Findings of Failure To Submit State Implementation Plan Revisions for Nonattainment Areas for the 2010 1-Hour Primary Sulfur Dioxide National Ambient Air Quality Standard

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OAR-2024-0168; FRL-11815-01-OAR]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Findings of Failure To Submit State Implementation Plan Revisions for Nonattainment Areas for the 2010 1-Hour Primary Sulfur Dioxide National Ambient Air Quality Standard</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 find that four States failed to submit State Implementation Plan (SIP) revisions required by the Clean Air Act (CAA) in a timely manner for certain nonattainment areas for the 2010 1-hour sulfur dioxide (SO <E T="52">2</E> ) National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS). The States that failed to submit the required SIP revisions are Arizona, Louisiana, New York, and Virginia. This action triggers certain CAA deadlines for the imposition of sanctions if a State does not submit a complete SIP addressing the outstanding requirements and for the EPA to promulgate a Federal Implementation Plan (FIP) if the EPA does not approve the State's SIP revision addressing the outstanding requirements. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final action is effective on September 16, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID Number EPA-HQ-OAR-2024-0168. 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 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 electronically through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Angelina Brashear, Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, Air Quality Policy Division (C539-01), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC; telephone number: (919) 541-4746; email address: <E T="03">brashear.angelina@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. General Information</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2"> A. How is this <E T="7462">Federal Register</E> document organized? </HD> The information presented in this preamble is organized as follows: <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. General Information</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2"> A. How is this <E T="04">Federal Register</E> document organized? </FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Notice and Comment Under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Where can I get a copy of this document and other related information?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Where do I go if I have specific State questions?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Consequences of Findings of Failure To Submit</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Findings of Failure To Submit for States That Failed To Make a Nonattainment Area SIP Submittal</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Executive Order 12866: Regulatory Planning and Review, Executive Order 13563: Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review, and Executive Order 14094: Modernizing Regulatory Review</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (UMRA)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Executive Order 13132: Federalism</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. Executive Order 13175: Consultation and Coordination With Indian Tribal Governments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">G. Executive Order 13045: Protection of Children From Environmental Health and Safety Risks</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">H. Executive Order 13211: Actions That Significantly Affect Energy Supply, Distribution or Use</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">I. National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act (NTTAA)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">J. Executive Order 12898: Federal Actions To Address Environmental Justice in Minority and Low Income Populations and Executive Order 14096: Revitalizing Our Nation's Commitment to Environmental Justice for All</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">K. Congressional Review Act (CRA)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">L. Judicial Review</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Notice and Comment Under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA)</HD> Section 553 of the APA, 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(4)(B), provides that, when an agency for good cause finds that notice and public procedures are impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest, the agency may issue a rule without providing notice and an opportunity for public comment. The EPA has determined that there is good cause for making this final agency action without prior proposal and opportunity for comment because no significant EPA judgment is involved in making findings of failure to submit SIPs, or elements of SIPs, required by the CAA, where States have made no submissions to meet the requirement. Thus, notice and public procedures are unnecessary to take this action. The EPA finds that this constitutes good cause under 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(4)(B). <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Where can I get a copy of this document and other related information?</HD> In addition to being available in the docket, an electronic copy of this <E T="04">Federal Register</E> document will be posted at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/so2-pollution/2010-sulfur-dioxide-national-ambient-air-quality-standards-implementation-actions.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD2">D. Where do I go if I have specific State questions?</HD> For questions related to specific States mentioned in this document, please contact the appropriate EPA Regional office: <GPOTABLE COLS="2" OPTS="L2,nj,tp0,i1" CDEF="s200,xs60"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Regional offices</CHED> <CHED H="1">States</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01"> <E T="03">EPA Region 2:</E> Mr. Kirk Wieber, Manager, Air Program Branch, EPA Region 2, 290 Broadway, New York, New York 10007. <E T="03">wieber.kirk@epa.gov</E> </ENT> <ENT>New York.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01"> <E T="03">EPA Region 3:</E> Mr. David Talley, Acting Chief, Planning and Implementation Branch, EPA Region 3, 1600 JFK Boulevard, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103. <E T="03">talley.david@epa.gov</E> </ENT> <ENT>Virginia.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01"> <E T="03">EPA Region 6:</E> Mr. Guy Donaldson, Manager, State Planning and Implementation Branch, EPA Region 6, 1201 Elm Street, Suite 500, Dallas, Texas 75270. <E T="03">donaldson.guy@epa.gov</E> </ENT> <ENT>Louisiana.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01"> <E T="03">EPA Region 9:</E> Ms. Idalia Perez, Manager, Air Planning Section, EPA Region 9, 75 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, California 94105. <E T="03">perez.idalia@epa.gov</E> </ENT> <ENT>Arizona.</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> In June 2010, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) promulgated a new 1-hour primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS of 75 parts per billion (ppb), which is met when the 3-year average of the annual 99th percentile of daily maximum 1-hour average concentrations does not exceed 75 ppb. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Following promulgation of a new or revised NAAQS, the EPA is required to designate all areas of the country as either “attainment,” “nonattainment,” or “unclassifiable” (CAA section 107(d)(1)). In multiple separate rules, <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> the EPA cumulatively designated 51 areas within 23 States and territories as nonattainment for the 2010 1-hour primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  On June 2, 2010, the EPA signed the final rule title, “Primary National Ambient Air Quality Standard for Sulfur Dioxide.” 75 FR 35520 (June 22, 2010), codified at 40 CFR part 50.17. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  A series of rules designated nonattainment areas of the country for the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS: Round 1 (78 FR 47191) on August 5, 2013; Round 2 (81 FR 45039) on July 12, 2016; Round 2 Supplement (81 FR 89870) on December 13, 2016; Round 3 (83 FR 1098) on January 9, 2018; Round 3 Supplement (83 FR 14597) on April 5, 2018; and Round 4 (86 FR 16055) on March 26, 2021. </FTNT> The CAA directs States containing an area designated nonattainment for the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> 1-hour primary NAAQS to develop and submit a nonattainment area (NAA) SIP to the EPA within 18 months of the effective date of an area's designation as nonattainment. The nonattainment (NAA) SIP (also referred to as an attainment plan) must meet the requirements of subparts l and 5 of part D of Title I of the CAA, and provide for attainment of the NAAQS by the applicable statutory attainment date. All components of the SO <E T="52">2</E> part D NAA SIP, including the emissions inventory, attainment demonstration, reasonably available control measures (RACM) including reasonably available control technology (RACT), enforceable emission limitations and control measures, reasonable further progress (RFP) plan, nonattainment new source review (NNSR), and contingency measures, are due under CAA section 191(a) to the EPA within 18 months of the effective date of designation of an area. Under CAA section 192(a), these NAA SIPs must provide for attainment of the NAAQS as expeditiously as practicable, but no later than 3 years from the effective date of the nonattainment designation. Responsible State air agencies were required to prepare and submit to the EPA a NAA SIP revision within 18 months of the effective date of the nonattainment designation to bring ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 26k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━