Air Plan Approval; OR; Regional Haze Plan for the Second Implementation Period

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R10-OAR-2023-0600, FRL-11593-02-R10]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; OR; Regional Haze Plan for the Second Implementation Period</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 the regional haze state implementation plan revision submitted by Oregon on April 29, 2022, as supplemented on November 22, 2023, as satisfying applicable requirements under the Clean Air Act and the EPA's Regional Haze Rule for the program's second implementation period. The Oregon submission addressed the requirement that states must periodically revise their long-term strategies for making reasonable progress towards the national goal of preventing any future, and remedying any existing, anthropogenic impairment of visibility, including regional haze, in mandatory Class I Federal areas. The Oregon submission also addressed other applicable requirements for the second implementation period of the regional haze program. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective November 7, 2024. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-R10-OAR-2023-0600. 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 or other information the disclosure of which 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 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> or please contact the person listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section for additional availability information. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Jeff Hunt, EPA Region 10, 1200 Sixth Avenue, Suite 155, Seattle, WA 98101, at (206) 553-0256 or <E T="03">hunt.jeff@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document, wherever “we” or “our” is used, it means the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. EPA Responses to Comments Received</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. National Park Service Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">1. Federal Land Manager Consultation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">2. Use of the Four Statutory Factors in Determining Reasonable Progress</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">3. Use of Permitted Emissions Limits To Align Allowable Emissions With Actual Emissions</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">4. Use of a Stipulated Agreement and Final Order (SAFO) Versus a Unilateral Order</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">5. Compliance Deadlines</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">6. Standards for Emissions Unit Replacement</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">7. Wauna Facility—Biomass Fired Fluidized Bed Boiler</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">8. Georgia-Pacific—Toledo LLC—Final Control Determination</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">9. Georgia-Pacific—Toledo LLC—Emission Limit</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">10. Georgia-Pacific—Toledo LLC—Emissions Unit Replacement</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">11. Cascade Pacific Pulp, LLC—Halsey Pulp Mill Power Boilers—SCR</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">12. Cascade Pacific Pulp, LLC—Halsey Pulp Mill Power Boilers—LNB</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">13. Cascade Pacific Pulp, LLC—Halsey Pulp Mill Power Boilers—Compliance Deadline and Emission Limit</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">14. International Paper—Springfield—Emission Limit</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">15. Owens-Brockway Glass Container Inc.</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Environmental Organizations' Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">1. Stationary Source Contribution</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">2. Oregon's Regional Haze Rule Is Inconsistent With the CAA</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">3. Oregon's Use of PSEL Reductions as a Source Selection Method</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">4. Oregon's “Alternative Compliance” Pathways</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">5. Documentation of Oregon's Four-Factor Analysis Process</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">6. Owens-Brockway Glass Container Inc.</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">7. Reasonable Progress Goals</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">8. Robust Demonstration Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">9. Environmental Justice</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Final 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</HD> On February 23, 2024, the EPA proposed to approve the regional haze state implementation plan (SIP) revision submitted by Oregon on April 29, 2022, as supplemented on November 22, 2023, as satisfying applicable requirements under the Clean Air Act (CAA) and the EPA's Regional Haze Rule (RHR) for the program's second implementation period (89 FR 13622). The public comment period for our proposed action was originally scheduled to close on March 25, 2024. However, on February 28, 2024, we received a request to extend the public comment period an additional 30 days. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> On March 14, 2024, we published a document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> extending the public comment period end date from March 25, 2024, to April 24, 2024 (89 FR 18866). <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  This extension request letter may be found in the docket for this action. </FTNT> We received four comments. We determined that two comments were not germane to our action, for the following reasons. One commenter expressed opposition to the cultivation of cannabis, asserting general air pollution concerns. The commenter did not provide any tangible connection to the regional haze requirements or the Oregon submission. The EPA acknowledges the commenter's concerns; however, the comment is outside the scope of this action and does not indicate that the EPA's approval of the SIP submission is inconsistent with the CAA. Oversight of cannabis farms is unrelated to this regional haze action. A second commenter cited some details from the Oregon regional haze plan, asserting a connection to transmission of the coronavirus. However, the commenter provided no logical basis for this assertion. The EPA acknowledges the commenter's concerns; however, the comment is outside the scope of this action and does not indicate that the EPA's approval of the SIP submission is inconsistent with the CAA. Potential connections between air pollution and respiratory viruses on public health is unrelated to this regional haze action. We also received two germane comments. One was submitted by the National Park Service (NPS). The second was submitted by Earthjustice on behalf of a coalition of environmental organizations consisting of Cully Air Action Team, National Parks Conservation Association, Neighbors for Clean Air, Northwest Environmental Defense Center, Oregon Environmental Council, Sierra Club, and Verde (Environmental Organizations). The full text of the comments may be found in the docket for this action. We have summarized the comments and provided our responses in section II. of this preamble. Under the Clean Air Act, the Administrator is required to approve a SIP submission that complies with the provisions of the Clean Air Act and applicable Federal regulations. 42 U.S.C. 7410(k); 40 CFR 52.02(a). Thus, in reviewing SIP submissions, the EPA's role is to approve state choices, provided that they meet the criteria of the Clean Air Act. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. EPA Responses to Comments Received</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. National Park Service Comments</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD3">1. Federal Land Manager Consultation</HD> <E T="03">Comment:</E> “[W]e would like to make the EPA aware that the Oregon SIP process did not meet the requirements for Federal Land Manager (FLM) consultation . . . The NPS participated in early, informal engagement with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (ODEQ) regarding SIP development beginning in January of 2020. This productive collaboration included a meeting, subsequent written documentation, and staff-to-staff technical feedback on individual facility four-factor analyses as documented in the Oregon SIP. The NPS appreciates the extensive efforts that Oregon invested in early communication. However, many of the draft conclusions and determinations presented to the NPS during early engagement were not incorporated into the draft SIP released for public review in late August 2021. In fact, the public comment draft included substantial changes to the facility-specific control determinations in comparison with what the NPS had reviewed previously.” <E T="03">Response:</E> The EPA disagrees with the commenter's assertion that Oregon did not meet the requirements for Federal Land Manager (FLM) consultation in 40 CFR 51.308(i). As described below, ODEQ met all of the FLM consultation statutory and regulatory requirements. Chapter 6.3 <E T="03">Consultations with Federal Land Managers</E> of the April 29, 2022, SIP revision contained documentation of the extensive outreach with the NPS. This included providing a May 5, 2021, draft of the regional haze plan explicitly for the purpose of FLM consultation (May 2021 FLM draft). A key element of 40 CFR 51.308(i)(2) is that consultation occur early enough in a state's policy analyses of its long-term strategy so that information and recommendations provided by the FLMs can meaningfully inform a state's decisions on the long-term strategy. Chapters 6.3.3 <E T="03">Federal Land Manager Review of Draft State Implementation Plan</E> and 6.3.4 <E T="03">Federal Land Manager Comments and DEQ Responses</E> ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 189k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━