Air Plan Approval; FL; Surface Coating of Miscellaneous Metal Parts and Products Amendments

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R04-OAR-2023-0273; FRL-12121-02-R4]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; FL; Surface Coating of Miscellaneous Metal Parts and Products Amendments</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 Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) on October 12, 2022. EPA is approving changes allowing the option for aerospace parts and products coating operations in Florida to comply with Federal National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) requirements in lieu of the volatile organic compound (VOC) standards in Florida's Surface Coating of Miscellaneous Metal Parts and Products (MMPP) rule (hereinafter referred to as FL MMPP Rule) in the Florida SIP. EPA has determined that the changes included in Florida's October 12, 2022, submission are consistent with the applicable provisions of the Clean Air Act (CAA or Act) and its implementing regulations. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective October 28, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket Identification No. EPA-R04-OAR-2023-0273. All documents in the docket are listed on the <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> website. Although listed in the index, some information may not be publicly available, <E T="03">i.e.</E> , Confidential Business Information 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 electronically through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> or in hard copy at the Air Regulatory Management Section, Air Planning and Implementation Branch, Air and Radiation Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 4, 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, Georgia 30303-8960. EPA requests that if at all possible, you contact the person 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 Federal holidays. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Simone Jarvis, Air Regulatory Management Section, Air Planning and Implementation Branch, Air and Radiation Division, Region 4, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, Georgia 30303-8960. The telephone number is (404) 562-8393. Ms. Jarvis can also be reached via electronic mail at <E T="03">Jarvis.Simone@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> EPA is approving changes to the Florida SIP submitted by the State on October 12, 2022. The changes address the FL MMPP Rule—Rule 62-296.513, <E T="03">Surface Coating of Miscellaneous Metal Parts and Products,</E> which provides specific reasonably available control technology (RACT) requirements for sources in Broward, Duval, Hillsborough, Miami-Dade, Orange, Palm Beach, or Pinellas Counties that apply surface coatings to any number of metal parts and products, to limit their VOC emission rates, including surface coating at aerospace manufacturing operations. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> However, sources are exempt from this rule if they emit no more than 15 pounds in any one day and no more than three pounds in any one hour. The FL MMPP Rule was incorporated into the Florida SIP to address the RACT requirements for areas that were designated nonattainment for the 1979 1-hour ozone standard. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> EPA redesignated these areas to attainment in 1995. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Rule 62-296.500(3)(a). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  On November 6, 1991, EPA designated and classified the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-W. Palm Beach Area ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> Broward, Dade, and Palm Beach Counties) as moderate nonattainment for the 1979 1-hour ozone NAAQS; the Jacksonville Area ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> Duval County) as transitional nonattainment; the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater Area ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties) as marginal nonattainment; and Orange County as attainment. <E T="03">See</E> 56 FR 56694. Among the requirements applicable to nonattainment areas for the 1-hour ozone NAAQS was the requirement to amend the SIPs for areas to satisfy the requirements of section 183 of the CAA. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 60 FR 41 for the Jacksonville, FL (Duval County) redesignation. <E T="03">See</E> 60 FR 10325 for the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-W. Palm Beach, FL (Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties) redesignation. <E T="03">See</E> 60 FR 62748 for the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL (Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties) redesignation. </FTNT> Through a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) published on July 30, 2024 (89 FR 61055), EPA proposed to approve changes to the State's MMPP Rule, which revises the SIP to provide that aerospace parts and products coating operations classified as area sources of hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) may, in lieu of complying with the VOC requirements of the FL MMPP Rule, instead comply with specified elements of EPA's NESHAP for Aerospace Manufacturing and Rework Facilities at 40 CFR part 63, subpart GG (Aerospace NESHAP). Major sources of HAPs, which are required to comply with the Aerospace NESHAP, would also be exempt from the FL MMPP Rule. In this rulemaking, EPA is finalizing its approval of Florida's October 12, 2022, request to incorporate the changes to the FL MMPP Rule into the Florida SIP. EPA's rationale for approving the changes is described in the July 30, 2024, NPRM. Comments on the July 30, 2024, NPRM were due on or before August 29, 2024. EPA received three sets of comments on the NPRM. EPA received two sets of substantively identical comments from the same commenter. These comments are addressed below and are available in the docket for this action. The third set of comments is not relevant to this action and is excluded from the docket. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Response to Comments</HD> EPA received two substantively identical sets of comments on the July 30, 2024, NPRM from Clean Future (Commenter). EPA has summarized and responded to the comments below: <E T="03">Comments:</E> The Commenter supports EPA's action and suggests that “the EPA offer a thorough analysis of the anticipated decreases in VOC emissions as a consequence of these adjustments.” The Commenter goes on to “urge the EPA to make certain that the revised SIP offers sufficient assistance to impacted industries and contains explicit guidelines for compliance.” Lastly, the Commenter “recommend[s] that the EPA establish a mechanism for periodic review and adjustment of the regulations to incorporate new developments and address any unforeseen challenges.” <E T="03">Response:</E> EPA appreciates the Commenter's support for this action. Due to the general nature of the Commenter's requests and suggestions, EPA is only able to provide general responses. The scope of EPA's review in evaluating SIP revisions is limited to the process in CAA section 110 and EPA's implementing regulations codified at 40 CFR part 51. Under CAA section 110, States have broad discretion to choose the mix of emission limitations and other control measures, means, or techniques that they will implement (or update) through a SIP to provide for attainment and maintenance of national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS). EPA's role, with respect to a SIP revision, is focused on reviewing the submission to determine whether it meets the minimum criteria of the CAA. These minimum criteria include CAA section 110(l) which prohibits EPA from approving a SIP revision that would interfere with any applicable requirement concerning attainment and reasonable further progress (as defined in section 171), or any other applicable requirement of the Act. Where a SIP revision meets the minimum CAA criteria, EPA must approve the submission. When approving a SIP revision, the Agency is not establishing its own requirements for the State to implement. If, at any time, EPA finds that a SIP is inadequate to attain or maintain the relevant NAAQS or otherwise does not comply with the CAA, EPA has the authority under CAA section 110(k)(5) to require the State to revise its SIP to correct such inadequacies. Regarding the suggestion that EPA provide a thorough analysis of anticipated decreases in VOC emission associated with this SIP revision, EPA discussed the potential changes in VOC emissions in the NPRM, and the Commenter has not pointed to any specific concerns with EPA's analysis of VOC emissions. In the NPRM, EPA noted that the SIP revision would allow some sources to apply coatings with a higher VOC content, which has the potential to increase VOC emissions. However, EPA also noted that with all counties in Florida attaining the 1997, 2008, and 2015 ozone, as well as the 2006 and 2012 PM <E T="52">2.5</E> NAAQS, and anticipated to attain the 2024 PM <E T="52">2.5</E> NAAQS based on 2021-2023 monitoring data, <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> it is unlikely that any de minimis increase in the potential to emit VOCs from aerospace coating operations facilities would impact any NAAQS. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> Thus, EPA has concluded that this SIP revision is consistent with the CAA and its implementing regulations and would not interfere with any applicable requirement concerning attainment and reasonable further p ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━