Air Plan Approval; Kansas; Regional Haze

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R07-OAR-2023-0582; FRL-11576-02-R7]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Kansas; Regional Haze</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final action. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking final action to disapprove a revision to Kansas's State Implementation Plan (SIP) submitted on July 28, 2021, intended to satisfy applicable requirements under the Clean Air Act (CAA) and EPA's Regional Haze Rule (RHR) for the program's second planning period. As required by the CAA, the RHR calls for State and Federal agencies to work together to improve visibility, including by reducing or eliminating regional haze, in 156 national parks and wilderness areas. The rule requires the States, in coordination with the EPA, the National Park Service (NPS), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the U.S. Forest Service (FS), and other interested parties, to develop and implement air quality protection plans in which States revise their long-term strategies (LTS) for making reasonable progress towards the national goal of preventing any future, and remedying any existing, anthropogenic impairment of visibility in these mandatory Class I Federal Areas. Disapproval does not trigger imposition of mandatory sanctions. The effective date of this action does trigger an obligation for the EPA to issue a Federal Implementation Plan (FIP) within two years. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final action is effective on September 6, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-R07-OAR-2023-0582. All documents in the docket are listed on the <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> website. Although listed in the index, some information may not be publicly available, <E T="03">i.e.,</E> 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">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section for additional information. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Jed D. Wolkins Environmental Protection Agency, Region 7 Office, Air Quality Planning Branch, 11201 Renner Boulevard, Lenexa, Kansas 66219; telephone number: (913) 551-7588; email address: <E T="03">wolkins.jed@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. What is being addressed in this document?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. The EPA's Response to Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Conservation Groups Comments and Responses</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. KDHE Comments and Responses</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Kansas Utilities' Comments and Responses</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. What action is the EPA taking?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. What is being addressed in this document?</HD> The EPA is disapproving Kansas's regional haze plan for the second planning period. As required by section 169A of the CAA, the Federal RHR calls for State and Federal agencies to work together to improve visibility in 156 national parks and wilderness areas. The rule requires the States, in coordination with the EPA, the NPS, FWS, the FS, and other interested parties, to develop and implement air quality protection plans to reduce the pollution that causes visibility impairment in mandatory Class I Federal areas. Visibility impairing pollutants include fine and coarse particulate matter (PM) ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> sulfates, nitrates, organic carbon, elemental carbon, and soil dust) and their precursors ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> sulfur dioxide (SO <E T="52">2</E> ), oxides of nitrogen (NO <E T="52">X</E> ), and, in some cases, volatile organic compounds (VOC) and ammonia (NH <E T="52">3</E> )). As discussed in further detail in our Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) and in this document, the EPA finds that Kansas submitted a regional haze SIP revision that does not meet the regional haze requirements for the second planning period. The State's submission and the NPRM can be found in the docket for this action. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> On July 28, 2021, Kansas submitted a revision to its SIP to address regional haze for the second implementation period. Kansas made this submission in order to satisfy the requirements of the CAA's regional haze program pursuant to CAA sections 169A and 169B and 40 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 51.308. The State's submission met the public notice requirements in accordance with 40 CFR 51.102. The submission also satisfied the completeness criteria of 40 CFR part 51, appendix V. The State provided public notice on its SIP revision from May 27, 2021, to June 28, 2021, and received comments from five parties, including the EPA. Kansas made some changes to its SIP revision based on some of the public comments. However, Kansas disagreed with most of the comments pointing out flaws in its SIP revision, and the State made no changes based on those comments. On January 2, 2024 (89 FR 178), the EPA published the NPRM proposing a disapproval of Kansas's July 28, 2021 SIP submission for not satisfying the regional haze requirements for the second planning period contained in the CAA and 40 CFR 51.308. The EPA is now determining that the Kansas SIP revision for the second RHR planning period does not meet the applicable statutory and regulatory requirements in CAA section 169A and 40 CFR 51.308 and is thus disapproving Kansas's submission. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. The EPA's Response to Comments</HD> The purpose of the proposed rulemaking was to take public comment on the EPA's intent to disapprove Kansas's July 28, 2021 SIP submission because it does not satisfy regional haze requirements for the second planning period. In the NPRM, the EPA proposed to disapprove the submission for, <E T="03">inter alia,</E> failing to consider the four statutorily required factors in CAA section 169A for developing the State's long-term strategy (LTS). <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The public comment period on the EPA's proposed rule opened January 2, 2024, the date of its publication in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , and closed on February 1, 2024. During this period, the EPA received three comment letters: (1) collective comments from the National Parks Conservation Association, Sierra Club, and the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks (collectively referred to as “the Conservation Groups” throughout this document); (2) comments from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE); and (3) collective comments from the Kansas City Board of Public Utilities—Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas (BPU), Evergy, Inc (Evergy), and Sunflower Electric Power Corporation (Sunflower) (collectively referred to as “the Kansas Utilities” throughout this document). All the public comments are available in the docket for this final action via Docket ID Number EPA-R07-OAR-2023-0582 on the <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> website. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  For more information on the RHR requirements, specifically the LTS requirements, see our NPRM in the docket for this action. </FTNT> In the rest of this section, the EPA has summarized and provided responses to the adverse comments received on the NPRM. No response is necessary for the comments received in support of the NPRM or the comments that were not directly related to the NPRM. After carefully considering the comments received, the EPA is finalizing its disapproval of the Kansas SIP submission for the RHR second planning period. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Conservation Groups Comments and Responses</HD> <E T="03">Conservation Groups Comment 1:</E> The Conservation Groups stated that executive orders, action plans, and commitments direct the Agency to consider environmental justice in Agency actions. The comment noted that the same pollutants that affect scenic views at national parks and wilderness areas also cause significant public health impacts. The Conservation Groups commented that the EPA ignores the environmental justice impacts of our action on Kansas's SIP revision. The commenters acknowledged that requiring Kansas to correct the deficiencies in the SIP revision may result in the State identifying new emission control measures to reduce pollution that negatively impacts low-income communities and communities of color. The commenters then provided information from the EPA's EJScreen tool to state that there are overburdened communities exposed to pollution near some large stationary sources, including Kansas City-BPU's Nearman Creek Power Station, the Jeffrey Energy Center, and the Lawrence Energy Center. The Conservation Groups stated that the EPA must analyze the potential disparate impacts or environmental justice benefits of its action on Kansas's SIP revision. <E T="03">Response to Conservation Groups Comment 1:</E> The EPA disagrees with this comment but acknowledges the EJScreen information provided by the commenters. The CAA does not explicitly address considerations of environmental justice and neither do the regulatory requirements of the second planning period in 40 CFR 51.308(f), (g)(1) through (5), and (i). As explained in “EPA Legal Tools to Advance Environmental Justice,”  <SU>2</SU> ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 79k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━