Partial Approval and Partial Disapproval of Air Quality State Implementation Plans; Arizona; Infrastructure Requirements for Fine Particulate Matter

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R09-OAR-2023-0539; FRL-11747-01-R9]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Partial Approval and Partial Disapproval of Air Quality State Implementation Plans; Arizona; Infrastructure Requirements for Fine Particulate Matter</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 a revision to the Arizona state implementation plan (SIP) as meeting the requirements of the Clean Air Act (CAA) for the implementation, maintenance, and enforcement of the 2012 fine particulate matter (PM <E T="52">2.5</E> ) national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS or “standards”). As part of this action, the EPA is proposing to approve regulatory provisions into the Arizona SIP. The EPA is seeking public comment on this proposed action and will accept comments from the public on this proposal for the next 30 days. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Any comments must arrive by July 15, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R09-OAR-2023-0539 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.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> . 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, 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://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> 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> Michael Dorantes, Geographic Strategies and Modeling Section (AIR-2-2), EPA Region IX, (415) 972-3934, <E T="03">dorantes.michael@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document, “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. The EPA's Approach To Reviewing Infrastructure SIPs</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Statutory Framework</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Regulatory Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. State Submittals</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Infrastructure SIP Submittal</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Revised Rules and Regulations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. The EPA's Evaluation and Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Proposed Approvals and Partial Approvals</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Proposed Partial Disapprovals</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Incorporation of Rules Into Arizona's State Implementation Plan</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Deferred Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2"> E. Revising Air Quality Control Regions and Evaluating Emergency Episode Planning Requirements for PM <E T="52">2.5</E> in Arizona </FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. Request for Public Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. The EPA's Approach To Reviewing Infrastructure SIPs</HD> The EPA has historically referred to SIP submittals made for the purpose of satisfying the requirements of CAA sections 110(a)(1) and 110(a)(2) as “infrastructure SIP” submittals. Although the term “infrastructure SIP” does not appear in the CAA, the EPA uses the term to distinguish this particular type of SIP submittal from submittals that are intended to satisfy other SIP requirements under the CAA, such as “nonattainment SIP” or “attainment SIP” submittals to address the nonattainment planning requirements of CAA title I part D, “regional haze SIP” submittals required by EPA rule to address the visibility protection requirements of section 169A, and nonattainment new source review (NSR) permit program submittals to address the permit requirements of CAA title I part D. Section 110(a)(1) of the Act requires that each State adopt and submit an infrastructure SIP for the implementation, maintenance, and enforcement of each NAAQS promulgated by the EPA, and that the EPA act on such SIP submittals. They are intended to address basic structural SIP requirements for new or revised NAAQS including, but not limited to, legal authority, regulatory structure, resources, permit programs, monitoring, and modeling necessary to assure attainment and maintenance of the standards. Herein, the EPA is acting on SIP submittals from Arizona that address the infrastructure requirements of CAA sections 110(a)(1) and 110(a)(2) with respect to the primary and secondary 2012 PM <E T="52">2.5</E> NAAQS. Under section 110(a)(1), states are required to submit infrastructure SIPs within three years (or such shorter period as the Administrator may prescribe) after the promulgation of a national primary ambient air quality standard (or any revision thereof). The statute directly imposes on States the duty to make these SIP submittals, and the requirement to make the submittals is not conditioned upon the EPA taking any action other than promulgating a new or revised NAAQS. Section 110(a)(2) includes a list of specific “elements” that each such infrastructure SIP submittal must address. CAA section 110(a)(1) addresses the timing and general requirements for infrastructure SIP submittals, and section 110(a)(2) provides more details concerning the required contents of these submittals. The list of required elements provided in section 110(a)(2) contains a wide variety of disparate provisions, some of which pertain to required legal authority, some of which pertain to required substantive program provisions, and some of which pertain to requirements for both authority and substantive program provisions. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The EPA therefore believes that, while the timing requirement in section 110(a)(1) is unambiguous, some of the other statutory provisions are ambiguous. In particular, the EPA believes that the list of required elements for infrastructure SIP submittals provided in section 110(a)(2) contains ambiguities concerning what is required for inclusion in an infrastructure SIP submittal. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  For example, CAA section 110(a)(2)(E)(i) provides that States must provide assurances that they have adequate legal authority under State and local law to carry out the SIP; section 110(a)(2)(C) provides that States must have a SIP-approved program to address certain sources as required by part C of title I of the CAA; and section 110(a)(2)(G) provides that States must have legal authority to address emergencies as well as contingency plans that are triggered in the event of such emergencies. </FTNT> The following examples of ambiguities illustrate the need for the EPA to interpret some CAA section 110(a)(1) and section 110(a)(2) requirements with respect to infrastructure SIP submittals for a given new or revised NAAQS. One example of ambiguity is that section 110(a)(2) requires that “each” SIP submittal must meet the list of requirements therein, while the EPA has long noted that this literal reading of the statute is internally inconsistent and would create a conflict with the nonattainment provisions in CAA title I part D, which specifically address nonattainment SIP requirements. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> Section 110(a)(2)(I) pertains to nonattainment SIP requirements, and part D addresses when attainment plan SIP submittals to address nonattainment area requirements are due. For example, section 172(b) requires the EPA to establish a schedule for submittal of such plans for certain pollutants when the Administrator promulgates the designation of an area as nonattainment, and section 107(d)(1)(B) allows up to two years, or in some cases three years, for such designations to be promulgated. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> This ambiguity illustrates that, rather than apply all the stated requirements of section 110(a)(2) in a strict literal sense, the EPA must determine which provisions of section 110(a)(2) are applicable for a particular infrastructure SIP submittal. Another example of ambiguity within sections 110(a)(1) and 110(a)(2) with respect to infrastructure SIPs pertains to whether States must meet all of the infrastructure SIP requirements in a single SIP submittal and whether the EPA must act upon such SIP submittal in a single action. Although section 110(a)(1) directs States to submit “a plan” to meet these requirements, the EPA interprets the CAA to allow States to make multiple SIP submittals separately addressing infrastructure SIP elements for the same NAAQS. If States elect to make such multiple SIP submittals to meet the infrastructure SIP requirements, the EPA can elect to act on such submittals either individually or in ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 56k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━