Air Plan Approval; Washington; Olympic Region Clean Air Agency, Recreational Fires

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R10-OAR-2024-0430: FRL-12243-01-R10]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Washington; Olympic Region Clean Air Agency, Recreational Fires</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to approve a revision to the Washington State Implementation Plan (SIP) that was submitted by the Department of Ecology (Ecology) in coordination with the Olympic Region Clean Air Agency (ORCAA). In 2013, Ecology and ORCAA inadvertently submitted for incorporation into the SIP a ban on small, recreational fires in Thurston County. These fires are defined as having a maximum pile size of three feet in diameter by two feet high using seasoned firewood or charcoal, generally associated with backyard, summer campfires. Ecology and ORCAA provided a review of the historical record to demonstrate that the ban on recreational fires was not relied upon for attainment, maintenance, or reasonable further progress in the Thurston County area. Ecology and ORCAA also provided data to demonstrate that removing the ban on recreational fires would not interfere with maintenance of the national ambient air quality standards. Therefore, we are proposing to approve the request by Ecology and ORCAA to remove this provision from the SIP. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before November 25, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R10-OAR-2024-0430 at <E T="03">https://www.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> 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, 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> <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> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background for Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Review of Attainment and Maintenance Plan Control Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Review of Particulate Matter Monitoring Data</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. The EPA's Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background for Proposed Action</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Review of Attainment and Maintenance Plan Control Requirements</HD> On August 7, 1987, the EPA identified a portion of Thurston County as a “Group I” area of concern due to measured violations of the then-newly promulgated 24-hour national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) for particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter less than or equal to a nominal 10 micrometers, referred to as PM <E T="52">10</E> (52 FR 29383). The Thurston County PM <E T="52">10</E> area consists of the adjoining cities of Olympia, Lacey, and Tumwater, Washington. Geographically, the area is characterized by low rolling terrain with hills rising higher toward its southern and western boundaries. The surrounding hills trap pollutants during certain meteorological conditions occurring in the late fall and winter, called inversions, that create a shallow, stagnant layer of air near ground level. Studies at the time showed that woodsmoke from residential home heating contributed 80-95% of ambient PM <E T="52">10</E> concentrations on the high pollution days of concern. In response to this problem in Thurston County and other areas in the State, the Washington Legislature adopted a comprehensive, statewide residential wood heating control program in 1987. Ecology promulgated regulations to implement the program under Washington Administrative Code (WAC) 173-433 <E T="03">Solid Fuel Burning Device Standards,</E> establishing a curtailment program regulating fireplace and woodstove usage on high PM <E T="52">10</E> concentration days, as well as other requirements related to residential wood heating. This set of regulations, and ORCAA's implementation and enforcement of the regulations, formed the control measures relied upon in the attainment plan submitted in February 1989. On November 15, 1990, the Clean Air Act (CAA) Amendments under section 107(d)(4)(B), designated the Thurston County Group I area as nonattainment for PM <E T="52">10</E> by operation of law. To address the additional moderate area requirements imposed by the 1990 CAA Amendments, Ecology submitted a supplement to the attainment plan in November 1991. However, the 1991 supplement to the attainment plan did not alter the primary focus on residential wood heating. The EPA took final action to approve the entire plan on July 27, 1993 (58 FR 40056). Importantly, in our final action, we clarified that the open burning ban for the area, which includes the smaller subset of recreational fires, was not submitted for approval and was not relied upon to demonstrate attainment of the PM <E T="52">10</E> NAAQS. The implementation of WAC 173-433 rapidly brought the area into attainment by 1991. As PM <E T="52">10</E> levels in the area steadily declined, the EPA redesignated the Thurston County nonattainment area to a maintenance area on October 4, 2000 (65 FR 59128). In addition to approving Ecology's redesignation request for the area, the EPA also approved a maintenance plan. The maintenance plan reaffirmed that the residential wood heating program was responsible for the permanent and enforceable reductions and would ensure continued compliance with the PM <E T="52">10</E> NAAQS for ten years, without any changes to the control measures already in place. On July 1, 2013, Ecology and ORCAA submitted a limited maintenance plan to fulfill the second 10-year planning requirement of Clean Air Act section 175A(b) to ensure compliance through 2020. A limited maintenance plan is used when monitored PM <E T="52">10</E> concentrations are very low relative to the NAAQS, and the suite of control measures that brought the area into attainment remain in place. In this case, the EPA promulgated a new 24-hour NAAQS for particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter less than or equal to a nominal 2.5 micrometers, referred to as PM <E T="52">2.5</E> (62 FR 38652, July 18, 1997). The EPA subsequently revised the 24-hour PM <E T="52">2.5</E> NAAQS to 35 micrograms per cubic meter (µg/m <SU>3</SU> ), while leaving the 24-hour PM <E T="52">10</E> NAAQS unchanged at 150 µg/m <SU>3</SU> . Ecology and ORCAA submitted a demonstration as part of the 2013 limited maintenance plan to show that converting the existing residential wood heating program from a focus on PM <E T="52">10</E> to the new PM <E T="52">2.5</E> standard would continue to protect the PM <E T="52">10</E> NAAQS. The agencies provided an analysis of PM <E T="52">10</E> and PM <E T="52">2.5</E> data collected by collocated Federal reference monitors at the Thurston County monitoring site, finding that in the critical winter season, the majority of PM <E T="52">10</E> was PM <E T="52">2.5</E> . The statistical relationship between the two PM parameters indicated that PM <E T="52">2.5</E> levels would need to exceed 139 µg/m <SU>3</SU> before the PM <E T="52">10</E> NAAQS was exceeded. Therefore, the State determined that conversion of the residential wood heating program from a focus on the PM <E T="52">10</E> NAAQS to the PM <E T="52">2.5</E> NAAQS would increase the stringency and effectiveness of the program. In conjunction with this demonstration, Ecology and ORCAA submitted revised State and local regulations to reflect the update to the PM <E T="52">2.5</E> NAAQS and wood burning, generally. It was during this update that Ecology and ORCAA inadvertently submitted ORCAA regulation 6.2.7(c) banning recreational fires in the area, which was not a control measure contained or relied upon in the attainment or maintenance plans. On October 3, 2013, EPA approved ORCAA regulation 6.2.7(c) into the ORCAA portion of the Washington SIP as part of EPA's approval of the area's second 10-year PM <E T="52">10</E> limited maintenance plan (78 FR 61188). <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Review of Particulate Matter Monitoring Data</HD> In addition to providing a historical analysis that ORCAA regulation 6.2.7(c) was not relied upon as part of the 1989 and 1991 attainment plans or the 1999 maintenance plan, ORCAA provided an analysis of particulate matter monitoring data to show that removing the ban on recreational fires is highly unlikely to affect compliance with the PM <E T="52">10</E> or PM <E T="52">2.5</E> NAAQS in any meaningful way. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> A graph of maximum summer and winter concentrations in Thurston County, calc ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 19k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━