Air Plan Approval; California; South Coast Air Quality Management District

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R09-OAR-2023-0494; FRL-11442-02-R9]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; California; South Coast Air Quality Management District</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 taking final action on a revision to the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD or “the District”) portion of the California State Implementation Plan (SIP). This revision concerns the regulation of emissions of oxides of nitrogen (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) and particulate matter (PM) associated with warehouses as indirect sources that attract or may attract mobile source emissions. The EPA is approving SCAQMD Rule 2305, “Warehouse Indirect Source Rule—Warehouse Actions and Investments to Reduce Emissions (WAIRE) Program,” to regulate these emission sources under the Clean Air Act (CAA or “the Act”) as a SIP strengthening. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective October 11, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-R09-OAR-2023-0494. 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">e.g.,</E> Confidential Business Information (CBI) 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 through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> or please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section for additional availability information. If you need assistance in a language other than English or if you are a person with a disability who needs a reasonable accommodation at no cost to you, please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> La Kenya Evans-Hopper, EPA Region IX, 75 Hawthorne St., San Francisco, CA 94105; phone: (415) 972-3245; email: <E T="03">evanshopper.lakenya@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document, “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Public Comments and EPA Responses</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. EPA 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. Proposed Action</HD> On October 12, 2023 (88 FR 70616) (“proposed rule”), the EPA proposed to approve SCAQMD Rule 2305 as a revision to the SCAQMD portion of the California SIP. Table 1 lists the SCAQMD rule addressed by the proposed rule with the dates that it was adopted by the SCAQMD and submitted by the California Air Resources Board (CARB). <GPOTABLE COLS="5" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s50,12,r100,12,12"> <TTITLE>TABLE 1—SUBMITTED RULE</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Local agency</CHED> <CHED H="1">Rule No.</CHED> <CHED H="1">Rule title</CHED> <CHED H="1">Adopted</CHED> <CHED H="1">Submitted</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">SCAQMD</ENT> <ENT>2305</ENT> <ENT>Warehouse Indirect Source Rule—Warehouse Actions and Investments to Reduce Emissions (WAIRE) Program</ENT> <ENT>05/07/2021</ENT> <ENT>08/13/2021</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> As described in the proposed rule, the purpose of SCAQMD Rule 2305 is to reduce local and regional emissions of NO <E T="52">X</E> and PM, and to facilitate local and regional emission reductions associated with warehouses and the mobile sources attracted to warehouses in the SCAQMD, to meet State and Federal air quality standards for ozone and fine PM (PM <E T="52">2.5</E> ). <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The rule applies within the jurisdiction of the SCAQMD, which includes all of Orange County, the non-desert portions of Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, and all of Riverside County (except for the Palo Verde Valley in far eastern Riverside County). <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  88 FR 70616, 70617 (October 12, 2023). </FTNT> Through the adoption of the 2016 South Coast Air Quality Management Plan (AQMP), the SCAQMD adopted certain “facility-based mobile source measures,” including a measure under which the SCAQMD committed to assess and identify potential actions to further reduce emissions from emission sources associated with warehouse distribution centers. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> In 2019, the EPA approved the ozone portions of the 2016 South Coast AQMP, including the commitment to develop facility-based mobile source measures, including the measure focused on warehouse distribution centers. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> The 2016 AQMP does not include an emission reduction estimate for the facility-based mobile source measure related to warehouses. In 2021, after assessing potential actions to further reduce emissions associated with warehouse distribution centers, the SCAQMD adopted Rule 2305 to fulfill the commitment from the AQMP. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  SCAQMD, Final 2016 Air Quality Management Plan, March 2017, pp. 4-25, 4-28 and 4-29. The 2016 South Coast AQMP designates the warehouse measure as MOB-03 (“Emission Reductions at Warehouse Distribution Centers”). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  84 FR 52005 (October 1, 2019). </FTNT> In the proposed rule, the EPA described the requirements established by SCAQMD Rule 2305. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> Rule 2305 applies to owners and operators of warehouses located in the SCAQMD with greater than 100,000 square feet of indoor floor space in a single building and who operate at least 50,000 square feet of the warehouse for warehousing activities. Warehouse operators are required either to earn points from specified emission reduction activities or to pay a mitigation fee. The points that warehouse operators earn are referred to as Warehouse Actions and Investments to Reduce Emissions Points (WAIRE Points). Warehouse facility owners or warehouse landowners may elect to opt in to earn WAIRE Points and transfer these points to a warehouse operator at the same site. Both warehouse facility owners and operators must comply with certain recordkeeping and reporting requirements under the rule. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  88 FR 70616, 70618-70620. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  More specifically, warehouse owners are required to submit Warehouse Operations Notifications (WONs), and warehouse operators are required to submit Initial Site Information Reports (ISIRs) and Annual WAIRE Reports (AWRs) to SCAQMD. The warehouse owner may choose to comply with the requirement to submit ISIRs or AWRs on behalf of the warehouse operator or may be required to submit the reports if they are also the warehouse operator. </FTNT> The principal substantive requirement in SCAQMD Rule 2305 is the requirement that each warehouse operator, or owner that opts in, <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> meet an annual compliance obligation by earning WAIRE Points. The annual compliance obligation, referred to as the WAIRE Points Compliance Obligation (WPCO), for each warehouse operator, or owner who opts in, is calculated based on Weighted Annual Truck Trips (WATTs) multiplied by a stringency factor (0.0025 points per WATT) and an annual variable (which accounts for the phased implementation of the rule). <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> Warehouse operators, or owners who opt in, are required to earn WAIRE Points either: through the completion of specified actions from the list of actions in the WAIRE Menu, <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> through completion of actions in an approved custom plan, through payment of a mitigation fee, or through a combination of these three options. <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  Under SCAQMD Rule 2305, warehouse operators are required to earn WAIRE points. Warehouse owners may choose to earn WAIRE points on behalf of the warehouse operator. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  SCAQMD Rule 2305(d)(1)(A) and Tables 1 and 2. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>  SCAQMD Rule 2305, Table 3. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>  SCAQMD Rule 2305(d)(1) and (2). </FTNT> In the proposed rule, the EPA described how it evaluated SCAQMD Rule 2305 and the basis for the EPA's preliminary conclusion that Rule 2305 generally meets all applicable CAA requirements with certain exceptions. <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> In support of our proposed action, the EPA preliminarily determined that: <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>  88 FR 70616, 70620-70625. </FTNT> • The SCAQMD and CARB met the procedural requirements for adoption and submission of SIPs and SIP revisions under CAA sections 110(a)(1), 110(a)(2), 110(l) and 40 CFR 51.102; • The SCAQMD has adequate legal authority to implement Rule 2305 under State law, and that SCAQMD's implementation of Rule 2305 would not be preempted or prohibited by any State or Federal law. The EPA noted that the SCAQMD's legal authority was the subject of litigation in the U.S. District Court  <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> at the time of the proposal;  <E T="03">California Trucking Association</E> v. <E T="03">South Coast Air Quality Management District,</E> C.D. Cal., Case #21-cv-06341 (“ <E T="03">CTA</E> v. <E T="03">SCAQMD”</E> ). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>12</SU>  At the time of publication of the proposed rule, the legal challenge to SCAQMD Rule 2305 in the U.S. District Court had not yet been resolved, and because the Court had not ruled against the SCAQMD, and because there w ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 163k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━