Air Plan Approval; Pennsylvania; Attainment Plan for the Indiana Nonattainment Area for the 2010 1-Hour Sulfur Dioxide National Ambient Air Quality Standard

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R03-OAR-2024-0024; FRL-11529-02-R3]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Pennsylvania; Attainment Plan for the Indiana Nonattainment Area for the 2010 1-Hour Sulfur Dioxide National Ambient Air Quality Standard</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 a state implementation plan (SIP) revision submitted by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (Pennsylvania or PA). The revision pertains to the attainment plan for the Indiana, PA nonattainment area for the 2010 1-hour sulfur dioxide (SO <E T="52">2</E> ) national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS). The EPA is approving these revisions to the Pennsylvania SIP in accordance with the requirements of the Clean Air Act (CAA). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective on October 15, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID Number EPA-R03-OAR-2024-0024. All documents in the docket are listed on the <E T="03">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">www.regulations.gov, o</E> r please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section for additional availability information. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Megan Goold, Planning & Implementation Branch (3AD30), Air & Radiation Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region III, 1600 John F Kennedy Boulevard, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103. The telephone number is (215) 814-2027. Ms. Goold can also be reached via electronic mail at <E T="03">goold.megan@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. 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) at 40 CFR 50.17(a), 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 40 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) part 50 appendix T (75 FR 35520, June 22, 2010). Under CAA section 107(d)(1), the EPA is required to designate areas as “nonattainment,” “attainment,” or “unclassifiable” within two years of establishing a new or revising an existing standard. As part of this process, states must submit recommendations for area designations and boundaries to the EPA within one year of the effective date of the standard. Effective on October 4, 2013, <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> the Indiana, PA Nonattainment Area (hereafter referred to as “the Indiana, PA NAA”) (which encompasses Indiana County, and Plumcreek Township, South Bend Township and Elderton Borough of Armstrong County) was designated as nonattainment for the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS. The area encompasses the primary SO <E T="52">2</E> emitting sources: the Keystone Generating Station (Keystone), Conemaugh Generating Station (Conemaugh), Homer City Generating Station (Homer City), and Seward Generating Station (Seward). The October 4, 2013, final designation triggered a requirement for Pennsylvania to submit by April 4, 2015 (within 18 months per CAA section 191(a)), a SIP revision with an attainment plan for how the Indiana, PA NAA would attain the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS as expeditiously as practicable, but no later than October 4, 2018, (five years from the designation per CAA section 192(a)) in accordance with CAA sections 110(a), 172(c) and 191-192. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  78 FR 47191 (August 5, 2013). </FTNT> For a number of areas, including the Indiana, PA NAA, the EPA published a March 18, 2016 Finding of Failure to Submit, with an effective date of April 18, 2016, finding that Pennsylvania and other pertinent states had failed to submit the required SO <E T="52">2</E> attainment plan by this submittal deadline. (See 81 FR 14736, March 18, 2016). This finding initiated a deadline under CAA section 179(a) for the potential imposition of new source review and highway funding sanctions. However, as a result of Pennsylvania's October 11, 2017 submittal (hereafter referred to as “the 2017 SIP submittal”), and the EPA's subsequent October 13, 2017 letter to Pennsylvania finding the submittal complete, the CAA section 179(a) sanctions were not imposed. Additionally, under CAA section 110(c), the March 18, 2016, finding triggered a requirement that the EPA promulgate a Federal implementation plan (FIP) within two years of the effective date of the finding unless, by that time, the state has made the necessary complete submittal, and the EPA has approved the submittal as meeting applicable requirements. The EPA took final action approving this attainment plan on October 19, 2020 (85 FR 66240, October 19, 2020), which removed the FIP obligation. On December 18, 2020, the Sierra Club, Clean Air Council, and Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future filed a petition for judicial review with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, challenging that final approval. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> On April 5, 2021, the EPA filed a motion for voluntary remand without vacatur of its approval of the Indiana, PA SO <E T="52">2</E> attainment plan. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">Sierra Club, et al.</E> v. <E T="03">EPA,</E> Case No. 20-3568 (3d Cir.). </FTNT> On August 17, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit granted the EPA's request for remand without vacatur of the final approval of Pennsylvania's SO <E T="52">2</E> attainment plan for the Indiana, PA NAA, and required that the EPA take final action in response to the remand no later than one year from the date of the court's order. On August 18, 2022, the EPA revised and corrected its prior full approval action (85 FR 66240, October 19, 2020) without further submission from Pennsylvania (effective September 19, 2022) (87 FR 50778, August 18, 2022). Specifically, the EPA retained the approval of the emissions inventory and nonattainment new source review (NNSR) program requirements, and disapproved the attainment demonstration, reasonably available control measures and reasonably available control technology (RACM/RACT) requirements, reasonable further progress (RFP) requirements, and contingency measures (hereafter referred to as the “2022 Partial Approval/Partial Disapproval”) (87 FR 50778, August 18, 2022). The partial disapproval action initiated a sanctions clock under CAA section 179, providing for emission offset sanctions for new sources if the EPA has not fully approved a revised attainment plan within 18 months (March 19, 2024) after final partial disapproval, and providing for highway funding sanctions if the EPA has not fully approved a revised plan within 6 months thereafter (September 19, 2024). The sanctions clock can be stopped only if the conditions of the EPA's regulations at 40 CFR 52.31 are met. Also, under CAA section 110(c), the partial disapproval action initiated an obligation for the EPA to promulgate a FIP within two years unless Pennsylvania has submitted, and the EPA has fully approved, a plan addressing the disapproved attainment planning requirements. On October 12, 2023, Pennsylvania submitted a 2023 SO <E T="52">2</E> Attainment Plan SIP Revision for the Indiana, PA NAA (hereafter referred to as the “2023 SIP submittal”). The 2023 SIP submittal addresses the requirements of CAA sections 172(c), 191 and 192 and the disapproved attainment planning requirements in the EPA's 2022 Partial Approval/Partial Disapproval. Specifically, this SIP revision contains a modified attainment demonstration using dispersion modeling, evaluates sources for RACT/RACM purposes, gives an RFP explanation, provides for contingency measures, and includes revised emissions limitations and control measures. Nonattainment area SO <E T="52">2</E> SIPs must meet the applicable requirements of the CAA, specifically CAA sections 110, 172, 191 and 192. The EPA's regulations governing nonattainment area SIPs are set forth at 40 CFR part 51, with specific procedural requirements and control strategy requirements residing at subparts F and G, respectively. Soon after Congress enacted the 1990 amendments to the CAA, the EPA issued comprehensive guidance on SIPs in a document entitled the “General Preamble for the Implementation of title I of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990,” published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> at 57 FR 13498 (April 16, 1992) (General Preamble). Among other things, the General Preamble addressed SO <E T="52">2</E> SIPs and fundamental principles for SIP control strategies. <E T="03">Id.</E> at 13545-49, 13567-68. On April 23, 2014, the EPA issued guidance and recommendations for meeting the statutory requirements in SO <E T="52">2</E> SIPs addressing the 2010 primary NAAQS, in a document entitled, “Guidance for 1-Hour SO <E T="52">2</E> Nonattainment Area SIP Submissions” (hereafter referred to as “2014 SO <E T="52">2</E> Nonattainment Guidance”). <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> In the 2014 SO <E T="52">2</E> Nonattainment Guidance, the EPA described the statutory requirements for a complete nonattainment area SIP, which include an accurate emissions inventory of current emissions for all sources of ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 85k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━