Partial Approval and Partial Disapproval of Air Quality State Implementation Plans; New Jersey; 2015 Ozone Infrastructure Requirements

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R02-OAR-2022-0631; FRL-10786-01-R2]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Partial Approval and Partial Disapproval of Air Quality State Implementation Plans; New Jersey; 2015 Ozone Infrastructure Requirements</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 partially approve and partially disapprove certain elements of a State Implementation Plan (SIP) revision that New Jersey submitted to demonstrate that the State satisfies the infrastructure requirements of section 110(a)(1) and (2) of the Clean Air Act (CAA) for the 2015 8-hour Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). The infrastructure requirements are designed to ensure that the structural components of each State's air quality management program are adequate to meet the State's responsibilities under the CAA. Except as noted, this SIP revision satisfies the infrastructure requirements of the CAA for the 2015 ozone NAAQS. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before May 13, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID Number EPA-R02-OAR-2022-0631 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> 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 electronically through <E T="03">https://www.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> . The 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. The 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, 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> Edward Linky, Environmental Protection Agency, Air Programs Branch, Region 2, 290 Broadway, New York, New York 10007-1866, at (212) 637-3764, or by email at <E T="03">Linky.Edward@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> The <E T="02">Supplementary Information</E> section is arranged as follows: <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. What action is the EPA proposing?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. What infrastructure elements are required under section 110(a)(1) and (2)?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. What is the EPA approach to review of infrastructure SIP Submissions?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. What did the State of New Jersey submit?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. How has the State addressed the elements of section 110(a)(1) and (2)?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VII. Environmental Justice Considerations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VIII. What action is the EPA taking?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IX. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. What Action is the EPA Proposing?</HD> The EPA is proposing to partially approve and partially disapprove elements of a SIP revision submitted by New Jersey on May 13, 2019, that address infrastructure SIP (iSIP) requirements for the 2015 8-hour ozone (2015 ozone) NAAQS. The EPA is proposing to approve the 2015 ozone infrastructure SIP revision for most elements. EPA is proposing to disapprove the portion of the submission that relates to prevention of significant deterioration (PSD). As explained more fully below, the disapproval portion of this action does not begin a new Federal Implementation Plan (FIP) clock, because the FIP is already in place. This action does not address the portion of the submission pertaining to the interstate transport requirements of section 110(a)(2)(D)(i)(I) (otherwise known as the “good neighbor” provision) with respect to the 2008 ozone NAAQS or the 2015 ozone NAAQS, since each was addressed in a previous EPA rulemaking. <E T="03">See</E> 87 FR 55692 (September 12, 2022) (addressing the good neighbor element of the 2008 ozone NAAQS) and 88 FR 9336, (February 13, 2023) (addressing the good neighbor element of the 2015 ozone NAAQS). This action also does not address New Jersey's negative declaration, demonstrating that no facilities exist in the State that are applicable to the Control Techniques Guidelines (CTG) for the Oil and Natural Gas Industry, which was included in this submittal but was addressed in a separate EPA rulemaking. <E T="03">See</E> 85 FR 29627 (May 18, 2020). As explained below, the EPA is proposing to find that the State has the necessary infrastructure, resources, and general authority to implement the 2015 ozone NAAQS, except where specifically noted. The EPA is proposing to approve the New Jersey infrastructure SIP revision for the 2015 ozone NAAQS for section 110(a)(2) infrastructure elements with the exception of elements, or portions of elements, C, D, and J as explained below. The proposed approval of the other section 110(a)(2) elements of the iSIP is principally based on the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) having the authority and resources to develop, enforce and maintain that the elements of an iSIP are in conformance with the requirements of the CAA section 110(a)(1) and (2). EPA proposes to disapprove the PSD portions of elements (C), D(i)(II), as well as D(ii), and J since New Jersey, even though it accepted delegation of, and implements, the Federal PSD program, does not have a SIP-approved PSD program and is under a Federal Implementation Plan (FIP). <E T="03">See</E> 40 CFR 52.1603. This determination is explained in Section VI of this document. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> On October 1, 2015, the EPA promulgated a revision to the ozone NAAQS. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> section 110(a)(1) of the CAA provides the procedural and timing requirements for SIPs. Section 110(a)(2) of the CAA lists specific elements that States must meet for SIP requirements related to a newly established or revised NAAQS. Sections 110(a)(1) and (2) of the CAA require, in part, that States submit to the EPA plans to implement, maintain and enforce each of the NAAQS promulgated by the EPA. By statute, SIPs meeting the requirements of sections 110(a)(1) and (2) are to be submitted by States within three years after promulgation of a new or revised standard. The EPA refers to this type of SIP submission as the “infrastructure” SIP because the SIP ensures that States can implement, maintain and enforce the air standards. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Ozone, Final Rule, 80 FR 65292 (October 26, 2015). Although the level of the standard is specified in the units of ppm, ozone concentrations are also described in parts per billion (ppb). For example, 0.070 ppm is equivalent to 70 ppb. </FTNT> On May 13, 2019, the NJDEP submitted to then Regional Administrator, Peter D. Lopez, a SIP revision that addresses infrastructure SIP requirements for the 2015 ozone NAAQS. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> The submittal was deemed complete by operation of law. We propose to approve all elements of the submittal except a portion of Element (C), Elements (D)(i)(II) and (ii), and a portion of Element (J), which we propose to disapprove. New Jersey does not have a SIP-approved PSD program and therefore has not addressed the PSD permit program requirements of part C if title I of the CAA. The EPA recognizes, however, that New Jersey has elected to comply with the Federal PSD requirements by accepting delegation of the Federal rules and has been successfully implementing this program for many years. New Jersey is already subject to a FIP which incorporates by reference the Federal PSD provisions as codified in 40 CFR 51.21, with the exception of paragraph (a)(1), into the implementation plan for the State. 40 CFR 52.1603. If the proposed disapproval of these aspects of the submittal is finalized, no further action is necessary, beyond the FIP which is in place, until such time as NJDEP submits, and EPA approves, a revision to its SIP regarding the PSD portions of those elements. The 2015 submission states there is no change to the status of these elements, and thus those portions are being disapproved. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  As discussed in section I of this document, the May 2019 SIP submittal addressed infrastructure requirements related to section 110(a)(2)(D)(i)(I) ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> good neighbor provision for the 2008 and 2015 ozone NAAQS, which EPA acted on separately. EPA finalized disapproval of the good neighbor provision for the 2008 ozone NAAQS. 87 FR 55692 (September 12, 2022). EPA finalized disapproval of the good neighbor provision for the 2015 ozone NAAQS. 88 FR 9336 (February 13, 2023). The May 2019 SIP submittal also included a negative declaration from the State that the Control Techniques Guidelines ( ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 62k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━