Air Plan Approval; California; Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R09-OAR-2024-0209; FRL-11948-01-R9]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; California; Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District</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 revisions to the Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District (MDAQMD or “District”) portion of the California State Implementation Plan (SIP). The revisions concern recodification of prohibitory and administrative rules used by the District to regulate air pollutants under the Clean Air Act (CAA or the Act). The EPA is proposing to update the California SIP to reflect the recodified rules. The EPA is taking comments on this proposal and plans to follow with a final action. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before August 15, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R09-OAR-2024-0209 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 disabilities 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> La Kenya Evans-Hopper, EPA Region IX, 75 Hawthorne St., San Francisco, CA 94105. By phone: (415) 972-3245 or by email at <E T="03">evanshopper.lakenya@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 State's Submittal</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. What is the background for this proposed action?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. What rules did the State submit to rescind or replace?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Are there other versions of the rules?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. What is the purpose of the submitted rule revisions?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. The EPA's Evaluation and Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. How is the EPA evaluating the rules?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Do the rules meet the evaluation criteria?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Public Comment and Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. The State's Submittal</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. What is the background for this proposed action?</HD> Under the CAA, the EPA has established National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for certain pervasive air pollutants, including, among others, ozone and particulate matter (PM). Under CAA section 110(a), states are required to adopt and submit SIPs to implement, maintain, and enforce the NAAQS. Under CAA section 107(d), the EPA has designated all areas of the country as attainment, nonattainment, or unclassifiable for the NAAQS. Areas designated as nonattainment must adopt and submit SIP revisions that, among other things, provide for attainment of the NAAQS by the applicable attainment date. The MDAQMD regulates sources of air pollution within California's “Mojave Desert Air Basin,” which lies within the previously-designated “Southeast Desert Air Basin.”  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The MDAQMD's jurisdiction includes the desert portion of San Bernardino County and the far eastern portion of Riverside County. The EPA has designated two areas in the San Bernardino County portion of the District as nonattainment areas for PM equal to or less than 10 microns in diameter (PM <E T="52">10</E> ): (1) the Trona planning area, located in the northwestern portion of the county, and (2) the larger San Bernardino nonattainment area that covers the remaining portion of San Bernardino County regulated by the MDAQMD, excluding the Trona planning area. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> A portion of San Bernardino County within the District is also in the West Mojave Desert ozone nonattainment area. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> The Riverside County portion of the District is designated as unclassifiable/attainment for all the NAAQS. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  The two air basins are described in the California Air Resources Board's (CARB's) <E T="03">Initial Statement of Reasons for Proposed Rulemaking, Proposed Amendments to Divide the Southeast Desert Air Basin and to Modify the Boundary of the South Coast Air Basin and Proposed Amendments to the Related Agricultural Burning Regulations,</E> April 1996. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  40 CFR 81.305—“California—PM-10” table of area designations. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  40 CFR 81.305. The West Mojave Desert ozone nonattainment area also includes the Antelope Valley portion of Los Angeles County. </FTNT> In 1972, when the original California SIP was submitted and approved by the EPA, the San Bernardino County Air Pollution Control District (SBCAPCD) had jurisdiction over stationary sources within all of San Bernardino County. On July 16, 1975, the Los Angeles County Air Pollution Control District (LACAPCD), Orange County Air Pollution Control District (OCAPCD), Riverside County Air Pollution Control District (RCAPCD), and SBCAPCD were unified into the Southern California Air Pollution Control District (SoCalAPCD). On February 1, 1977, California split the SoCalAPCD into four agencies. The western coastal area became regulated by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) and the remaining eastern desert portions of Los Angeles, San Bernardino, and Riverside Counties were separated back into air pollution control districts for each county ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> LACAPCD, SBCAPCD, and RCAPCD). The original jurisdiction of the SCAQMD covered an area referred to as the “South Coast Air Basin” that included all of Orange County and the western non-desert portions of Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties. The jurisdiction of the LACAPCD, SBCAPCD, and RCAPCD extended over a portion of an air basin referred to as the “Southeast Desert Air Basin.”  <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  43 FR 25684 (June 14, 1978). </FTNT> The Southeast Desert Air Basin portion of Riverside County was added to the SCAQMD on December 1, 1977. Effective December 1, 1977, under state law, all SCAQMD Rules and Regulations became applicable within the Southeast Desert portion of Riverside County. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> In 1982, the applicability of SCAQMD rules that had been approved as part of the California SIP was extended to the Southeast Desert portion of Riverside County. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> On July 1, 1993, the SBCAPCD was re-formed as the MDAQMD. On July 1, 1994, the Palo Verde Valley area in far eastern Riverside County (and that is a part of the Southeast Desert portion of Riverside County) left the SCAQMD and joined the MDAQMD. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  Letter dated August 11, 1980, from Gary Rubenstein, Deputy Executive Officer, CARB to Paul DeFalco, Jr., EPA Regional Administrator—approved at 47 FR 25013 (June 9, 1982). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  47 FR 25013 (June 9, 1982). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  The Palo Verde Valley portion of the MDAQMD covers an area approximately 30 miles wide along the eastern boundary of the county adjoining the State of Arizona. </FTNT> An outgrowth of the complicated regulatory history of the MDAQMD is that the applicable SIP for the area the District regulates consists of a mixture of rules from current and former agencies. Rules adopted by MDAQMD apply District-wide; SBCAPCD rules apply only in the San Bernardino County portion of the District; and rules adopted by the RCAPCD, SoCalAPCD or the SCAQMD only apply in the Riverside County portion of the District. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. What rules did the State submit to rescind or replace?</HD> This proposal covers portions of SIP revisions submitted by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to the EPA on September 23, 2022, <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> November 30, 2022, and October 13, 2023. <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> Table 1 lists the MDAQMD rules that were submitted for inclusion in the SIP with the date each rule was adopted and then submitted by CARB. <SU>12</SU> <FTREF/> When these rules were submitted, CARB also requested rescission of the analogous rules in the SIP that were adopted by SCAQMD  <SU>13</SU> <FTREF/> and apply within the Riverside County portion of the District. Table 2 lists the rules to be rescinded by this ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 31k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━