Announcement of the Delegation of Partial Administrative Authority for the Southern Ute Indian Reservation to the Southern Ute Indian Tribe for Implementation of the Clean Air Act Federal Minor New Source Review Program in Indian Country and the Indian Country Minor Source Oil and Gas Federal Implementation Plan

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 49</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R08-OAR-2024-0194; FRL-11993-01-R8]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Announcement of the Delegation of Partial Administrative Authority for the Southern Ute Indian Reservation to the Southern Ute Indian Tribe for Implementation of the Clean Air Act Federal Minor New Source Review Program in Indian Country and the Indian Country Minor Source Oil and Gas Federal Implementation Plan</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule; notice of delegation of authority; technical amendment. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking action to announce that on June 11, 2024, EPA Region 8 and the Southern Ute Indian Tribe (SUIT) entered into an Agreement for Delegation of Partial Administrative Authority to assist the EPA in administering the following two federal Clean Air Act (CAA) programs within the SUIT Reservation: the Federal Minor New Source Review Program in Indian country (EPA Indian country MNSR Program) and the Federal Implementation Plan for Managing Air Emissions from True Minor Sources in Indian Country in the Oil and Natural Gas Production and Oil and Natural Gas Processing Segments of the Oil and Natural Gas Sector (EPA Indian country Minor Source Oil and Gas FIP). Notice of this partial delegation is being added to the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). The EPA is taking this action pursuant to the CAA. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The delegation was effective on June 11, 2024. The amendments to the CFR made by this rulemaking are effective on September 9, 2024. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-R08-OAR-2024-0194. 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 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 availability information. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Kyle Olson, Air and Radiation Division, EPA, Region 8, Mailcode 8ARD-IO, 1595 Wynkoop Street, Denver, Colorado 80202-1129, telephone number: (303) 312-6002, email address: <E T="03">olson.kyle@epa.gov.</E> Additional information may also be obtained from the SUIT by contacting Danny Powers, Southern Ute Indian Tribe Air Quality Division Head, P.O. Box 737 MS#84, Ignacio, Colorado 81137. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document “we,” “us,” and “our” means the EPA. The purpose of this action is to announce, pursuant to 40 CFR 49.161 and 40 CFR 49.103, that on June 11, 2024, EPA Region 8 delegated partial administrative authority to the SUIT, limited to the area of the SUIT Reservation, to assist the EPA in administering the following two federal CAA programs: (1) the EPA Indian country MNSR Program, and (2) the EPA Indian country Minor Source Oil and Gas FIP. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Authority To Delegate</HD> Pursuant to 40 CFR 49.161, the EPA may partially delegate to a Tribe the authority to assist the EPA in administering the EPA Indian country MNSR Program. Pursuant to 40 CFR 49.103, the EPA may delegate to a Tribe the authority to assist the EPA in administering the EPA Indian country Minor Source Oil and Gas FIP. To obtain delegation, a Tribe must submit a request to the relevant EPA Regional Administrator that meets the requirements of 40 CFR 49.161(b)(1)(i) through (iv) and 40 CFR 49.103(b)(1) through (3). EPA Region 8 determined that the SUIT's request for delegation satisfied those requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Partial Delegation of Administrative Authority</HD> On June 11th, 2024, EPA entered into an “Agreement for Delegation of Partial Administrative Authority of Certain Federal Clean Air Act Indian Country Programs to the Southern Ute Indian Tribe by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.” The Delegation Agreement provides authority for the SUIT to assist EPA in administering the following rules that are part of the EPA Indian country MNSR Program and the EPA Indian country Minor Source Oil and Gas FIP, with the exception of enforcement of those rules. For the EPA Indian country MNSR Program: 40 CFR 49.151 (Program Overview, including serving as the reviewing authority, receiving, processing, and issuing or denying permits); 40 CFR 49.154 (Permit application requirements); 40 CFR 49.155 (Permit requirements); 40 CFR 49.156 (General permits and permits by rule); 40 CFR 49.157 (Public participation requirements); 49.158 (Synthetic minor source permits); 40 CFR 49.159 (Final permit issuance and administrative and judicial review); 49.160 (Registration program for minor sources in Indian country); 40 CFR 49.162 (Air quality permit by rule for new or modified true minor source auto body repair and miscellaneous surface coating operations in Indian country); 40 CFR 49.163 (Air quality permit by rule for new or modified true minor source petroleum dry cleaning facilities in Indian country); and 40 CFR 49.164 (Air quality permit by rule for new or modified true minor source gasoline dispensing facilities in Indian country). For the EPA Indian country Minor Source Oil and Gas FIP: 40 CFR 49.104 (Requirements regarding threatened or endangered species and historic properties) and 40 CFR 49.105 (Requirements, including conducting inspections for compliance with the requirements of this provision). Section 553 of the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(B), provides that, when an agency for good cause finds that notice and public procedure are impracticable, unnecessary or contrary to the public interest, the agency may issue a rule without providing notice and an opportunity for public comment. EPA has determined that there is good cause for making today's rule final without prior proposal and opportunity for comment because EPA is merely informing the public of partial delegation of administrative authority to the SUIT and making a technical amendment to the CFR by adding a note announcing the partial delegation, as directed by 40 CFR 49.161 and 40 CFR 49.103. Thus, notice and public procedure are unnecessary. EPA finds that this constitutes good cause under 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(B). Moreover, since this action does not create any new regulatory requirements, EPA finds that good cause exists to provide for an immediate effective date pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 553(d)(3). <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. How can I get copies of this document and other related information?</HD> <E T="03">Docket:</E> EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-R08-OAR-2024-0194. Publicly available docket materials are available either electronically through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or in hard copy at the EPA Docket Center, WJC West Building, Room 3334, 1301 Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, DC. The docket Center's hours of operations are 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Monday-Friday (except Federal Holidays). For further information on the EPA Docket Center services and the current status, see <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets.</E> <E T="03">Electronic access:</E> You may access this <E T="04">Federal Register</E> document electronically from <E T="03">https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/current.</E> The delegation agreement and other docket materials are available electronically in EDOCKET, EPA's electronic public docket and comment system, found at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</HD> Additional information about these statutes and Executive Orders can be found at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/laws-and-executive-orders.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Executive Order 12866: Regulatory Planning and Review and Executive Order 14094: Modernizing Regulatory Review</HD> This action is not a significant regulatory action as defined in Executive Order 12866, as amended by Executive Order 14094, and was therefore not subject to a requirement for Executive Order 12866 review. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA)</HD> This action does not impose an information collection burden under the PRA. The PRA applies to federally-mandated collection of information directed to 10 or more people, but the information collection required under the delegation agreement applies only to the SUIT. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA)</HD> I certify that this action will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities under the RFA. This action will not impose any requirements on small entities. This action merely makes a technical amendment to the CFR and gives notice of a partial delegation of administrative authority. This action does not alter regulatory requirements that apply to small entities. <HD SOURCE="HD2">D. Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA)</HD> This action does not contain any unfunded mandate as described in UMRA, 2 U.S.C. 1531-1538, and does not significantly or uniquely affect small governments. The costs involved in this action are imposed only by participation in a voluntary federal program. UMRA generally excludes from the definition of “federal intergovernmental mandate” duties that arise from participation in a voluntary federal program. <HD SOURCE="H ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━