Air Plan Approval; Wisconsin; SIP Alignment Revision

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R05-OAR-2023-0540; FRL-11835-01-R5]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Wisconsin; SIP Alignment Revision</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 an October 27, 2023, submittal from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) to align provisions approved in the Wisconsin State Implementation Plan (SIP) with current Wisconsin administrative rules and statutes. WDNR requested that certain provisions previously approved into the Wisconsin SIP under now obsolete numbering schemes be renumbered to ensure citations in the Wisconsin SIP reflect the current numbering systems of the Wisconsin Administrative Code (WAC) and the Wisconsin Statutes (Wis. Stats.). WDNR also requested that EPA approve rule and statute provisions that have been revised since they were approved into the Wisconsin SIP. Finally, WDNR requested removal of rules and statutes from the Wisconsin SIP that are no longer in effect in Wisconsin. Approval of these changes in the Wisconsin SIP will not impact the state's air quality or ability to meet Clean Air Act (CAA) requirements. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before June 17, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R05-OAR-2023-0540 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> or via email to <E T="03">arra.sarah@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> Christos Panos, Attainment Planning and Maintenance Section, Air Programs Branch (AR18J), Environmental Protection Agency, Region 5, 77 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60604, (312) 353-8328, <E T="03">panos.christos@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. Background</HD> Wisconsin's air pollution control rules were officially submitted for SIP approval on January 14, 1972, and approved into the SIP on May 31, 1972 (37 FR 10902), under Natural Resources (NR) chapter 154 of the Wisconsin Administrative Code (WAC). On October 1, 1986 (Wisconsin Register No. 369, September 1986), the air pollution control rules were renumbered from the NR 154 series to the NR 400 series. In addition, on May 1, 1995 (Wisconsin Register No. 472, April 1995), the air pollution control rules underwent a subsequent renumbering process within the NR 400 series. This has resulted with the Wisconsin SIP consisting of rules approved using the previous NR 154 citations, some NR 400 series rules prior to being renumbered on May 1, 1995, and NR 400 series rules under the current numbering system. The SIP revision submitted by WDNR on October 27, 2023, requests that the previous SIP rules approved under the obsolete numbering systems are renumbered to ensure that all the rules in the Wisconsin SIP are aligned with the WAC's current NR 400 numbering system. Similarly, Wisconsin Statutes addressing air pollution were originally submitted and approved into the Wisconsin SIP under Wis. Stats. chapter 144. The Wisconsin Statutes also underwent a renumbering under 1995 Wisconsin Act 227, where the air pollution statutes were moved from Wis. Stats. chapter 144 to Wis. Stats. chapter 285. This has resulted with the Wisconsin SIP consisting of Wisconsin air pollution statutes approved under both Wis. Stats. chapter 144 and Wis. Stats. chapter 285. The SIP revision submitted by WDNR on October 27, 2023, requests that the previously SIP statutes approved under Wis. Stats. chapter 144 are renumbered to ensure that all the rules in the Wisconsin SIP are aligned with the current numbering system under Wis. Stats. chapter 285. Further, there are some instances where rule and statute language was revised and some provisions were not retained by Wisconsin as part of, or after, the renumbering processes. The October 27, 2023, SIP revision also requests that EPA approve revised rule or statute language into the Wisconsin SIP to replace the provisions' former citations and language and to remove some provisions from the Wisconsin SIP that are no longer in effect in Wisconsin. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Review of the Wisconsin Alignment SIP Submittal</HD> As previously stated, the purpose of this SIP revision is to revise the current SIP approved Wisconsin administrative rules and statute provisions so that they are consistent with the current version of the Wisconsin rules and statutes. This will provide clarity to regulators, sources, and the public as to what has been approved into the Wisconsin SIP. To accomplish this WDNR requested that EPA revise the SIP by (1) replacing rules and statutes citations that were revised as part of, or after, the renumbering processes, and (2) approving provisions that were simply updated, but not renumbered, with the most current version of these rule or statute provisions. WDNR also requested that EPA remove certain provisions from the Wisconsin SIP that are no longer in effect in Wisconsin. These provisions were either repealed at the state level via rulemaking action, or were not retained in the WAC or Wis. Stats. during the renumbering processes. The following list identifies the most recent version of the state rules and statutes that contain all of the requested revisions: • Chapters 15, 110, 285 and 299, Updated 21-22 Wis. Stats., published October 4, 2023; • NR 400 Register July 2022 No. 799, effective August 1, 2022; • NR 415 Register April 2023 No. 808, effective May 1, 2023; • NR 417 Register November 1999 No. 526, effective November 1, 1999; • NR 431 Register November 2003 No. 574, effective November 1, 2003; • NR 436 Register November 1999 No. 526, effective November 1, 1999; • NR 445 Register March 2016 No. 723, effective April 1, 2016; • NR 447 Register June 2004 No. 582, effective July 1, 2004; • NR 492 Register April 2013 No. 688, effective May 1, 2013; • NR 493 Register November 1999 No. 527, effective December 1, 1999; • Chapter Trans 131 Register July 2023 No. 811, effective August 1, 2023. WDNR's request was organized as follows: (1) Section 2 requests renumbering of current SIP-approved rules and statutes; (2) Section 3 requests approval of rules and statutes that were modified following initial EPA approval; and (3) Section 4 requests removal of provisions from the Wisconsin SIP that are no longer in effect. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 2. Renumbering Request: Update Citations in the SIP</HD> This section of the WDNR submittal identifies citations that were previously approved into the SIP under now obsolete numbering schemes. These citations have not undergone any language revisions since they were approved into the Wisconsin SIP, making this primarily an administrative action to update the citation numbers. Table 1 of the submittal contains NR 154 provisions that were approved into the SIP prior to the October 1986. Table 2 contains NR 400 provisions that were approved into the SIP between October 1986 and May 1995. Table 3 contains Wis. Stats. Chapter 144 provisions that were approved into the SIP prior to promulgation of 1995 Wisconsin Act 227. These changes are approvable because they do not impact the stringency of the Wisconsin SIP. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 3. Approval Request: Incorporate Updated Provisions Into the SIP</HD> This section of the WDNR submittal identifies provisions that were previously approved into the SIP under now obsolete numbering schemes and underwent language revisions by Wisconsin after they were approved into the SIP. This section also identifies provisions that were not renumbered, but contain language revisions since they were approved into the SIP. Approving these provisions updates the Wisconsin SIP to be consistent in both language and numbering with current Wisconsin rules and statues. Table 4 of the submittal contains NR 154 provisions that were renumbered and revised since they were approved into the SIP. Table 5 contains NR 400 provisions that were renumbered and revised since they were approved into the SIP. Table 6 contains Wis. Stats. Provisions that were renumbered and revised since they were approved into the SIP or are being approved into the SIP for the first time. These changes are approvable because the majority of t ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━