Air Plan Approval; North Carolina; Second Period Regional Haze Plan

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R04-OAR-2022-0786; FRL-10405-01-R4]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; North Carolina; Second Period Regional Haze Plan</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 to approve in part and conditionally approve in part a regional haze State Implementation Plan (SIP) revision submitted by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, Division of Air Quality (DAQ), dated April 4, 2022 (“Haze Plan” or “2022 Plan”) under the Clean Air Act (CAA or Act) and EPA's Regional Haze Rule (RHR) for the regional haze program's second planning period. North Carolina's 2022 SIP submission addresses the requirement that states must periodically revise their long-term strategies for making reasonable progress toward the national goal of preventing any future, and remedying any existing, anthropogenic impairment of visibility, including regional haze, in mandatory Class I Federal areas. The SIP submission also addresses other applicable requirements for the second planning period of the regional haze program. EPA is taking this action pursuant to sections 110 and 169A of the Act. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before September 19, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R04-OAR-2022-0786, at <E T="03">http://www.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> . 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 whose disclosure 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. 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, 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> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Michele Notarianni, Multi-Air Pollutant Coordination Section, Air Planning and Implementation Branch, Air and Radiation Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 4, 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, Georgia 30303-8960. Ms. Notarianni can be reached via telephone at (404) 562-9031 or electronic mail at <E T="03">notarianni.michele@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. What action is EPA proposing?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Background and Requirements for Regional Haze Plans</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Regional Haze Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Roles of Agencies in Addressing Regional Haze</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Requirements for Regional Haze Plans for the Second Planning Period</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Identification of Class I Areas</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Calculations of Baseline, Current, and Natural Visibility Conditions; Progress to Date; and the Uniform Rate of Progress (URP)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Long-Term Strategy (LTS) for Regional Haze</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2"> D. Reasonable Progress Goals (RPGs) </FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Monitoring Strategy and Other State Implementation Plan Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. Requirements for Periodic Reports Describing Progress Toward the RPGs</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">G. Requirements for State and Federal Land Manager (FLM) Coordination</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. EPA's Evaluation of North Carolina's Regional Haze Submission for the Second Planning Period</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Identification of Class I Areas</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Calculations of Baseline, Current, and Natural Visibility Conditions; Progress to Date; and the URP</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. LTS for Regional Haze</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. RPGs</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Monitoring Strategy and Other Implementation Plan Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. Requirements for Periodic Reports Describing Progress Toward the RPGs</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">G. Requirements for State and FLM Coordination</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">H. Environmental Justice (EJ) Considerations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VII. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews </FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. What action is EPA proposing?</HD> On April 4, 2022, the North Carolina DAQ submitted a revision to its SIP to address regional haze for the second planning period. DAQ made this SIP submission to satisfy the requirements of the CAA's regional haze program pursuant to CAA sections 169A and 169B and 40 CFR 51.308. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> EPA is proposing to approve in part and conditionally approve in part North Carolina's Haze Plan. For the reasons discussed in this document, EPA is proposing to approve the sections of the Haze Plan addressing the requirements of 40 CFR 51.308(f)(1), (f)(4) through(6), and (g)(1) through(5). EPA is proposing to conditionally approve the sections of the Haze Plan addressing the requirements of 40 CFR 51.308(f)(2), (f)(3), and (i)(2) through(4) due to concerns with the legal and practicable enforceability of certain permit conditions identified in the Haze Plan for incorporation into the SIP. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  In a letter dated August 15, 2022, EPA found that North Carolina's Haze Plan meets the completeness criteria outlined in 40 CFR part 51, Appendix V. A completeness determination does not constitute a finding on the merits of the submission or whether it meets the relevant criteria for SIP approval. The August 15, 2022, letter is included in the docket for this proposed rulemaking. </FTNT> Consistent with CAA section 110(k)(3), EPA may approve in part portions of the SIP submittal if those portions meet the all the applicable requirements. Under CAA section 110(k)(4), EPA may conditionally approve a SIP revision based on a commitment from a state to adopt specific enforceable measures by a date certain, but not later than one year from the date of conditional approval of the plan revision. If the state fails to meet the commitment within one year of the final conditional approval, the conditional approval will be treated as a disapproval. North Carolina submitted a letter, dated July 30, 2024, (“Commitment Letter”), requesting partial conditional approval of its Haze Plan and committing to submit a SIP revision containing specific enforceable measures no later than one year from the effective date of a final conditional approval action, should EPA finalize this partial conditional approval as proposed. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> EPA is proposing to conditionally approve the sections of the Haze Plan addressing the requirements of 40 CFR 51.308(f)(2), (f)(3), and (i)(2) through(4). These elements are fully separable from the elements proposed for partial approval. If North Carolina meets its commitment to submit the required SIP revision that adequately addresses the identified concerns related to the enforceability of certain permit conditions by the specified deadline and EPA approves the submission, then the conditional approval will be converted to a full approval. See Section IV.C.3.b of this document for a discussion of the enforceability concerns resulting in the proposed partial conditional approval and the commitments in North Carolina's Commitment Letter. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  The Commitment Letter is in the docket for this proposed rulemaking. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background and Requirements for Regional Haze Plans</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Regional Haze Background</HD> In the 1977 CAA Amendments, Congress created a program for protecting visibility in the nation's mandatory Class I Federal areas, which include certain national parks and wilderness areas. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> CAA 169A. The CAA establishes as a national goal the “prevention of any future, and the remedying of any existing, impairment of visibility in mandatory class I Federal areas which impairment results from manmade air pollution.” CAA 169A(a)(1). The CAA further directs EPA to promulgate regulations to assure reasonable progress toward meeting this national goal. CAA 169A(a)(4). On December 2, 1980, EPA promulgated regulations to address visibility impairment in mandatory Class I Federal areas (hereinafter referred to as “Class I areas”) that is “reasonably attributable” to a single source or small group of sources. <E T="03">See</E> 45 FR 80084 (December 2, 1980). These regulations, codified at 40 CFR 51.300 through 51.307, represented the first phase of EPA's efforts to address visibility impairment. In 1990, Congress added section 169B to the CAA to further address visibility impairment, specifically, impairment from regional haze. CAA 169B. EPA promulgated the RHR, codified at 40 CFR 51.308, <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> on July 1, 1999. 64 FR 35714 (July 1, 1999). These regional haze regulations are a central component of EPA's comprehensive visibility protection program for Class I areas. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  Areas statutorily designated as mandatory Class I Federal areas consist of national parks exceeding 6,000 acres, ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 231k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━