Air Quality Plans; California; San Luis Obispo County Air Pollution Control District; New Source Review

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R09-OAR-2023-0449; FRL-11378-02-R9]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Quality Plans; California; San Luis Obispo County Air Pollution Control District; New Source Review</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is finalizing a revision to the San Luis Obispo County Air Pollution Control District's (SLOCAPCD or “District”) portion of the California State Implementation Plan (SIP). This revision governs the District's issuance of permits for stationary sources, and focuses on the preconstruction review and permitting of major sources and major modifications under part D of title I of the Clean Air Act (CAA or “the Act”). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective June 17, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket No. EPA-R09-OAR-2023-0449. 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 (CBI) or other information the disclosure of which 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 <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> or please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. If you need assistance in a language other than English or if you are a person with a disability who needs a reasonable accommodation at no cost to you, please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Manny Aquitania, EPA Region IX, 75 Hawthorne St., San Francisco, CA 94105; by phone: (415) 972-3977, or by email at <E T="03">aquitania.manny@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document, the terms “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents </HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Public Comments and EPA Responses</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. EPA Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Proposed Action</HD> On December 29, 2023, <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> the EPA proposed to approve the rule listed in Table 1 into the California SIP. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  88 FR 90138. </FTNT> <GPOTABLE COLS="5" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="xs66,xs54,r100,12C,12C"> <TTITLE>Table 1—Submitted Rule</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Local agency</CHED> <CHED H="1">Rule #</CHED> <CHED H="1">Rule title</CHED> <CHED H="1">Adopted</CHED> <CHED H="1">Submitted</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">SLOCAPCD</ENT> <ENT>Rule 224</ENT> <ENT>Federal Requirements for New and Modified Major Sources in Non-Attainment Areas</ENT> <ENT>01/26/22</ENT> <ENT>07/05/22</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> For areas designated nonattainment for one or more of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), the applicable SIP must include preconstruction review and permitting requirements for new or modified major stationary sources of such nonattainment pollutant(s) under part D of title I of the Act, commonly referred to as Nonattainment New Source Review (NNSR). The rule listed in Table 1 contains the SLOCAPCD's NNSR permit program applicable to new and modified major sources located in the areas within the District that are designated nonattainment for the NAAQS. Our proposed action contains more information on the rule and our evaluation. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Public Comments and EPA Responses</HD> The EPA's proposed action provided a 30-day public comment period. During this period, we did not receive any comments. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. EPA Action</HD> No comments were submitted on our proposal. We continue to find that Rule 224 satisfies the relevant requirements for a CAA NNSR program for ozone, <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> as well as the associated visibility requirements for sources subject to review under such a program in accordance with 40 CFR 51.307. Therefore, as authorized in section 110(k)(3) of the Act, the EPA is approving the submitted rule. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  As discussed in our proposed action, we determined that Rule 224 satisfies the NNSR program requirements applicable to nonattainment areas classified as Marginal for ozone, and that the submittal addressed the NNSR requirements both the 2008 and 2015 ozone NAAQS. 88 FR 90138, 90139. </FTNT> This action incorporates the submitted rule into the California SIP. In conjunction with the EPA's SIP approval of the District's visibility program for sources subject to the NNSR program, this action also revises the scope of the visibility Federal Implementation Plan (FIP) at 40 CFR 52.281 for California so that this FIP no longer applies to sources located in the SLOCAPCD nonattainment areas that are subject to the District's visibility program. <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 incorporating by reference San Luis Obispo County Air Pollution Control District Rule 224, “Federal Requirements for New and Modified Major Sources in Non-Attainment Areas,” adopted on January 26, 2022, as described in Section I of this preamble, which regulates the District's issuance of permits for stationary sources under part D of title I of the CAA. The EPA has made, and will continue to make, these materials available through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and in hard copy at the EPA Region IX Office (please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section of this preamble for more information). <HD SOURCE="HD1">V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</HD> Under the Clean Air Act, the Administrator is required to approve a SIP submission that complies with the provisions of the Act and applicable federal regulations. 42 U.S.C. 7410(k); 40 CFR 52.02(a). Thus, in reviewing SIP submissions, the EPA's role is to approve state choices, provided that they meet the criteria of the Clean Air Act. 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, 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); • Does not impose an information collection burden under the provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act (44 U.S.C. 3501 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ); • 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 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ); • 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 subject to Executive Order 13045 (62 FR 19885, April 23, 1997) because it proposes to approve a state program; • 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 Advancement Act of 1995 (15 U.S.C. 272 note) because application of those requirements would be inconsistent with the Clean Air Act. In addition, the SIP is not approved to apply on any Indian reservation land or in any other area where the EPA or an Indian tribe has demonstrated that a tribe has jurisdiction. In those areas of Indian country, the rule does not have tribal implications and will not impose substantial direct costs on tribal governments or preempt tribal law as specified by Executive Order 13175 (65 FR 67249, November 9, 2000). Executive Order 12898 (Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations, 59 FR 7629, February 16, 1994) directs Federal agencies to identify and address “disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects” of their actions on minority populations and low-income populations to the greatest extent practicable and permitted by law. The EPA defines environmental justice (EJ) as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.” The EPA further defines the term fair treatment to mean that “no group of people should bear a disproportionate burden of environmental harms and risks, including those resulting from the negative environmental consequences of industrial, governmental, and commercial operations or programs and policies.” The District did not evaluate environmental justice considerations as part of its SIP submittal; the CAA and applicable implementing regulations neither prohibit nor require such an evaluation. The EPA did not perform an EJ analysis and did not consider EJ in this action. Consideration of EJ is not required as part of this action, and there is no ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 13k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━