Air Plan Approval; Virginia; Revision Listing and Implementing the 2010 Primary Sulfur Dioxide National Ambient Air Quality Standard for the Giles County Nonattainment Area

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R03-OAR-2024-0027; FRL-11418-02-R3]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Virginia; Revision Listing and Implementing the 2010 Primary Sulfur Dioxide National Ambient Air Quality Standard for the Giles County Nonattainment Area</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is approving a state implementation plan (SIP) revision submitted by the Commonwealth of Virginia. The revision consists of an amendment to the list of Virginia nonattainment areas to include a newly designated sulfur dioxide (SO <E T="52">2</E> ) nonattainment area. EPA is approving this revision to the Virginia SIP in accordance with the requirements of the Clean Air Act (CAA). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective on August 22, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID Number EPA-R03-OAR-2024-0027. All documents in the docket are listed on the <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> website. Although listed in the index, 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 in hard copy form. Publicly available docket materials are available through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov, o</E> r please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">For Further Information Contact</E> section for additional availability information. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Serena Nichols, Planning & Implementation Branch (3AD30), Air & Radiation Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region III, 1600 John F Kennedy Boulevard, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103. The telephone number is (215) 814-2053. Ms. Nichols can also be reached via electronic mail at <E T="03">Nichols.Serena@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> On February 22, 2024, EPA published a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) for the Commonwealth of Virginia (89 FR 13302, February 22, 2024). In the NPRM, EPA proposed approval of Virginia's amendment to an existing regulation in the SIP by adding a sulfur dioxide section for the newly designated SO <E T="52">2</E> nonattainment area in a portion of Giles County. This revision is needed for the Commonwealth to implement the 2010 primary SO <E T="52">2</E> national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS). Virginia submitted the formal SIP revision on August 9, 2023. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Summary of SIP Revision and EPA Analysis</HD> The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality's (VADEQ's) August 9, 2023 SIP submittal proposed to revise Virginia's SIP to include amendments to an existing regulation in the SIP which add a sulfur dioxide section for the newly designated SO <E T="52">2</E> nonattainment area in a portion of Giles County. The amendments revise a provision in the Virginia Administrative Code (VAC), specifically 9VAC5-20-204 “Nonattainment areas” Subsection A, with a state effective date of February 15, 2023, which geographically defines the nonattainment areas by locality for the criteria pollutants indicated. The amendments are necessary for implementing the 2010 primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS. The added subdivision at 9VAC5-20-204 A 5, refers to the area as “Giles County Sulfur Dioxide Nonattainment Area (part),” and defines it as that part of Giles County bounded by the lines connecting the coordinate points as designated in 40 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 81.347. There are also two minor changes—(1) a non-substantive wording change to the introductory language of 9VAC5-20-204 A which replaced the word “below” with “in this subsection” so that the phrase “Nonattainment areas are geographically defined below” now reads as “Nonattainment areas are geographically defined in this subsection” and (2) shifting “All other pollutants” from 9VAC5-20-204 A 5 to 9VAC5-20-204 A 6. Other specific requirements of Virginia's August 9, 2023 submittal and the rationale for EPA's proposed action are explained in the NPRM, and will not be restated here. No public comments were received on the NPRM. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Final Action</HD> EPA is approving the Virginia SIP revision adding the “Giles County Sulfur Dioxide Nonattainment Area (part)” to Virginia's list of nonattainment areas, which the VADEQ submitted to EPA on August 9, 2023. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. General Information Pertaining to SIP Submittals From the Commonwealth of Virginia</HD> In 1995, Virginia adopted legislation that provides, subject to certain conditions, for an environmental assessment (audit) “privilege” for voluntary compliance evaluations performed by a regulated entity. The legislation further addresses the relative burden of proof for parties either asserting the privilege or seeking disclosure of documents for which the privilege is claimed. Virginia's legislation also provides, subject to certain conditions, for a penalty waiver for violations of environmental laws when a regulated entity discovers such violations pursuant to a voluntary compliance evaluation and voluntarily discloses such violations to the Commonwealth and takes prompt and appropriate measures to remedy the violations. Virginia's Voluntary Environmental Assessment Privilege Law, Va. Code Sec. 10.1-1198, provides a privilege that protects from disclosure documents and information about the content of those documents that are the product of a voluntary environmental assessment. The Privilege Law does not extend to documents or information that: (1) are generated or developed before the commencement of a voluntary environmental assessment; (2) are prepared independently of the assessment process; (3) demonstrate a clear, imminent and substantial danger to the public health or environment; or (4) are required by law. On January 12, 1998, the Commonwealth of Virginia Office of the Attorney General provided a legal opinion that states that the Privilege Law, Va. Code Sec. 10.1-1198, precludes granting a privilege to documents and information “required by law,” including documents and information “required by Federal law to maintain program delegation, authorization or approval,” since Virginia must “enforce Federally authorized environmental programs in a manner that is no less stringent than their Federal counterparts. . . .” The opinion concludes that “[r]egarding § 10.1-1198, therefore, documents or other information needed for civil or criminal enforcement under one of these programs could not be privileged because such documents and information are essential to pursuing enforcement in a manner required by Federal law to maintain program delegation, authorization or approval.” Virginia's Immunity Law, Va. Code Sec. 10.1-1199, provides that “[t]o the extent consistent with requirements imposed by Federal law,” any person making a voluntary disclosure of information to a state agency regarding a violation of an environmental statute, regulation, permit, or administrative order is granted immunity from administrative or civil penalty. The Attorney General's January 12, 1998 opinion states that the quoted language renders this statute inapplicable to enforcement of any Federally authorized programs, since “no immunity could be afforded from administrative, civil, or criminal penalties because granting such immunity would not be consistent with Federal law, which is one of the criteria for immunity.” Therefore, EPA has determined that Virginia's Privilege and Immunity statutes will not preclude the Commonwealth from enforcing its program consistent with the Federal requirements. In any event, because EPA has also determined that a state audit privilege and immunity law can affect only state enforcement and cannot have any impact on Federal enforcement authorities, EPA may at any time invoke its authority under the CAA, including, for example, sections 113, 167, 205, 211 or 213, to enforce the requirements or prohibitions of the state plan, independently of any state enforcement effort. In addition, citizen enforcement under section 304 of the CAA is likewise unaffected by this, or any, state audit privilege or immunity law. <HD SOURCE="HD1">V. Incorporation by Reference</HD> In this document, EPA is finalizing regulatory text that includes incorporation by reference. In accordance with requirements of 1 CFR 51.5, EPA is finalizing the incorporation by reference of the VADEQ regulation amending 9VAC5-20-204 to add a new sulfur dioxide nonattainment area and two other minor changes as discussed in section II of this preamble, “Summary of SIP Revision and EPA Analysis.” The EPA has made, and will continue to make, these materials generally available through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> and at the EPA Region III Office (please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">For Further Information Contact</E> section of this preamble for more information). Therefore, these materials have been approved by EPA for inclusion in the SIP, have been incorporated by reference by EPA into that plan, are fully federally enforceable under sections 110 and 113 of the CAA as of the effective date of the final rulemaking of EPA's approval, and will be incorporated by reference in the next update to the SIP compilation. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  62 FR 27968 (May 22, 1997). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">VI. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. General Requirements</HD> Under ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━