Air Plan Approval; District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia; Update of the Motor Vehicle Emissions Budgets for the Washington-MD-VA 2008 8-Hour Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standard Maintenance Area

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R03-OAR-2024-0162; FRL-11869-01-R3]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia; Update of the Motor Vehicle Emissions Budgets for the Washington-MD-VA 2008 8-Hour Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standard Maintenance Area</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 state implementation plan (SIP) revisions submitted by the District of Columbia (the District), State of Maryland (MD), and Commonwealth of Virginia (VA). The revisions update the motor vehicle emissions budgets (MVEBs) and the onroad and nonroad (except for marine, airport, and railroad) mobile emissions for volatile organic compounds (VOC) and nitrogen oxides (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) for the years 2025 and 2030. EPA proposes to approve the updated MVEBs and updates to the applicable onroad and nonroad mobile emissions for VOC and NO <E T="52">X</E> for the years 2025 and 2030. EPA is also approving the allocation of a portion of the safety margins for VOC and NO <E T="52">X</E> in the ozone maintenance plan to the 2025 and 2030 MVEBs. The MVEBs will be available for transportation conformity purposes, in accordance with the requirements of the Clean Air Act (CAA). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before July 3, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R03-OAR-2024-0162 at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> or via email to <E T="03">Goold.Megan@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">www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Gregory Becoat, Planning & Implementation Branch (3AD30), Air & Radiation Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region III, 1600 John F Kennedy Boulevard, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103. The telephone number is (215) 814-2053. Mr. Becoat can also be reached via electronic mail at <E T="03">Becoat.Gregory@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> On November 14, 2023, September 6, 2023, and October 11, 2023, the District, Maryland, and Virginia, respectively, formally submitted requests to update the 2008 8-Hour Ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) maintenance plan for the Washington DC-MD-VA 2008 8-Hour Ozone NAAQS Maintenance Area (hereafter “the Washington Area” or “the Area”). These revisions update the Area's maintenance plan to include revised onroad and nonroad MVEBs for VOCs and NO <E T="52">X</E> that reflect the updated EPA Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES3.04) model and increased onroad vehicle emission rates. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> On April 15, 2019 (84 FR 15108), EPA approved Maryland and Virginia's requests to redesignate to attainment their portions of the Washington Area from marginal nonattainment to attainment of the 2008 8-Hour Ozone NAAQS, as well as the VOC and NO <E T="52">X</E> MVEBs for the years 2014, 2025, and 2030 for the entire Area. On July 16, 2019 (84 FR 33855), EPA approved the District's request to redesignate to attainment its portion of the Washington Area from marginal nonattainment to attainment of the 2008 8-Hour Ozone NAAQS. Motor vehicle budgets are the projected levels of controlled emissions from the transportation sector (mobile sources) that are estimated in the SIP to provide for maintenance of the ozone standard. The transportation conformity rule (40 CFR part 93, subpart A) allows States to update existing SIP-approved MVEBs from older emissions models ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> MOVES2014 or MOVES2010), if it is determined that it is appropriate to update the MVEBs with a new emissions model for future conformity determinations (in this case MOVES3.04). The current SIP-approved MVEBs for the Area were developed using the Highway Mobile Source Emission Factor Model (MOVES2014a) to generate onroad estimates and projections. On January 7, 2021 (86 FR 1106), EPA published an updated MOVES3 model, which became mandatory for use in transportation conformity analyses effective January 10, 2023. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Summary of SIP Revision and EPA Analysis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Requirements for Revising Maintenance Plans</HD> EPA's MOVES3 guidance document describes how and when to use the latest version of the MOVES emissions model for SIP development, transportation conformity determinations, general conformity determinations, and other purposes. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The Area submitted a SIP revision that included an update to the MVEBs for VOCs and NO <E T="52">X</E> , that were initially developed using the MOVES2014a model, for the years 2025 and 2030. The revised MVEBs for the onroad MVEBs were developed using the MOVES3.04 emissions model and followed the requirements described in EPA's MOVES3 Technical Guidance. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  EPA's MOVES3 Technical Guidance: Using MOVES to Prepare Emission Inventories for State Implementation Plans and Transportation Conformity is located in the EPA's guidance portal at <E T="03">www.epa.gov/state-and-local-transportation/policy-and-technical-guidance-state-and-local-transportation.</E> </FTNT> If a state revises an existing SIP with MOVES3, it must show that the SIP continues to meet applicable requirements with the new level of motor vehicle emissions calculated by the new model. EPA's MOVES3 Policy Guidance provides the following description on how to meet the applicable requirements for existing SIPs that are revised with MOVES3, including ideas for how to streamline these revisions whenever possible: (1) use of latest planning assumptions: the motor vehicle emissions inventories for base year, milestone year and attainment/maintenance year will need to be recalculated with the latest available planning assumptions; (2) states will need to consider and evaluate whether growth and control strategy assumptions for non-motor vehicle sources ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> stationary, area, and nonroad mobile sources) are still accurate at the time that the MOVES3 SIP revision is developed to ensure the revised emissions inventories are consistent with the relevant applicable requirement ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> reasonable further progress, attainment, or maintenance); and (3) if these assumptions have not changed, the state can explain this and re-submit the original SIP with the revised motor vehicle emissions inventories and budgets to meet the remaining applicable requirements as described in the guidance document. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  EPA's MOVES3 Policy Guidance (pp. 9-10) located in the EPA's guidance portal at <E T="03">www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2020-11/documents/420b20044_0.pdf.</E> </FTNT> Areas may be able to revise their motor vehicle emissions inventories and budgets using MOVES3 without revising the entire SIP or completing additional modeling if: (1) the SIP meets applicable requirements when the previous motor vehicle emissions inventories are replaced with MOVES3 inventories; and (2) the state can document that the growth and control strategy assumptions for non-motor vehicle sources continue to be valid and any minor updates do not change the overall conclusions of the SIP. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> The Area did not meet both required criteria for nonroad model source emissions. Consequently, the SIP revision included information addressing the recommendations described in the MOVES3 Policy Guidance. The SIP revision includes the following: (1) a demonstration that the 2008 8-Hour Ozone NAAQS maintenance plan continues to meet applicable requirements with the revised motor vehicle emissions inventories, as calculated by the MOVES3.0.4 model; (2) a review of the point, nonpoint (area), and marine, airport, and railroad (MAR) source missions inventories for the interim and maintenance years to determine if growth and control strategy assumptions have changed; and (3) an assessment to confirm that excess emissions exist and the quantification of these excess emissions for use in the safety margin applied to the MVEBs. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Retaining the 2014 Attainment Year Inventories</HD> The Area's maintenance demonstration must show that emissions of VOC and NO <E T="52">X</E> do not increase in future years beyond the actual estimated emissions in the 2014 attainment year in order to maintain compliance with the 2008 8-Hour Ozone NAAQS. The SIP revision describ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 46k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━