Outer Continental Shelf Air Regulations Update To Include New Jersey State Requirements

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 55</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R02-OAR-2024-0277; FRL 12035-01-R2]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Outer Continental Shelf Air Regulations Update To Include New Jersey State Requirements</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to update a portion of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Air Regulations. Requirements applying to OCS sources located within 25 miles of states' seaward boundaries must be updated periodically to remain consistent with the requirements of the corresponding onshore area (COA), as mandated by the Clean Air Act (CAA). The portion of the OCS air regulations that is being updated pertains to the requirements for OCS sources for which the State of New Jersey is the COA. The intended effect of approving the OCS requirements for the State of New Jersey is to regulate emissions from OCS sources in accordance with the requirements onshore. The requirements discussed below are proposed to be incorporated by reference into the Code of Federal Regulations and listed in the appendix to the OCS air regulations. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before August 15, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID Number EPA-R02-OAR-2024-0277 at <E T="03">https://www.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, 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://www2.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Viorica Petriman, Air Programs Branch, Permitting Section, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 2, 290 Broadway, New York, New York 10007, (212) 637-4021, <E T="03">petriman.viorica@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background and Purpose</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. The EPA's Evaluation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. The EPA's Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background and Purpose</HD> On September 4, 1992, EPA promulgated 40 CFR part 55 (“Part 55”), <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> which established requirements to control air pollution from Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) sources in order to attain and maintain Federal and State ambient air quality standards (AAQS) and to comply with the provisions of part C of title I of the Clean Air Act (CAA). The 40 CFR part 55 regulations apply to all OCS sources offshore of the states except those located in the Gulf of Mexico west of 87.5 degrees longitude. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  The reader may refer to the Proposed Rulemaking, December 5, 1991 (56 FR 63774), and the preamble to the final rule promulgated September 4, 1992 (57 FR 40792) for further background and information on the OCS regulations. </FTNT> Section 328(a) of the CAA requires that for such OCS sources located within 25 miles of a State's seaward boundary, the requirements shall be the same as would be applicable if the sources were located in the corresponding onshore area (COA). Because the OCS requirements are based on onshore requirements, and onshore requirements may change, CAA section 328(a)(1) requires that the EPA update the OCS requirements as necessary to maintain consistency with onshore requirements. To comply with this statutory mandate, the EPA must incorporate by reference into part 55 all relevant state rules in effect for onshore sources, so they can be applied to OCS sources located offshore. This limits EPA's flexibility in deciding which requirements will be incorporated into 40 CFR part 55 and prevents EPA from making substantive changes to the requirements it incorporates. As a result, EPA may be incorporating rules into 40 CFR part 55 that do not conform to all of EPA's state implementation plan (SIP) guidance or certain requirements of the CAA. Inclusion in the OCS rule does not imply that a rule meets the requirements of the CAA for SIP approval, nor does it imply that the rule will be approved by EPA for inclusion in the SIP. 40 CFR 55.12 specifies certain times at which part 55's incorporation by reference of a state's rules must be updated. One time such a “consistency update” must occur is when any OCS source applicant submits a Notice of Intent (NOI) under 40 CFR 55.4 for a new or a modified OCS source. 40 CFR 55.4(a) requires that any OCS source applicant must submit to EPA an NOI before performing any physical change or change in method of operation that results in an increase in emissions if the OCS source is located within 25 miles of a state's seaward boundaries. EPA must conduct any necessary consistency update when it receives an NOI, and prior to receiving any application for a preconstruction permit from the OCS source applicant. 40 CFR 55.6(b)(2) and 55.12(f). This proposed action is being taken in response to the submittal of an NOI to EPA, with copies provided to certain state agencies, on May 10, 2024, by Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind Project 3, LLC, which proposes to submit an OCS permit application for the construction of a new OCS source (a wind energy project) about 7.3 nautical miles offshore New Jersey. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. The EPA's Evaluation</HD> In updating 40 CFR part 55, the EPA reviewed the New Jersey State Department of Environmental Protection (“NJDEP”) air rules currently in effect, to ensure that they are rationally related to the attainment or maintenance of Federal and State AAQS or part C of title I of the CAA, that they are not designed expressly to prevent exploration and development of the OCS, and that they are applicable to OCS sources. <E T="03">See</E> 40 CFR 55.1. The EPA has also evaluated the rules to ensure they are not arbitrary and capricious. <E T="03">See</E> 40 CFR 55.12(e). The EPA has excluded New Jersey's administrative or procedural rules, <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> and requirements that regulate toxics which are not related to the attainment and maintenance of Federal and State AAQS. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  Each COA which has been delegated the authority to implement and enforce part 55 will use its administrative and procedural rules as onshore. However, in those instances where EPA has not delegated authority to implement and enforce part 55, as is the case in New Jersey, EPA will use its own administrative and procedural requirements to implement the substantive requirements. <E T="03">See</E> 40 CFR 55.14(c)(4). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. The EPA's Proposed Action</HD> In today's action, the EPA is proposing to amend 40 CFR 55.14 to incorporate by reference an updated compilation of the State of New Jersey Requirements Applicable to OCS Sources and to revise the “New Jersey” entry in appendix A to 40 CFR part 55 to include air pollution control rules found in New Jersey Administrative Code, title 7, Chapters 27 and 27B, and currently state effective. The specific provisions are identified in the proposed regulatory language at the end of this proposed rule. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Incorporation by Reference</HD> In this proposed rule, the EPA is proposing to include in a final EPA rule regulatory text that includes incorporation by reference. In accordance with the requirements of 1 CFR 51.5, the EPA is proposing to incorporate by reference an updated compilation of NJDEP air rules applicable to OCS sources, “State of New Jersey Requirements Applicable to OCS Sources,” dated June 6, 2024, that includes the updated state provisions described in sections II. and III. of this preamble. These documents are available in the docket of this rulemaking through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</HD> Under the Clean Air Act, the Administrator is required to establish requirements to control air pollution from OCS sources located within 25 miles of states' seaward boundaries that are the same as onshore air control requirements. To comply with this statutory mandate, the EPA must incorporate applicable onshore rules into part 55 as they exist onshore. 42 U.S.C. 7627(a)(1); 40 CFR 55.12. Thus, in promulgating OCS consistency updates, the EPA's role is to maintain consistency between OCS regulations and the regulations of onshore areas, provided that they meet the criteria of the Clean Air Act. Accordingly, this action simply updates the existing OCS requirements to make them consistent with requirements onshore, without the exercise of any policy discretion by the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD2">a. Executive Order 12866, Regulatory Planning and Review</HD> This action is not a “significant regulatory action” under the terms of Executive Orders (E.O.) 12866 (58 FR 51735, October 4, 1993) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 36k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━