Air Plan Revisions; California; San Diego County Air Pollution Control District and Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R09-OAR-2024-0418; FRL-12225-02-R9]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Revisions; California; San Diego County Air Pollution Control District and Mojave Desert 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 to approve revisions to the San Diego County Air Pollution Control District (SDCAPCD) and Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District (MDAQMD) portions of the California State Implementation Plan (SIP). These revisions concern negative declarations for the Control Techniques Guidelines (CTG) for the Oil and Natural Gas Industry (Oil and Natural Gas CTG). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective December 4, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-R09-OAR-2024-0418. 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> Eugene Chen, EPA Region IX, 75 Hawthorne St., San Francisco, CA 94105. By phone: (415) 947-4304 or by email at <E T="03">chen.eugene@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. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Proposed Action</HD> On September 23, 2024, the EPA proposed to approve the California Air Resources Board's (CARB) submittal of negative declarations for the Oil and Natural Gas CTG adopted by SDCAPCD and MDAQMD. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> As discussed in our proposed action, these negative declarations should provide reasonable assurances that no sources subject to the CTG's requirements currently exist in the relevant ozone nonattainment areas. Based on our review, we did not identify any sources that would be subject to the Oil and Natural Gas CTG and agreed with the SDCAPCD and MDAQMD negative declarations. We therefore proposed approval of these negative declarations for the Oil and Natural Gas CTG. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  89 FR 77467. </FTNT> <GPOTABLE COLS="4" OPTS="L2,nj,i1" CDEF="xs60,r100,10,10"> <TTITLE>Table 1—Submitted Documents</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Local agency</CHED> <CHED H="1">Document</CHED> <CHED H="1">Adopted</CHED> <CHED H="1">Submitted to EPA</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">SDCAPCD</ENT> <ENT>2020 Reasonably Available Control Technology Demonstration for the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Ozone in San Diego County (“2020 RACT SIP”)—Negative Declaration for Oil and Natural Gas CTG</ENT> <ENT>10/14/2020</ENT> <ENT>12/29/2020</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">MDAQMD</ENT> <ENT>70 ppb Ozone Standard Implementation Evaluation: RACT SIP Analysis; Federal Negative Declarations; and Emission Statement Certification—Negative Declaration for Oil and Natural Gas CTG</ENT> <ENT>10/28/2019</ENT> <ENT>12/20/2019</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> As discussed in our September 23, 2024 (89 FR 77467) proposal, we only proposed action on the negative declaration for the Oil and Natural Gas CTG in Attachment B of the SDCAPCD submittal and did not propose action on any other elements of the submittal. Similarly, for the MDAQMD submittal, we only proposed action on the negative declaration for the Oil and Natural Gas CTG in table 2 and did not propose action on any other elements of the submittal. In both cases, the negative declarations for the Oil and Natural Gas CTG were submitted for the 2008 and 2015 ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). <E T="51">2 3</E> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  Page 10 of MDAQMD 70 ppb O3 Evaluation, Final Staff Report. <SU>3</SU>  Page B-10 of SDCAPCD 2020 RACT SIP, Attachment B. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Public Comments and EPA Responses</HD> The EPA's proposed action provided a 30-day public comment period. During this period, we received four comments. We have summarized these comments and included our responses below. <E T="03">Comment 1:</E> One commenter inquired about grants for the electrification of equipment on small farms and included information regarding a certain model of electric tractor deployed in Europe. <E T="03">Response 1:</E> Our proposed action is related to oil and natural gas sources located in certain California air districts. We do not consider this comment to be germane because it is beyond the scope of our proposed action. <E T="03">Comment 2:</E> One commenter expressed general support for the proposed action and urged the EPA to adopt the proposed rulemakings. <E T="03">Response 2:</E> The EPA acknowledges the comment. <E T="03">Comment 3:</E> One commenter urged the EPA to take action to regulate cannabis growth. The commenter asserts that cannabis cultivation is responsible for significant emissions of greenhouse gases and that cannabis plants themselves are a source of terpenes, which are VOCs that “when mixed with nitrogen oxide and sunlight, form ozone-degrading aerosols.” <E T="03">Response 3:</E> We acknowledge the information provided by the commenter regarding the potential for the cannabis cultivation industry to be a source of greenhouse gas emissions and VOCs. As noted in our response to Comment 1 of this preamble above, our proposed action is related to oil and natural gas sources located in certain California air districts. As a result, we do not consider this comment to be germane because it is beyond the scope of our proposed action. <E T="03">Comment 4:</E> One commenter opposes the EPA action on the proposed rulemakings. The commenter notes the need for ozone regulation in southwest California under the 2008 and 2015 ozone NAAQS because “the ozone emitted by the oil and natural gas industries has a stronger impact than in more temperate regions.” The commenter suggests that “providing a bulwark against accelerated ozone production from [these] sources is paramount” and concludes by stating “if the SDCAPCD, MDAQMD and EPA sign onto the negative decision to include oil and natural gas industries in these portions of the California SIP, the problem of ground-level ozone will not be fully resolved.” <E T="03">Response 4:</E> We acknowledge the commenters concerns regarding ozone levels in southwest California and attainment of the 2008 and 2015 ozone NAAQS for the areas at issue in the EPA's proposed action. However, we disagree with the commenter that the proposed action will negatively impact ozone emissions in the areas at issue. We wish to clarify that the EPA's proposed action involves a negative <E T="03">declaration,</E> not a negative decision. As discussed above and in our proposed action, the negative declarations from SDCAPCD and MDAQMD represent their certifications that there are no sources subject to the Oil and Natural Gas CTG present in their jurisdictions. A negative declaration does not exempt sources from regulation, and if sources subject to the Oil and Natural Gas CTG subsequently came to exist in either of the Districts, CAA sections 182(b)(2) and (f) would require that District to adopt control measures implementing RACT for the CTG. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  In a separate action earlier this year, the EPA proposed to approve a California statewide regulation into the California SIP for those areas that need to regulate sources covered by the Oil and Natural Gas CTG. See 89 FR 36729 (May 3, 2024). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. EPA Action</HD> None of the comments submitted change our assessment of the SIP revision as described in the proposed action at issue. Therefore, as authorized in section 110(k)(3) of the Act, the EPA is approving SDCAPCD's and MDAQMD's negative declarations for the Oil and Natural Gas CTG because they fulfill the relevant requirements in CAA sections 110(a), 110(l), and 182(b)(2). In addition, our approval of SDCAPCD's negative declaration terminates the EPA's obligation to promulgate a Federal Implementation Plan (FIP) for SDCAPCD arising from our November 16, 2020 finding of failure to submit for the Oil and Natural Gas CTG. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  November 16, 2020. 85 FR 72963. Our November 16, 2020 finding of failure to submit also triggered offset sanctions and highway funding sanctions. These sanctions clocks were extinguished by SDCAPCD's December 29, 2020 submittal and our May 6, 2021 letter determining that the District's negative declaration submittal was complete. See Docket Item B-01. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</H ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 22k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━