dated November 8, 2023, which provides the text of the NCDEQ air rules in effect as of November 8, 2023, that would apply to OCS sources. EPA has made, and will continue to make, these materials available through www.regulations.gov and at the EPA Region 4 Office (please contact the person identified in the FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT section of this preamble for more information). V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews Under the Clean Air Act, the Administrator is required to establish requirements to control air pollution from OCS sources located within 25 miles of States' seaward boundaries that are the same as onshore air pollution control requirements. To comply with this statutory mandate, EPA must incorporate applicable onshore rules into 40 CFR part 55 as they exist onshore. See 42 U.S.C. 7627(a)(1); 40 CFR 55.12. Thus, in promulgating OCS consistency updates, EPA's role is to maintain consistency between OCS regulations and the regulations of onshore areas, provided that they meet the criteria of the CAA. Accordingly, this action simply updates the existing OCS requirements to make them consistent with requirements onshore, without the exercise of any policy direction by EPA. 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); Is certified as not having a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities under the Regulatory Flexibility Act (5 U.S.C. 601 et seq.); Does not contain any unfunded mandate or significantly or uniquely affect small governments, as described in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (Pub. L. 104-4); Does not have Federalism implications as specified in Executive Order 13132 (64 FR 43255, August 10, 1999); Is not an economically significant regulatory action based on health or safety risks subject to Executive Order 13045 (62 FR 19885, April 23, 1997); Is not a significant regulatory action subject to Executive Order 13211 (66 FR 28355, May 22, 2001); and Is not subject to requirements of section 12(d) of the National Technology Transfer and ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 37k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━