Federal Implementation Plan for Nonattainment New Source Review Program; Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District, California

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <SUBAGY>40 CFR Part 52</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R09-OAR-2024-0228; FRL-11830-01-R9]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Federal Implementation Plan for Nonattainment New Source Review Program; Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District, California</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 promulgate a Federal Implementation Plan (FIP) under the Clean Air Act (CAA) that consists of Nonattainment New Source Review (NNSR) rules for areas within the jurisdiction of the Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District (MDAQMD or “District”) in which air pollutant concentrations are above specific National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). The NNSR rules would apply to construction of new major stationary sources and major modifications at existing major stationary sources of air pollution. The proposed FIP, if finalized, would be implemented by the EPA, unless and until it is replaced by an EPA-approved state implementation plan (SIP). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before August 23, 2024. The EPA will hold a virtual public hearing on July 24, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R09-OAR-2024-0228 via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/</E> (our preferred method). Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. <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 “Public Participation” heading of the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. You may register for the hearing at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/caa-permitting/public-hearing-federal-implementation-plan-nonattainment-new-source-review-program-0.</E> Please refer to the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section for additional information on the public hearing. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Tanya Abrahamian, Air and Radiation Division, Rules Office (AIR-3-2), Environmental Protection Agency, Region IX, telephone number: (213) 244-1849; email address: <E T="03">Abrahamian.Tanya@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">Public Participation</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Written Comments</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R09-OAR-2024-0228 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> (our preferred method). Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from the docket. The EPA may publish any comment received to its public docket. Do not submit to the EPA's docket at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> 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, 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> <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Participation in Virtual Public Hearing</HD> The EPA will begin pre-registering speakers for the hearing no later than 1 business day after publication of this document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . To register to speak at the virtual hearing, please visit <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/caa-permitting/public-hearing-federal-implementation-plan-nonattainment-new-source-review-program-0</E> for online registration. The last day to pre-register to speak at the hearing will be July 22, 2024. The EPA will post a general agenda for the hearing that will list pre-registered speakers in approximate order at: <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/caa-permitting/public-hearing-federal-implementation-plan-nonattainment-new-source-review-program-0.</E> The virtual public hearing will be held via teleconference on July 24, 2024. The virtual public hearing will convene at 4 p.m. Pacific Time (PT) and will conclude at 7 p.m. PT. The EPA may close the session 15 minutes after the last pre-registered speaker has testified if there are no additional speakers. For information or questions about the public hearing, please contact Tanya Abrahamian, per the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section of this document. The EPA will announce further details at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/caa-permitting/public-hearing-federal-implementation-plan-nonattainment-new-source-review-program-0.</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 5 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">Abrahamian.Tanya@epa.gov.</E> The EPA also recommends submitting the text of your oral comments as written comments to the rulemaking docket. The EPA may ask clarifying questions during the oral presentations, but the EPA 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 comments 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/caa-permitting/public-hearing-federal-implementation-plan-nonattainment-new-source-review-program-0.</E> While the EPA expects the hearing to go forward as set forth above, please monitor our website or contact <E T="03">Abrahamian.Tanya@epa.gov,</E> per the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section of this document, 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 accommodations such as audio description, please pre-register for the hearing and describe your needs by July 22, 2024. The EPA may not be able to arrange accommodations without advance notice. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Policy on Children's Health</HD> In 2021, EPA updated its <E T="03">Policy on Children's Health</E> to reflect that “children's environmental health refers to the effect of environmental exposure during early life: from conception, infancy, early childhood and through adolescence until 21 years of age.” In addition, the policy applies to “effects of early life exposures [that] may also arise in adulthood or in later generations.” In this action, the EPA is proposing to implement our Federal regulations in the nonattainment areas under the MDAQMD. In so far as there is an impact from this action, it will be positive since the deficiencies in the District's program it is meant to rectify would likely result in increased emissions as compared to this FIP and our Federal NNSR regulations. The information presented in this preamble is organized as follows: <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Purpose of This Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Standards, Designations, and Classifications</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Findings and Disapprovals</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Scope of the EPA's Proposed FIP</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Proposed FIP Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Plan Overview</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Definitions</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Applicability</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Permit Approval Criteria</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Public Participation Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. Final Permit Issuance and Administrative and Judicial Review</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">G. Administration and Delegation of the Major NSR Plan for the MDAQMD</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">H. SIP Replacement of All or Any Part of This FIP</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">I. Severability</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Environmental Justice Considerations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Proposed Action and Request for Public Comment</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Purpose of This Action</HD> The EPA is proposing an NNSR FIP that will apply to construction of new major sources and major modifications at existing major sources that are located within areas that are designated as not in attainment with specific NAAQS. These are the San Bernardino County portion of the West Mojave Desert ozone nonattainment area and the San Bernardino County and Trona Planning Area PM <E T="52">10</E> nonattainment areas. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  See 40 CFR 81.305. The PM <E T="52">10</E> nonattainment areas together consist of all of the MDAQMD portion of San Bernardino County; they are the Trona Planning Area and the portion of San Bernardino County that exclude ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 96k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━