Approval and Promulgation of Air Quality Implementation Plans; Texas; Federal Implementation Plan for the Rusk-Panola Sulfur Dioxide Nonattainment Area

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R06-OAR-2022-0311; FRL-12095-01-R6]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Approval and Promulgation of Air Quality Implementation Plans; Texas; Federal Implementation Plan for the Rusk-Panola Sulfur Dioxide Nonattainment Area</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 a Federal Implementation Plan (FIP) to establish enforceable emission limits for attaining the 2010 1-hour sulfur dioxide (SO <E T="52">2</E> ) primary national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) for the Rusk and Panola Counties, Texas nonattainment area (Rusk-Panola area). The EPA is proposing the FIP to address deficiencies in Texas' 2022 Rusk-Panola area attainment State Implementation Plan (SIP) revision, as identified in the EPA's proposed limited approval and limited disapproval of that SIP, and which can be found in the same docket as this action. Under the limited approval, if finalized, the entire SIP submission would become federally enforceable. The limited disapproval, if finalized, would trigger the 2-year deadline for EPA to finalize a FIP that addresses the deficiencies in the SIP as well as the 18-month deadline to impose mandatory emission offsets and highway funding sanctions. The EPA is proposing to determine that the proposed FIP would provide for attainment of the 2010 1-hour primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS in the Rusk-Panola SO <E T="52">2</E> nonattainment area and meets the other applicable requirements under the Clean Air Act (CAA). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before October 7, 2024. <E T="03">Virtual Public hearing:</E> The EPA will hold a virtual public hearing to solicit comments on September 5, 2024. The last day to pre-register to speak at the hearing will be on September 3, 2024. On September 4, 2024, the EPA will post a general agenda for the hearing that will list pre-registered speakers in approximate order at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/tx/rusk-panola-so2-nonattainment-area.</E> If you require the services of a translator or a special accommodation such as audio description/closed captioning, please pre-register for the hearing and describe your needs by August 28, 2024. For more information on the virtual public hearing, <E T="03">see</E> <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> . </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R06-OAR-2022-0311 at <E T="03">http://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> . For either manner of submission, 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 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. 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://www2.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Andrew Lee, EPA Region 6 Office, Ozone and Infrastructure Section, 214-665-6750, <E T="03">lee.andrew.c@epa.gov.</E> We encourage the public to submit comments via <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Please call or email the contact listed above if you need alternative access to material indexed but not provided in the docket. Modeling files and other files related to the alternative model review are available upon request. Copyrighted materials are available for review in person at EPA Region 6 office in Dallas. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document wherever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Virtual Public Hearing</HD> The EPA is holding a virtual public hearing to provide interested parties the opportunity to present data, views, or arguments concerning the proposal. The EPA will hold a virtual public hearing to solicit comments on September 5, 2024. The hearing will convene at 3:00 p.m. Central Time (CT) with a 30-minute break from 5:00 to 5:30 p.m. CT. The hearing will conclude at 7:00 p.m. CT, or 15 minutes after the last pre-registered presenter in attendance has presented if there are no additional presenters. The EPA will announce further details, including information on how to register for the virtual public hearing, on the virtual public hearing website at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/tx/rusk-panola-so2-nonattainment-are.</E> The EPA will begin pre-registering speakers and attendees for the hearing upon publication of this document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . To pre-register to attend or speak at the virtual public hearing, please use the online registration form available at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/tx/rusk-panola-so2-nonattainment-area</E> or contact us via email at <E T="03">lee.andrew.c@epa.gov.</E> The last day to pre-register to speak at the hearing will be on September 3, 2024. On September 4, 2024, the EPA will post a general agenda for the hearing that will list pre-registered speakers in approximate order at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/tx/rusk-panola-so2-nonattainment-area.</E> Additionally, requests to speak will be taken on the day of the hearing as time allows. The EPA will make every effort to follow the schedule as closely as possible on the day of the hearing; however, please plan for the hearing to run either ahead of schedule or behind schedule. Each commenter will have approximately 3 to 5 minutes to provide oral testimony. The EPA encourages commenters to provide the EPA with a copy of their oral testimony electronically by including it in the registration form or emailing it to <E T="03">lee.andrew.c@epa.gov.</E> The EPA may ask clarifying questions during the oral presentations but will not respond to the presentations at that time. Written statements and supporting information submitted during the comment period will be considered with the same weight as oral comments and supporting information presented at the virtual public hearing. A transcript of the virtual public hearing, as well as copies of oral presentations submitted to the EPA, will be included in the docket for this action. The EPA is asking all hearing attendees to pre-register, even those who do not intend to speak. The EPA will send information on how to join the public hearing to pre-registered attendees and speakers. Please note that any updates made to any aspect of the hearing will be posted online at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/tx/rusk-panola-so2-nonattainment-area.</E> While the EPA expects the hearing to go forward as set forth above, please monitor our website or contact us via email at <E T="03">lee.andrew.c@epa.gov</E> to determine if there are any updates. The EPA does not intend to publish a document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> announcing updates. If you require the services of a translator or a special accommodation such as audio description/closed captioning, please pre-register for the hearing and describe your needs by August 28, 2024. The EPA may not be able to arrange accommodations without advance notice. <HD SOURCE="HD1"> I. SO <E T="0735">2</E> Background </HD> On June 22, 2010, the EPA published a new 1-hour primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS of 75 parts per billion (ppb), which is met at an ambient air quality monitoring site when the 3-year average of the annual 99th percentile of daily maximum 1-hour average concentrations does not exceed 75 ppb, as determined in accordance with appendix T of 40 CFR part 50. On December 13, 2016, the EPA designated portions of Rusk and Panola Counties surrounding the Martin Lake Power Plant (“Martin Lake”) in Texas as nonattainment for the 2010 1-hour primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS, effective January 12, 2017. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Section 191 of the CAA directs states to submit SIPs for nonattainment areas to the EPA within 18 months of the effective date of the designation, <E T="03">i.e.,</E> by no later than July 12, 2018, for the Rusk-Panola area. Under CAA section 192, these SO <E T="52">2</E> SIPs are required to demonstrate that their respective areas will attain the NAAQS as expeditiously as practicable, but no later than 5 years from the effective date of designation, <E T="03">i.e.,</E> January 12, 2022. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 81 FR 89870; <E T="03">see also</E> 40 CFR part 81, subpart C. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Rusk-Panola Background</HD> On August 10, 2020, the EPA published “Findings of Failure to Submit State Implementation Plans Required for Attainment of the 2010 1-Hour Primary Sulfur Dioxide (SO <E T="52">2</E> ) National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS)” that found Texas failed to submit the required SIP for the Rusk-Panola area by the July 12, 2018, CAA deadline. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> This finding, effective on September 9, 2020, triggered CAA sec ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 54k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━