Outer Continental Shelf Air Regulations; Amendment to State Requirements Incorporated; Massachusetts

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 55</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R01-OAR-2024-0367; FRL-12222-01-R1]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Outer Continental Shelf Air Regulations; Amendment to State Requirements Incorporated; Massachusetts</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule; amendment to state requirements. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to update a portion of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) air regulations. Requirements applying to OCS sources located within 25 miles of states' seaward boundaries must be updated periodically to remain consistent with the requirements of the corresponding onshore area (COA). The portion of the OCS air regulations that is being updated pertains to the requirements for OCS sources for which the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the designated COA. The intended effect of this proposed rule is to amend existing regulations incorporated by reference into the Massachusetts section of EPA's OCS air regulations. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before October 11, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R01-OAR-2024-0367 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> or via email to <E T="03">collins.patrick@epa.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">https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets</E> . Publicly available docket materials are available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Region 1 Regional Office, Air & Radiation Division, 5 Post Office Square—Suite 100, Boston, MA. EPA requests that if at all possible, you contact the contact listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section to schedule your inspection. The Regional Office's official hours of business are Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., excluding legal holidays and facility closures due to COVID-19. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Patrick Collins, Air and Radiation Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA New England Regional Office, 5 Post Office Square (Mail Code 05-MI), Boston, MA 02109, (617) 918-1196, <E T="03">collins.patrick@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">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background and Purpose</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. EPA's Evaluation of Appendix A of Part 55 for Massachusetts</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background and Purpose</HD> On September 4, 1992, the EPA promulgated 40 CFR part 55, <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> which established requirements to control air pollution from OCS sources in order to attain and maintain federal and state ambient air quality standards and to comply with the provisions of part C of title I of the Clean Air Act (CAA). The regulations at 40 CFR part 55 apply to all OCS sources offshore of the states except those located in the Gulf of Mexico west of 87.5 degrees longitude. Section 328 of the CAA requires that for such sources located within 25 miles of a state's seaward boundary, the requirements shall be the same as would be applicable if the sources were located in the COA. Because the OCS requirements are based on onshore requirements, and onshore requirements may change, section 328(a)(1) of the CAA requires that the EPA update the OCS requirements as necessary to maintain consistency with onshore requirements. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  The reader may refer to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, December 5, 1991 (56 FR 63774), and the preamble to the final rule promulgated September 4, 1992 (57 FR 40792) for further background and information on the OCS regulations. </FTNT> On September 17, 2008 (73 FR 53718), the EPA finalized a consistency update of the OCS air regulations pertaining to the requirements of OCS sources in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The update was the result of a Notice of Intent (NOI) being submitted on December 7, 2007 by Cape Wind Associates, LLC. The rules incorporated by reference into appendix A of 40 CFR part 55 were applicable provisions of 310 Code of Massachusetts Regulations (CMR) 4.00: Timely Action Schedule and Fee Provisions; 310 CMR 6.00: Ambient Air Quality Standards for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; 310 CMR 7.00: Air Pollution Control; and 310 CMR 8:00: The Prevention and/or Abatement of Air Pollution Episode and Air Pollution Incident Emergencies. On August 24, 2010 (75 FR 51968), the EPA finalized a consistency update of the OCS regulations pertaining to the requirements of OCS sources in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This update was the result of EPA's annual review of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts regulations. The rules incorporated by reference into appendix A of 40 CFR part 55 were updates and new requirements of 310 CMR 4.00: Timely Action Schedule and Fee Provisions; 310 CMR 6.00: Ambient Air Quality Standards for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; 310 CMR 7.00: Air Pollution Control; and 310 CMR 8:00: The Prevention and/or Abatement of Air Pollution Episode and Air Pollution Incident Emergencies. A similar action occurred on November 13, 2018 (83 FR 56259) after the submittal of an NOI on December 11, 2017 by Vineyard Wind, LLC, leading to further updates to appendix A of 40 CFR part 55. The rules incorporated through this action were applicable provisions of 310 CMR 4.00: Timely Action Schedule and Fee Provisions; 310 CMR 6.00: Ambient Air Quality Standards for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; 310 CMR 7.00: Air Pollution Control; and 310 CMR 8.00: The Prevention and/or Abatement of Air Pollution Episode and Air Pollution Incident Emergencies, as amended through March 9, 2018. Lastly, on November 15, 2022 (87 FR 68364) the EPA finalized action to incorporate updates to 40 CFR part 55 after receipt of an NOI on September 9, 2021 by Sunrise Wind, LLC. This final rule incorporated applicable provisions of 310 CMR 4.00: Timely Action Schedule and Fee Provisions; 310 CMR 6.00: Ambient Air Quality Standards for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; and 310 CMR 7.00: Air Pollution Control, as amended through March 5, 2021. EPA has received subsequent NOIs for projects and conducted periodic reviews of Massachusetts regulations to ensure all applicable requirements for OCS sources as they relate to attainment and maintenance of federal or state ambient air quality standards and the requirements of part C of title I of the CAA are incorporated by reference into the Massachusetts section of appendix A in 40 CFR part 55. These evaluations have not led to additional requirements incorporated by reference into appendix A, because either a Massachusetts regulation did not change or because any changes to a previously incorporated regulation were not applicable to the attainment and maintenance of federal or state ambient air quality standards for OCS sources. However, through EPA's implementation of the OCS air permitting program, we have become aware that 310 CMR 4.03: Annual Compliance Assurance Fee and 310 CMR 7.12: U Source Registration are unnecessarily incorporated into appendix A of 40 CFR part 55. These two regulations are either (1) implemented by existing EPA programs and thus duplicative or (2) not rationally related to the attainment or maintenance of federal or state ambient air quality standards or to the requirements of part C of title I of the CAA. EPA is proposing to remove these previously approved regulations incorporated into appendix A of 40 CFR part 55 since our last amendment on November 15, 2022. <E T="03">See</E> 87 FR 68364. Additional rationale for this proposed action is provided below. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. EPA's Evaluation of Appendix A of Part 55 for Massachusetts</HD> 310 CMR 4.03: Annual Compliance Assurance Fee outlines the procedure for issuance and collection of a source's annual compliance assurance fees imposed in the COA. Per 40 CFR 55.10, for sources in the inner or outer OCS where the EPA is the permitting authority, the EPA will collect permit fees consistent with fee requirements outlined in 40 CFR part 71. Per the provisions of 40 CFR 55.12(e), no rule or regulation that EPA finds to be arbitrary or capricious will be incorporated into this part. EPA's review finds that 310 CMR 4.03: Annual Compliance Assurance Fee should be removed from part 55 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━