Air Quality Plans; Arizona; Maricopa County Air Quality Department; Source-Specific SIP Revision

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R09-OAR-2024-0199; FRL-12188-01-R9]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Quality Plans; Arizona; Maricopa County Air Quality Department; Source-Specific SIP Revision</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 approval of a source-specific revision to the Maricopa County Air Quality Department's (MCAQD or “Department”) portion of the Arizona State Implementation Plan (SIP). This revision consists of certain permit conditions related to emissions offsets generated from the replacement of existing diesel-fueled solid waste collection trucks promulgated by the MCAQD and submitted by the State of Arizona for inclusion in the Maricopa County portion of the Arizona SIP under the Clean Air Act (CAA or “Act”). The permit conditions have been submitted for SIP approval to ensure that they are federally enforceable, which is the basis for qualifying certain emissions reductions as creditable offsets under the CAA. We are taking comments on this proposal and plan to follow with a final action. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before September 18, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R09-OAR-2024-0199 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> . For comments submitted at <E T="03">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> . The 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 the disclosure of which 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. The 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, please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. For the full EPA public comment policy, information about CBI or multimedia submissions, and general guidance on making effective comments, please visit <E T="03">http://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> If you need assistance in a language other than English or if you are a person with disabilities who needs a reasonable accommodation at no cost to you, please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Christa Cichoski, EPA Region IX, 75 Hawthorne St., San Francisco, CA 94105; by phone: (415) 972-3930; or by email to <E T="03">cichoski.christa@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. The State's Submittal</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. What SIP revision did the State submit?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. What is the purpose of the submitted source-specific SIP revision?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. The EPA's Evaluation and Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. What is the background for this proposal?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. How is the EPA evaluating the source-specific SIP revision?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Does the source-specific SIP revision meet the evaluation criteria?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Proposed Action and Public Comment</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. The State's Submittal</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. What SIP revision did the State submit?</HD> On August 3, 2022, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) submitted three source-specific SIP revisions on behalf of the MCAQD. The SIP revisions consist of portions of the following three operating permits: Facility ID F001645 was issued P0008308, Facility ID F001646 was issued P0008309, and Facility ID F000443 was issued P0008316. On February 3, 2023, the SIP submittal was deemed complete by operation of law. On April 3, 2024, via a letter dated March 29, 2024, <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> the ADEQ submitted corrected copies of these same permit conditions to correct minor typographical errors. The permits are now numbered: P0011602, P0011603, P0011601, respectively. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  We note that the Maricopa County letter to ADEQ is dated April 1, 2024, which is after the March 29, 2024 date of the ADEQ letter. The MCAQD has clarified that their letter contained a typographical error and should have been dated March 29, 2024. See email dated June 20, 2024, from Kimberly Butler (MCAQD) to Laura Yannayon (EPA Region 9), which documents this clarification. A copy is provided in the docket for this action. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. What is the purpose of the submitted source-specific SIP revision?</HD> The submitted permit conditions ensure that emission reduction credits granted to Waste Management of Arizona, Inc. (Waste Management) for replacing existing diesel-fired solid waste collection trucks with compressed natural gas (CNG)-fired solid waste collection trucks meet the offset integrity criteria contained in 40 CFR part 51.165(a)(3)(ii)(C)( <E T="03">1</E> )( <E T="03">i</E> ), which requires such emission reductions to be surplus, permanent, quantifiable, and federally enforceable. Approval of these portions of the permits into the Maricopa portion of the Arizona SIP will provide the necessary federal enforceability for these permit conditions. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. The EPA's Evaluation and Action</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. What is the background for this proposal?</HD> Waste Management replaced 225 diesel-fueled solid waste collection trucks with 225 CNG-fueled solid waste collection trucks, which reduced annual emissions of NO <E T="52">X</E> from the four collection fleets based at three transfer stations within the Maricopa County ozone nonattainment area. On July 8, 2021, Waste Management submitted an emission reduction credit (ERC) application to the Department to certify these emission reductions for use as offsets. The Department evaluated the submittal and determined the emission reductions qualified as surplus, quantifiable, and permanent. The Department further determined that the emission reductions would qualify as federally enforceable if the three transfer station air quality permits associated with the four collection fleets were submitted to the EPA as source-specific SIP revisions and approved into the applicable SIP. In August 2021, the Department issued Waste Management permits P0008308, P0008309, and P0008316, which included permit conditions to ensure the emission reductions are surplus, permanent, quantifiable and enforceable. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> The permits were revised to include a condition that the replaced diesel-fueled trucks be either permanently disabled or permanently removed from the nonattainment area and a condition that CNG trucks can only be replaced in the future with trucks that are certified to a NO <E T="52">X</E> emission limit equivalent to, or less than, that of current CNG trucks. In addition, the permits were revised to include monitoring and recordkeeping requirements to make the reductions enforceable. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  These permits were subsequently renumbered as permits P0011602, P0011603, P0011601, respectively, when corrected copies were submitted on April 3, 2024. </FTNT> After the Department revised these permits, the Department issued mobile ERC (MERC) Certificates to Waste Management for 33.6 tons/year of emission reduction credits. To ensure the federal enforceability of these emission reductions, the EPA directed the Department to submit the permit conditions related to the emission reduction credits for approval into the Maricopa portion of the Arizona SIP. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors approved submittal of the Waste Management permit conditions as SIP revisions on July 27, 2022. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. How is the EPA evaluating the source-specific SIP revision?</HD> In analyzing this source-specific SIP submittal, we reviewed it for compliance with the substantive CAA requirements for SIPs in general as set forth in CAA section 110(a)(2), the permit requirements for nonattainment areas in CAA section 173, and the requirements for offsets in 40 CFR 51.165(a)(3)(ii)(C)( <E T="03">1</E> )( <E T="03">i</E> ). We also evaluated the submittal and our action to ensure consistency with the requirements related to SIP revisions in CAA sections 110(l) and 193. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Does the source-specific SIP revision meet the evaluation criteria?</HD> The EPA's implementing regulations regarding the requirements that emission reductions must meet to be used as offsets are found at 40 CFR 51.165(a)(3). Generally, offsets are creditable if they are permanent, surplus, quantifiable, and federally enforceable. We refer to this group of requirements as the “offset integrity criteria.” We reviewed the permit conditions in all three permits pertaining to the emission reductions to ensure they met the offset integrity criteria. While the conditions in each permit are numbered differently, they all consist of the same nine conditions, with the only difference being the quantity of ERCs granted in each permit. For c ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 19k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━