Air Plan Approval; Ohio; OAC Chapter 3745-17 Particulate Matter

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R05-OAR-2024-0034; FRL-11775-01-R5]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Ohio; OAC Chapter 3745-17 Particulate Matter</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 assorted revisions to Ohio's particulate matter rules that the state requested EPA approve into the Ohio State Implementation Plan (SIP) under the Clean Air Act (CAA). The updates to Ohio's particulate matter rules include revisions to remove provisions for facilities or emissions units that have permanently shut down, update facility names and addresses, and make nonsubstantive revisions to the language of the rules. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before May 15, 2024. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R05-OAR-2024-0034 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> or via email to <E T="03">langman.michael@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">https://www2.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Emily Crispell, Control Strategies Section, Air Programs Branch (AR-18J), Environmental Protection Agency, Region 5, 77 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60604, (312) 353-8512, <E T="03">crispell.emily@epa.gov.</E> The EPA Region 5 office is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, excluding Federal holidays and facility closures due to COVID-19. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document whenever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. History of Submittal</HD> The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (Ohio EPA  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> ) is subject to requirements to review each of its regulations every five years, to assess whether any updates to the regulations are warranted and for other purposes. Accordingly, Ohio EPA reviewed its regulations in Ohio Administrative Code (OAC) Chapter 3745-17, entitled “Particulate Matter Standards,” and adopted various revisions amending and updating these rules. Ohio EPA then requested that EPA approve these revisions into the SIP, in a submittal dated January 18, 2024. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  To avoid confusion, this action uses the term “Ohio EPA” as shorthand for the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and the term “EPA” as shorthand for the United States Environmental Protection Agency. </FTNT> As a result of its review, Ohio EPA concluded that rule revisions were needed to remove provisions that are no longer necessary because the affected facility has permanently shut down. A second set of revisions Ohio EPA made to its rules renumbered emissions units and updated addresses for facilities that have combined operations. A final set of revisions modified the wording of selected text to reflect new semantic preferences, reordered definitions alphabetically, and updated test method, publication and referenced material titles, effective dates, addresses and websites. Previous revisions to the rules in OAC 3745-17 included providing a category of power plants operating continuous opacity monitoring systems the option to demonstrate compliance with an alternate set of opacity limits. Ohio EPA requested approval of those revisions on June 4, 2003, but EPA proposed to disapprove those revisions on June 27, 2005, at 70 FR 36901. Subsequently, on September 5, 2014, Ohio EPA withdrew its submittal of these revisions. On June 1, 2018, Ohio EPA submitted revisions to OAC 3745-17 and requested that EPA not act on the alternate set of opacity limits. On February 21, 2024, Ohio EPA clarified that the state was not requesting EPA action on these provisions in its January 18, 2024, submittal. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Review of Other Rule Revisions</HD> As summarized above, Ohio EPA's revisions to OAC 3745-17 include the removal of provisions that pertain to facilities that have permanently shut down, renumbering of emissions units for facilities that have combined operations, and modification of wording for phrases that Ohio EPA wishes to rephrase. Chapter 3745-17 includes 11 rules, extending from 3745-17-01 to 3745-17-14 but not including the adopted but now rescinded rules numbered 3745-17-02, 3745-17-05, or 3745-17-06. Ohio EPA revised all 11 of these remaining rules. The following discussion reviews each rule revision individually. <HD SOURCE="HD2">3745-17-01 “Definitions”</HD> The primary revisions to OAC 3745-17-01 include the addition of a section to the introduction explaining that the definitions in 3745-15-01 “General Provisions on Air Pollution Control” apply to the rules in chapter 3745-17, the renumbering of the referenced materials section to paragraph AA, the alphabetical reordering of definitions throughout the rule, and updates to publication dates and website URLs of referenced materials. No terms or definitions were added or removed from this section. <HD SOURCE="HD2">3745-17-03 “Measurement Methods and Procedures”</HD> The primary revisions in this rule are editorial, for example the revision of references to terms defined in 3745-17-01 to reflect the new location of those terms that were reordered, the revision of the introduction paragraph to show the Referenced Materials section is located under paragraph (AA), cleaning up sections 3745-17-03(B)(3), 3745-17-03(B)(4), 3745-17-03(B)(9) and 3745-17-03(B)(10) to renumber or remove references to rules that had been removed in previous rulemakings, and the removal of provisions that apply to facilities or emissions units that have permanently shut down. Additional editorial changes include removal of the use of “shall” in some instances, removing pronouns such as “his/her” and in instead referring to “the observer”. EPA finds that these editorial revisions yield an equally acceptable regulation. While Ohio EPA requested approval of most of OAC 3745-17-03, Ohio EPA expressly excluded two elements of OAC 3745-17-03 from this request. One of these elements, in OAC 3745-17-03(B)(1)(b), offers an alternate opacity limit (in brief, authorizing 1.1 percent of nonexempt 6-minute opacity values to exceed 20 percent opacity) for power plants operating continuous opacity monitoring systems. The second, associated element is the phrase in OAC 3745-17-03(B)(1)(a) stating “Except as provided in paragraph (B)(1)(b) of this rule”. These are provisions that Ohio EPA submitted on June 4, 2003, that EPA proposed to disapprove on June 27, 2005, and that Ohio EPA withdrew from consideration on September 5, 2014. Accordingly, EPA is proposing to act on most of OAC 3745-17-03 but EPA is proposing not to act on subparagraph 3745-17-03(B)(1)(b) and the specified phrase in 3745-17-03(B)(1)(a). <HD SOURCE="HD2">3745-17-04 “Compliance Time Schedules”</HD> The primary revisions in this rule are the removal of provisions that apply to facilities or emissions units that have permanently shut down and the removal of references to paragraphs that were removed in previous rulemakings. EPA finds that these revisions are approvable. <HD SOURCE="HD2">3745-17-07 “Control of Visible Particulate Emissions From Stationary Sources”</HD> The primary revisions in this rule include modifications to the introduction paragraph to show the information for referenced materials are located under paragraph (AA), and the removal of references to 3745-17-07(B)(9) and 3745-17-07(B)(10) as those paragraphs were removed in previous rulemakings. EPA finds that these revisions result in an equally protective set of rules and are approvable. <HD SOURCE="HD2">3745-17-08 “Restriction of Emission of Fugitive Dust”</HD> The primary revisions in this rule are modifications to the terms defined in 3745-17-01 to reflect the new location of those terms that were reordered, changes to the introduction paragraph to show the information for referenced materials is located under paragraph (AA), the removal of references to 3745-17-08(E) and 3745-17-08(F) as those paragraphs had been removed in previous rulemakings, and revising the facility name and address associated with Ohio EPA premise number 0641090010 in 3745-17-08(A)(3)(e) to reflect the facility name change from “Mingo Junction Steel Works LLC” to “JSW Steel USA Ohio” and the removal of the address for the north plant that has permanently shut down. EPA finds that these revisions are approvable. <HD SOURCE="HD2">3745-17-09 “Restrictions on Particulate Emissions and Odors From Incinerators”</HD> The primary revisions in this rule are minor and editorial, for exa ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━