Air Plan Approval; Tennessee; Nitrogen Oxides SIP Call Alternative Monitoring and Domtar Paper Company, LLC

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R04-OAR-2023-0277; FRL-12065-01-R4]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Tennessee; Nitrogen Oxides SIP Call Alternative Monitoring and Domtar Paper Company, LLC</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 a State Implementation Plan (SIP) revision submitted by the State of Tennessee, through the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC), on June 26, 2023. The June 26, 2023, SIP revision would specify monitoring, recordkeeping, and reporting requirements for large industrial non-electricity generating units (EGUs) subject to the nitrogen oxides (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) SIP Call that are permissible as alternatives to the monitoring, recordkeeping, and reporting requirements. The SIP revision would also establish source-specific alternative monitoring, recordkeeping, and reporting requirements under the NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call for Domtar Paper Company, LLC (Domtar). </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-R04-OAR-2023-0277 at <E T="03">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> . 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. 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">www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Steven Scofield, Multi-Air Pollutant Coordination Section, Air Planning and Implementation Branch, Air and Radiation Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 4, 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, Georgia 30303-8960. The telephone number is (404) 562-9034. Mr. Scofield can also be reached via electronic mail at <E T="03">scofield.steve@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> Under Clean Air Act (CAA or Act) section 110(a)(2)(D)(i)(I), also called the good neighbor provision, States are required to address the interstate transport of air pollution. Specifically, the good neighbor provision requires that each State's implementation plan contain adequate provisions to prohibit air pollutant emissions from within the State that will significantly contribute to nonattainment of the national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS), or that will interfere with maintenance of the NAAQS, in any other State. On October 27, 1998 (63 FR 57356), EPA finalized the “Finding of Significant Contribution and Rulemaking for Certain States in the Ozone Transport Assessment Group Region for Purposes of Reducing Regional Transport of Ozone” (NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call). The NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call required Eastern States, including Tennessee, to submit SIPs limiting emissions of ozone season NO <E T="52">X</E> by implementing statewide emissions budgets. The NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call addressed the good neighbor provision for the 1979 ozone NAAQS and was designed to mitigate the impact of transported NO <E T="52">X</E> emissions, one of the precursors of ozone. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> EPA developed the NO <E T="52">X</E> Budget Trading Program, an allowance trading program that States could adopt to meet their obligations under the NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call. This trading program allowed the following sources to participate in a regional cap and trade program: generally, electricity generating units (EGUs) with capacity greater than 25 megawatts (MW); and large industrial non-EGUs, such as boilers and combustion turbines, with a rated heat input greater than 250 million British thermal units per hour (MMBtu/hr). The NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call also identified available cost-effective emissions reductions from cement kilns and stationary internal combustion engines in establishing total, statewide emissions budgets, although EPA suggested that States regulate these sources through mechanisms other than the trading program. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  As originally promulgated, the NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call also addressed good neighbor obligations under the 1997 8-hour ozone NAAQS, but EPA subsequently stayed and later rescinded the rule's provisions with respect to that standard. <E T="03">See</E> 65 FR 56245 (September 18, 2000); 84 FR 8422 (March 8, 2019). </FTNT> To comply with the NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call requirements, in 2000 and 2001, TDEC submitted a revision to add new rule sections to the SIP-approved version of Chapter 1200-3-27, <E T="03">Nitrogen Oxides,</E> of the Tennessee Rules. EPA approved the revision as compliant with Phase I of the NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call in 2004. <E T="03">See</E> 69 FR 3015 (January 22, 2004). The approved revision required EGUs and large non-EGUs in the State to participate in the NO <E T="52">X</E> Budget Trading Program beginning in 2004. In 2005, Tennessee submitted, and EPA approved, a SIP revision to address additional emissions reductions required for the NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call under Phase II. <E T="03">See</E> 70 FR 76408 (December 27, 2005). In 2005, EPA published the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), which required several Eastern States, including Tennessee, to submit SIPs that prohibited emissions consistent with revised ozone season NO <E T="52">X</E> budgets (as well as annual budgets for NO <E T="52">X</E> and sulfur dioxide). <E T="03">See</E> 70 FR 25162 (May 12, 2005); <E T="03">see also</E> 71 FR 25328 (April 28, 2006). CAIR addressed the good neighbor provision for the 1997 ozone NAAQS and 1997 fine particulate matter (PM <E T="52">2.5</E> ) NAAQS and was designed to mitigate the impact of transported NO <E T="52">X</E> emissions with respect to ozone and PM <E T="52">2.5.</E> CAIR established several trading programs that States could join through SIPs or EPA would implement through Federal implementation plans (FIPs) for EGUs greater than 25 MW in each affected State; States also retained the option to submit SIPs that achieved the required emission reductions from other types of sources. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> When the CAIR trading program for ozone season NO <E T="52">X</E> was implemented beginning in 2009, EPA discontinued administration of the NO <E T="52">X</E> Budget Trading Program; however, the requirements of the NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call continued to apply. For large non-EGUs that would have been covered under the NO <E T="52">X</E> Budget Trading Program, States were allowed, but not obligated, to achieve the required emissions reductions from these types of units by including the units in the CAIR trading program for ozone season NO <E T="52">X</E> . <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  CAIR had separate trading programs for annual sulfur dioxide (SO <E T="52">2</E> ) emissions, seasonal NO <E T="52">X</E> emissions, and annual NO <E T="52">X</E> emissions. </FTNT> On November 25, 2009 (74 FR 61535), EPA approved revisions to Tennessee's SIP that used the CAIR trading program for ozone season NO <E T="52">X</E> to address the State's obligations under the NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call related to non-EGUs. Consistent with CAIR's requirements, EPA approved a SIP revision in which Tennessee regulations: (1) Terminated its NO <E T="52">X</E> Budget Trading Program requirements, and (2) adopted State rule provisions modifying certain provisions of the CAIR FIP applicable to Tennessee to include the State's non-EGUs that would have been covered by the NO <E T="52">X</E> Budget Trading Program in the Federal CAIR trading program for ozone season NO <E T="52">X</E> instead. <E T="03">See</E> 74 FR 61535. In this manner, participation of EGUs in the CAIR ozone season NO <E T="52">X</E> trading program pursuant to a FIP addressed the State's obligation under the NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call for those units, and Tennessee also chose to meet the State's obligations as to non-EGUs subject to the NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call by requiring those units to participate in the same CAIR trading program pursuant to the SIP. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (D.C. Circuit) initially vacated CAIR in 2008, but ultimately remanded the rule to EPA without vacatur to preserve the environmental benefits provided by CAIR. <E T="03">See North Carolina</E> v. <E T="03">EPA,</E> 531 F.3d 896, <E T="03">modified on rehearing,</E> 550 F.3d 1176 (D.C. Cir. 2008). The ruling allowed CAIR to remain in effect temporarily until a replacement rule consistent with the court's opinion was developed. While EPA worked on developing a replacement rule, the CAIR program continued to be implemented, with the NO <E T="52">X</E> annual and ozone season trading programs beginning in 2009 and the SO <E T="52">2</E> annual trading program beginning in 2010. Followi ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 42k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━