Air Plan Approval; Wisconsin; Infrastructure SIP Requirements for the 2015 Ozone NAAQS

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R05-OAR-2018-0664; FRL-12010-01-R5]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Wisconsin; Infrastructure SIP Requirements for the 2015 Ozone NAAQS</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is approving elements of a State Implementation Plan (SIP) submission from Wisconsin regarding the infrastructure requirements of section 110 of the Clean Air Act (CAA) for the 2015 ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). The infrastructure requirements are designed to ensure that the structural components of each state's air quality management program are adequate to meet the state's responsibilities under the CAA. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective on September 30, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-R05-OAR-2018-0664. 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">i.e.,</E> Confidential Business Information (CBI), Proprietary Business Information (PBI), 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 either through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or at the Environmental Protection Agency, Region 5, Air and Radiation Division, 77 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60604. This facility is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, excluding Federal holidays. We recommend that you telephone Eric Svingen, Environmental Engineer, at (312) 353-4489 before visiting the Region 5 office. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Eric Svingen, Air and Radiation Division (AR-18J), Environmental Protection Agency, Region 5, 77 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60604, (312) 353-4489, <E T="03">svingen.eric@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document whenever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. What is the background of this SIP submission?</HD> Whenever EPA promulgates a new or revised NAAQS, CAA section 110(a)(1) requires states to make SIP submissions to provide for the implementation, maintenance, and enforcement of the NAAQS. This type of SIP submission is commonly referred to as an “infrastructure SIP.” These submissions must meet the various requirements of CAA section 110(a)(2), as applicable. On September 30, 2020 (85 FR 61673), EPA published a notice of proposed rulemaking proposing to approve most elements of a September 14, 2018, submission from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) intended to address all applicable infrastructure requirements for the 2015 ozone NAAQS. EPA's proposed rulemaking contained a detailed analysis of Wisconsin's submission. Public comments on the September 30, 2020, proposed rule were due by October 30, 2020. EPA's September 30, 2020, proposed rulemaking did not address Wisconsin's infrastructure requirements under section 110(a)(2)(D)(i)(I) and section 110(a)(2)(F). In separate rulemakings, EPA has since taken action on these elements. In a February 13, 2023 (88 FR 9384), rulemaking addressing the interstate transport elements under section 110(a)(2)(D)(i)(I), EPA approved Wisconsin's September 14, 2018, submission as to the requirements of prong 1 and disapproved the submission as to the requirements of prong 2. On July 24, 2023 (88 FR 47375), EPA approved an August 3, 2022, submission from Wisconsin certifying that its SIP is sufficient to meet the stationary source monitoring and reporting element under section 110(a)(2)(F). In this action, which finalizes EPA's September 30, 2020, proposed rulemaking, EPA is taking final action on all remaining elements of Wisconsin's infrastructure requirements for the 2015 ozone NAAQS. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. What are EPA's responses to comments?</HD> During the public comment period on EPA's September 30, 2020, proposed rulemaking, EPA received one comment in support of our action, as well as one adverse comment, which addressed three aspects of Wisconsin's infrastructure SIP submission. For each aspect, summaries of the adverse comment and EPA's responses are provided below. <E T="03">Comment:</E> A commenter alleges that EPA cannot finalize approval of Wisconsin's submission as meeting the infrastructure SIP requirements of CAA section 110(a)(2)(B). The commenter notes that EPA's proposed rule refers to our October 2, 2019, approval of Wisconsin's 2020 Annual Monitoring Network Plan (AMNP), but the commenter suggests that Wisconsin would have submitted a more recent AMNP in July 2020. The commenter asserts that EPA should have based its proposal on the most recent AMNP. The commenter notes that neither AMNP was in the docket folder for the proposed rulemaking, and requests that EPA add both AMNPs to the docket and open a new 30-day public comment period. <E T="03">Response:</E> EPA disagrees that EPA must propose approval only on the most recently submitted AMNP. Wisconsin submitted its 2021 AMNP on June 29, 2020, and EPA approved the 2021 AMNP on September 15, 2020. On September 10, 2020, when the Deputy Regional Administrator signed EPA's rulemaking proposing approval of the state's infrastructure SIP submission for the 2015 ozone NAAQS with respect to section 110(a)(2)(B), EPA's approval of the 2020 AMNP was the most current approval, and therefore EPA could not have cited approval of the 2021 AMNP. Further, a state's 2021 AMNP describes changes it intended to make no earlier than January 1, 2021. On the date EPA published the proposed approval, Wisconsin was implementing its monitoring network according to the 2020 AMNP. Additionally, in its 2021 AMNP, Wisconsin outlined changes to its monitoring network that had no adverse impact on its ability to monitor ozone. In Table 14 of its 2021 AMNP, Wisconsin listed proposed changes at only four monitoring sites. At its Milwaukee SER DNR Headquarters site, the state proposed to terminate monitoring of eight pollutants including ozone, because of the scheduled demolition of the facility adjacent to that site. At the other three sites, the state proposed new monitoring or increased monitoring of pollutants that had earlier been monitored at the Milwaukee SER DNR Headquarters site. The state proposed to start monitoring of five of those pollutants, including ozone, nearby at a new Milwaukee UWM Park & Ride site. At its Milwaukee Sixteenth St. Health Center site, the state proposed increasing the frequency of sampling of particles with an aerodynamic diameter of less than or equal to 2.5 micrometers (PM <E T="52">2.5</E> ). The state also proposed to start monitoring oxides of nitrogen (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) at its Chiwaukee site. Importantly, the 2021 AMNP was not Wisconsin's first mention of the proposed termination of the Milwaukee SER DNR Headquarters site. The state had already proposed this termination in its 2020 AMNP, and EPA's September 30, 2020, rulemaking references EPA's October 2, 2019, approval of that plan. EPA accordingly concludes that referencing the most recently approved 2020 AMNP at the time of signature of the proposed rulemaking, as opposed to the most recently submitted 2021 AMNP, did not deprive commenters of an ability to raise concerns about adverse changes to the state's ozone monitoring network. EPA is now adding the 2020 AMNP and 2021 AMNP to the docket folder for this action. EPA further disagrees that any AMNP must have been included in the docket at the time of the comment period for this action. Prior to submitting an AMNP to EPA, WDNR makes each AMNP broadly available through a public comment process (see 40 CFR 58.10). Both the 2020 AMNP and 2021 AMNP are available at the WDNR website. WDNR's September 14, 2018, submittal contains a link to a subpage of this website, and EPA provided the same link in the proposed rule. Accordingly, EPA concludes that commenters had knowledge of, and access to, both the 2020 and 2021 AMNPs during the comment period and thus there was no need for EPA to provide an additional comment period for this purpose. <E T="03">Comment:</E> A commenter alleges that EPA cannot finalize approval of Wisconsin's submission as meeting the infrastructure SIP requirements of CAA section 110(a)(2)(E). The commenter asserts that Wisconsin's infrastructure SIP submission for the 2015 ozone NAAQS fails to provide any documentation, budgetary details, or personnel numbers to support its conclusions that Wisconsin meets the infrastructure SIP requirements relating to adequate resources to carry out the SIP. The commenter notes that WDNR's submission identifies its section 105 grants and Environmental Performance Partnership Agreement (EnPPA), but states that these sources were neither described in detail in the submission nor included in the docket for EPA's proposed rulemaking. The commenter refers to requirements at 40 CFR 51.280 and asserts that 1-, 3-, and 5-year resource projections are required but not included in Wisconsin's submission. The commenter also cites to a report which states that environmental agency funding in Wisconsin has been cut by 36 percent from 2008 to 2018. The commenter alleges that Wisconsin “must provide concrete assurances that it has adequate funding and personnel both now and for the next 5 years.” <E T="03">Response:</E> EPA agrees that CAA section 110(a)(2)(E)(i) req ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 32k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━