Determination of Attainment by the Attainment Date for the 2010 1-Hour Primary Sulfur Dioxide National Ambient Air Quality Standard; Texas; Freestone-Anderson and Titus Counties

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R06-OAR-2020-0434; FRL-12215-01-R6]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Determination of Attainment by the Attainment Date for the 2010 1-Hour Primary Sulfur Dioxide National Ambient Air Quality Standard; Texas; Freestone-Anderson and Titus Counties</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> Pursuant to the Federal Clean Air Act (CAA or the Act), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to determine that the sulfur dioxide (SO <E T="52">2</E> ) nonattainment area (NAA) in Freestone and Anderson Counties and the SO <E T="52">2</E> NAA in Titus County have each attained the 2010 1-hour primary SO <E T="52">2</E> national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) by the applicable attainment date of January 12, 2022. This determination is based on primary source shutdowns, available ambient air quality monitoring data from the 2019-2021 monitoring period, relevant modeling analysis, and additional emissions inventory information. This action, if finalized, will address the EPA's obligation under CAA section 179(c) to determine whether the Freestone-Anderson and Titus SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAs attained the 2010 1-hour primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS by the statutory attainment date of January 12, 2022, for each area. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before October 3, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket No. EPA-R06-OAR-2020-0434, at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or via email to <E T="03">grady.james@epa.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 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 James E. Grady, (214) 665-6745, <E T="03">grady.james@epa.gov.</E> 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">https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> <E T="03">Docket:</E> The index to the docket for this action is available electronically at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> While all documents in the docket are listed in the index, some information may not be publicly available due to docket file size restrictions or content ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> CBI). <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> James E. Grady, EPA Region 6 Office, Regional Haze and SO <E T="52">2</E> Section, 1201 Elm Street, Suite 500, Dallas, TX 72570, 214-665-6745; <E T="03">grady.james@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. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document “we,” “us,” or “our” mean the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2"> A. The 2010 1-Hour Primary SO <E T="54">2</E> NAAQS </HD> Under section 109 of the CAA, the EPA has established primary and secondary NAAQS for certain pervasive air pollutants (referred to as “criteria pollutants”) and conducts periodic reviews of the NAAQS to determine whether they should be revised or whether new NAAQS should be established. The primary NAAQS represent ambient air quality standards that the EPA has determined are requisite to protect the public health, while the secondary NAAQS represent ambient air quality standards that the EPA has determined are requisite to protect the public welfare from any known or anticipated adverse effects associated with the presence of such an air pollutant in the ambient air. Under the CAA, the EPA must establish a NAAQS for SO <E T="52">2</E> , which is primarily released to the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels by power plants and other industrial facilities. SO <E T="52">2</E> is also emitted from industrial processes including metal extraction from ore and heavy equipment that burns fuel with a high sulfur content. Short-term exposure to SO <E T="52">2</E> can damage the human respiratory system and increase breathing difficulties. Small children and people with respiratory conditions, such as asthma, are more sensitive to the effects of SO <E T="52">2</E> . Sulfur oxides at high concentrations in ambient air can also react with compounds to form small particulates (fine particulate matter or PM <E T="52">2.5</E> ) that can penetrate deeply into the lungs and cause acute health problems and/or chronic diseases. The EPA first established primary SO <E T="52">2</E> standards in 1971 at 140 parts per billion (ppb) over a 24-hour averaging period and at 30 ppb over an annual averaging period. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  36 FR 8186 (April 30, 1971). </FTNT> On June 22, 2010, the EPA published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> a strengthened, primary 1-hour SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS, establishing a new standard at a level of 75 ppb, based on the 3-year average of the annual 99th percentile of daily maximum 1-hour average concentrations of SO <E T="52">2</E> . <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> The revised SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS provides increased protection of public health. Along with revision of the SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS, EPA revoked the 1971 primary annual and 24-hour SO <E T="52">2</E> standards for most areas of the country following area designations under the new NAAQS. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  75 FR 35520. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2"> B. Designations, Classifications, and Attainment Dates for the 2010 SO <E T="54">2</E> NAAQS </HD> Following promulgation of a new or revised NAAQS, the EPA is required to designate all areas of the country as either “attainment,” “nonattainment,” or “unclassifiable,” pursuant to CAA section 107(d)(1). On August 5, 2013, the EPA finalized its first round of designations for the 2010 1-hour primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> In that 2013 action, the EPA designated 29 areas in 16 states as nonattainment for the 2010 1-hour primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS based on air quality monitoring data. Following the first round of designations, EPA entered into a March 2, 2015, Consent Decree  <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> which required the EPA to complete the remaining area designations by three specific deadlines according to a court-ordered schedule. On July 12, 2016, the EPA finalized its second round of initial designations under the 2010 1-hour primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS, designating an additional four areas as nonattainment, effective September 12, 2016. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> On December 13, 2016 (effective January 12, 2017), EPA finalized a supplement to the July 12, 2016, second round final action, designating three more areas in Texas as nonattainment for the 2010 1-hour primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> Included in that supplement to the second round of designations was one area in Freestone and Anderson Counties and one area in Titus County. These designations were based on consideration of the data available at the time of designations, including air quality modeling. Pursuant to section 192(a) of the CAA, the attainment dates for the Freestone-Anderson and Titus NAAs were both no later than 5 years after the effective date of initial designation, or January 12, 2022. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  78 FR 47191 (August 5, 2013). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  Mar. 02, 2015, Consent Decree; <E T="03">Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council</E> v. <E T="03">EPA,</E> Case No. 3:13-cv-3953-SI (N.D. Cal.). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  81 FR 45039 (July 12, 2016). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  81 FR 89870 (December 13, 2016). </FTNT> CAA section 191(a) requires states that contain an area designated nonattainment for the 2010 1-hour primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS to develop and submit a nonattainment area (NAA) State Implementation Plan (SIP) to the EPA within 18 months of the effective date of an area's designation as nonattainment ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> by July 12, 2018). For SO <E T="52">2,</E> a NAA SIP (also referred to as an attainment plan) must meet the requirements of CAA sections 110 and 172(c), and 191-192, and provide for attainment of the NAAQS by the applicable statutory attainment date, or no later than 5 years from the effective date of designation ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> by January 12, 2022). When a NAA is attaining the 2010 1-hour primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS based on the most recent available data, the EPA may issue a Clean Data Determination (CDD), suspending certain NAA planning requirements. The EPA issued a CDD for the Freestone-Anderson and Titus NAAs based on available monitoring data, emissions data, and air quality modeling via a final rule published on May 14, 2021 (effective June 14, 2021). <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> A CDD does not alter the nonattainment designations for these areas. For the EPA to redesignate thes ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 51k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━