Air Plan Approval; FL; General Provisions Repeals and Amendments

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R04-OAR-2023-0211; FRL-11927-01-R4]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; FL; General Provisions Repeals and Amendments</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 a State Implementation Plan (SIP) revision submitted by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) on August 12, 2022, for the purpose of removing several obsolete, duplicative, or unnecessary rules from the general provisions portion of the Florida SIP. EPA is proposing to approve this revision pursuant to the Clean Air Act (CAA or Act). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments are due on or before June 14, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R04-OAR-2023-0211, at <E T="03">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> . 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, 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://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Sarah LaRocca, Air Planning and Implementation Branch, Air and Radiation Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 4, 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, Georgia 30303-8960. Ms. LaRocca can be reached via phone number (404) 562-8994 or via electronic mail at <E T="03">larocca.sarah@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> EPA is proposing to approve changes to the Florida SIP submitted by the State on August 12, 2022, to remove several obsolete, duplicative, or unnecessary rules from the Florida SIP. Specifically, the changes address Rules 62-204.100, Florida Administrative Code (F.A.C.), <E T="03">Purpose and Scope;</E> 62-204.200, F.A.C., <E T="03"> Definitions;</E> 62-204.220, F.A.C., <E T="03"> Ambient Air Quality Protection;</E> 62-204.240, F.A.C., <E T="03"> Ambient Air Quality Standards;</E> 62-204.260, F.A.C., <E T="03">Prevention of Significant Deterioration Maximum Allowable Increases (PSD Increments);</E> and 62-204.400, F.A.C., <E T="03">Public Notice and Hearing Requirements for State Implementation Plan Revisions.</E> <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> To support the removal of these rules from the SIP, Florida's August 12, 2022, submittal provides justifications to demonstrate, pursuant to CAA section 110(l), that the removal would not interfere with any applicable requirement concerning attainment of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) and reasonable further progress (RFP) or any other applicable requirement of the CAA. EPA's analysis of Florida's August 12, 2022, submission, and the Agency's rationale for proposing to approve removal of these rules from the Florida SIP are provided in section II, below. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  FDEP's August 12, 2022, SIP Revision also included changes to Rules 62-204.320, 62-204.340, 62-204.360, and 62-204.500. Florida subsequently withdrew the changes to Rules 62-204.320, 62-204.340, and 62-204.360 from EPA's consideration. EPA intends to address the changes to Rule 62-204.500 in separate rulemakings. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. EPA's Analysis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Rule 62-204.100, Purpose and Scope</HD> In Florida's August 12, 2022, submission, the State requests that EPA remove Rule 62-204.100, <E T="03"> Purpose and Scope,</E> from the Florida SIP. The State repealed this rule on February 16, 2012. Rule 62-204.100 was first approved by EPA into the Florida SIP on June 16, 1999, with a state-effective date of March 13, 1996. <E T="03">See</E> 64 FR 32346. However, the State has since determined that this rule is unnecessary because it does not contain any requirements and merely explains the purpose of Chapter 62-204. EPA agrees with the State's rationale and is therefore proposing to remove Rule 62-204.100 from the Florida SIP because removal would not interfere with any applicable requirement concerning attainment of any NAAQS and RFP or any other applicable CAA requirement. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Rule 62-204.200, Definitions</HD> In Florida's August 12, 2022, submission, the State requests that EPA remove Rule 62-204.200, <E T="03">Definitions,</E> from the Florida SIP. The State repealed this rule on February 16, 2012. Rule 62-204.200 was first approved by EPA into the Florida SIP on June 16, 1999, with a state-effective date of March 13, 1996. <E T="03">See</E> 64 FR 32346. The SIP-approved rule was last updated in 2008. <E T="03">See</E> 73 FR 36435 (June 27, 2008). However, the State has determined that the lists of definitions are either unnecessary or are redundant in the Florida SIP due, in part, to subsequent changes in the SIP. Most of the definitions in this rule are also listed in SIP-approved Rule 62-210.200. The only definitions not duplicated in Rule 62-210.200 are Rule 62-204.200(21), <E T="03">Marginal Nonattainment Area for Ozone;</E> Rule 62-204.200(23), <E T="03">Moderate Nonattainment Area;</E> Rule 62-204.200(25), <E T="03">Nonattainment Area;</E> and Rule 62-204.200(28), <E T="03">Redesignation of an Area.</E> These definitions are not required to be part of the Florida SIP because they define terms related to designating and redesignating areas for compliance with the NAAQS, the authority for which rests with EPA. EPA agrees with Florida that Rules 62-204.200 (21), (23), (25) and (28), are not necessary in the Florida SIP and agrees that the rest of Rule 62-204.200 is redundant to Rule 62-210.200 in the Florida SIP. Therefore, EPA is proposing to remove the rule from the SIP because removal would not interfere with any applicable requirement concerning attainment of any NAAQS and RFP or any other applicable CAA requirement. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Rule 62-204.220, F.A.C., Ambient Air Quality Protection</HD> In Florida's August 12, 2022, submission, the State requests that EPA remove Rule 62-204.220, <E T="03">Ambient Air Quality Protection,</E> from the Florida SIP. The State repealed this rule on February 16, 2012. Rule 62-204.220 was first approved by EPA into the Florida SIP on June 16, 1999, with a state-effective date of March 13, 1996. <E T="03">See</E> 64 FR 32346. Rule 62-204.220(1) prohibits the Department from issuing an air permit which would cause or contribute to a violation of an ambient air quality standard, except as provided in Rule 62-212.500, which pertains to preconstruction permitting in nonattainment areas. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> Rule 62-204.220(2) prohibits the Department from issuing air quality permits that would authorize the construction or modification of any emissions unit or facility that would cause or contribute to an ambient concentration at any point within a baseline area that exceeds either the appropriate baseline concentration for the point plus the appropriate maximum allowable increase or the appropriate ambient air quality standard, whichever is less, except as provided in Rule 62-212.400, which pertains to PSD permitting. “Baseline Area” is defined in SIP-approved Rule 62-210.200 as “all of the state” for sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and particulate matter ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> PM <E T="52">10</E> and PM <E T="52">2.5</E> ). “Baseline concentration” is also defined in Rule 62-210.200 and is the ambient concentration level that exists in the baseline area at the time of the applicable minor source baseline date. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  Florida currently does not have any nonattainment areas. <E T="03">See</E> 40 CFR 81.310. </FTNT> The language in Rule 62-204.220(1) and (2) is unnecessary because SIP-approved Rule 62-212.300(1)(b) and (1)(c) also prohibit a source from constructing or modifying any emissions unit or facility if it would either (1) cause or contribute to a violation of any ambient air quality standard, except as provided in Rule 62-212.500 or (2) cause or contribute to an ambient concentration at any point within a baseline area that exceeds either the appropriate baseline concentration for the point plus the appropriate maximum allowable increase or the appropriate ambient air quality standard, whichever is less. The State is also seeking to remove Rule 62-204.220(3), which requires that ambient air quality monitors used to establish violations of an ambient air quality standard meet the requirements of 40 CFR part 58 (part 58). The relevant sections of part 58 apply directly to any State or local air pollution control agency which has a delegated authority to operate a portion of the State's State or Local Air Monitoring Station (SLAMS)  <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> network. Among other requirements, part 58 prescribes detailed collection methodologies, quality assurance procedures, and data handling and reporting requirements for ambient air monitoring network operations. Because Rule 62-20 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 22k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━