Removal of Affirmative Defense Provisions From Specified New Source Performance Standards and National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Parts 60 and 63</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OAR-2023-0509; FRL-11625-01-OAR]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2060-AW16</RIN> <SUBJECT>Removal of Affirmative Defense Provisions From Specified New Source Performance Standards and National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The EPA is proposing amendments to several New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) and National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) under the Clean Air Act (CAA). Specifically, the EPA is proposing to remove the affirmative defense provisions associated with violation of emission standards due to malfunctions. These provisions are being proposed for removal because the EPA finds that they are inconsistent with a D.C. Circuit Court decision that vacated affirmative defense provisions in one of the EPA's CAA regulations, and because the EPA finds that the reasoning in the decision applies equally to other CAA rules. Since the court decision, the EPA has been removing affirmative defense provisions from CAA rules when they were otherwise revised or amended. This action proposes to remove the remaining affirmative defense provisions more efficiently. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Comments.</E> Comments must be received on or before August 8, 2024. <E T="03">Public hearing.</E> If anyone contacts us requesting a public hearing on or before June 29, 2024, we will hold a virtual public hearing. See <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> for information on requesting and registering for a public hearing. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2023-0509, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/</E> (our preferred method). Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Email:</E> <E T="03">a-and-r-docket@epa.gov.</E> Include Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2023-0509 in the subject line of the message. • <E T="03">Fax:</E> (202) 566-9744. Attention Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2023-0509. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Docket Center, Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2023-0509, Mail Code 28221T, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20460. • <E T="03">Hand/Courier Delivery:</E> EPA Docket Center, WJC West Building, Room 3334, 1301 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20004. The Docket Center's hours of operation are 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Monday-Friday (except federal holidays). <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions received must include the Docket ID No. for this rulemaking. Comments received may be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/,</E> including any personal information provided. For detailed instructions on sending comments and additional information on the rulemaking process, see the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For questions about this proposed action, contact U.S. EPA, Attn. Dr. Michelle Bergin, Sector Policies and Programs Division (Mail Code D205-01), P.O. Box 12055, Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 109 T.W. Alexander Drive, P.O. Box 12055, RTP, North Carolina 27711; telephone number: (919) 541-2726; and email address: <E T="03">bergin.michelle@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <E T="03">Preamble acronyms and abbreviations.</E> We use multiple acronyms and terms in this preamble. While this list may not be exhaustive, to ease the reading of this preamble and for reference purposes, the EPA defines the following terms and acronyms here: <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">CAA Clean Air Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">CBI Confidential Business Information</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">CFR Code of Federal Regulations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">EPA Environmental Protection Agency</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">NAICS North American Industry Classification System</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">NESHAP National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">NSPS New Source Performance Standards</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">SIP state implementation plan</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">SSM startup, shutdown, and malfunction</FP> </EXTRACT> <E T="03">Participation in virtual public hearing.</E> To request a virtual public hearing, contact the public hearing team at (888) 372-8699 or by email at <E T="03">SPPDpublichearing@epa.gov.</E> If requested, the hearing will be held via virtual platform on July 9, 2024. The hearing will convene at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time (ET) and will conclude at 3:00 p.m. ET. The EPA may close a session 15 minutes after the last pre-registered speaker has testified if there are no additional speakers. The EPA will announce further details at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/stationary-sources-air-pollution/removal-affirmative-defense-provisions-specified-new-source.</E> If a public hearing is requested, the EPA will begin pre-registering speakers for the hearing no later than 1 business day after a request has been received. To register to speak at the virtual hearing, please use the online registration form available at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/stationary-sources-air-pollution/removal-affirmative-defense-provisions-specified-new-source</E> or contact the public hearing team at (888) 372-8699 or by email at <E T="03">SPPDpublichearing@epa.gov.</E> The last day to pre-register to speak at the hearing will be July 6, 2024. Prior to the hearing, the EPA will post a general agenda that will list pre-registered speakers at: <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/stationary-sources-air-pollution/removal-affirmative-defense-provisions-specified-new-source.</E> The EPA will make every effort to follow the schedule as closely as possible on the day of the hearing; however, please plan for the hearings to run either ahead of schedule or behind schedule. Each commenter will have 4 minutes to provide oral testimony. The EPA encourages commenters to provide the EPA with a copy of their oral testimony electronically (via email) by emailing it to <E T="03">bergin.michelle@epa.gov.</E> The EPA also recommends submitting the text of your oral testimony as written comments to the rulemaking docket. The EPA may ask clarifying questions during the oral presentations but will not respond to the presentations at that time. Written statements and supporting information submitted during the comment period will be considered with the same weight as oral testimony and supporting information presented at the public hearing. Please note that any updates made to any aspect of the hearing will be posted online at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/stationary-sources-air-pollution/removal-affirmative-defense-provisions-specified-new-source.</E> While the EPA expects the hearing to go forward as set forth above, please monitor our website or contact the public hearing team at (888) 372-8699 or by email at <E T="03">SPPDpublichearing@epa.gov</E> to determine if there are any updates. The EPA does not intend to publish a document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> announcing updates. If you require the services of a translator or special accommodation such as audio description, please pre-register for the hearing with the public hearing team and describe your needs by July 1, 2024. The EPA may not be able to arrange accommodations without advanced notice. <E T="03">Docket.</E> The EPA has established a docket for this rulemaking under Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2023-0509. All documents in the docket are listed in <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/.</E> Although listed, some information is not publicly available, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Certain other material, such as copyrighted material, is not placed on the internet and will be publicly available only as pdf versions that can only be accessed on the EPA computers in the docket office reading room. Certain data bases and physical items cannot be downloaded from the docket but may be requested by contacting the docket office at 202-566-1744. The docket office has up to 10 business days to respond to these requests. With the exception of such material, publicly available docket materials are available electronically in <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/.</E> <E T="03">Instructions.</E> Direct your comments to Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2023-0509. The EPA's policy is that all comments received will be included in the public docket without change and may be made available online at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/,</E> including any personal information provided, unless the comment includes information claimed to be CBI or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Do not submit electronically to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/</E> any information that you consider to be CBI or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. This type of information should be submitted as discussed below. The EPA may publish any comment received to its public docket. 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 addit ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 39k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━