Air Plan Approval; Pennsylvania; Adoption of Federal Implementation Plan Reasonably Available Control Technology Requirements for Keystone, Conemaugh, Homer City, and Montour Generating Facilities for the 1997 and 2008 Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R03-OAR-2024-0302; FRL-12064-02-R3]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Pennsylvania; Adoption of Federal Implementation Plan Reasonably Available Control Technology Requirements for Keystone, Conemaugh, Homer City, and Montour Generating Facilities for the 1997 and 2008 Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards</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 portion of the state implementation plan (SIP) revisions submitted by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The revisions being approved adopt nitrogen oxides (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) emission limits and requirements for the coal-fired electric generating units (EGUs) equipped with selective catalytic reduction (SCR) at the Keystone, Conemaugh, Homer City, and Montour facilities. The NO <E T="52">X</E> limits address reasonably available control technology (RACT) requirements for these EGUs for the 1997 and 2008 ozone national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) and address the deficiencies identified in EPA's August 16, 2022, disapproval of an earlier SIP submission. This action is being taken under the Clean Air Act (CAA). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective on December 6, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID Number EPA-R03-OAR-2024-0302. 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,</E> or 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> Sean Silverman, 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) 814-5511. Mr. Silverman can also be reached via electronic mail at <E T="03">silverman.sean@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> On August 16, 2022, (87 FR 50257) EPA took final action to disapprove portions of a Pennsylvania SIP revision submitted May 16, 2016 that, among other things, established NO <E T="52">X</E> emission limitations for the coal-fired EGUs equipped with SCR at the Keystone, Conemaugh, Homer City, and Montour facilities, to satisfy certain RACT obligations for the 1997 and 2008 ozone NAAQS. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> EPA's August 16, 2022, final disapproval started a sanctions clock under CAA section 179 and 40 CFR 52.31. The two-to-one new source emissions offset sanction took effect on March 15, 2024 (18 months following the September 15, 2022, effective date of the August 16, 2022, disapproval, 87 FR 50257). Highway funding sanctions would have taken effect September 15, 2024, unless the state submitted, and EPA approved, SIP revisions correcting the deficiencies identified in the August 16, 2022, disapproval action. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  A more detailed and complete summary of the history of the RACT limits for these EGUs can be found in the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for this final action. 89 FR 56680 (July 10, 2024). </FTNT> On August 31, 2022, EPA issued a Federal implementation plan (FIP) adopting NO <E T="52">X</E> RACT limits for these four sources addressing these same RACT obligations. 87 FR 53381. Three of the sources subject to the FIP filed a challenge to the FIP in the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals. <E T="03">Keystone-Conemaugh Projects LLC</E> v. <E T="03">EPA, et al.,</E> No. 22-3026. Following briefing and oral argument, on May 2, 2024, the Third Circuit issued a decision upholding the RACT limits and other requirements in EPA's August 31, 2022, FIP. The court decided and resolved all issues raised by the Petitioners in EPA's favor. Id. On April 10, 2024, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) submitted two SIP revisions to EPA which adopted into the SIP the NO <E T="52">X</E> limits and other requirements found in EPA's final August 31, 2022, FIP for Keystone, Conemaugh, Homer City, and Montour (Montour was submitted separately). On July 10, 2024, EPA published a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) proposing to approve Pennsylvania's April 10, 2024, SIP revisions (89 FR 56680). EPA's NPRM also proposed to find that the incorporation of title V permits containing the FIP requirements into Pennsylvania's SIP addressed the deficiencies identified in EPA's August 16, 2022 (87 FR 50257), partial disapproval. The reasons for the proposed approval and the determination were stated in the proposal for this action and will not be restated here. Based on this finding and the proposed approval, EPA simultaneously issued an Interim Final Determination (IFD) staying the application of the offset sanction and deferring the application of the highway sanction triggered by EPA's August 16, 2022 (87 FR 50257) disapproval. 89 FR 56666 (July 10, 2024). EPA's proposed action noted that it was not taking action at this time on certain RACT limits for auxiliary boilers which were included in the SIP revisions, and therefore this final action does not address those RACT limits for the identified auxiliary boilers. The public comment period for the proposed approval and determination ended on August 9, 2024. EPA received three comments, which can be found in the docket. One of the comments is not relevant to this action and will not be addressed. The other two were supportive, but one generally supportive comment also contained comments which could be considered adverse. Those potentially adverse comments are addressed below. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Summary of SIP Revision and EPA Analysis</HD> Pennsylvania's SIP submissions, dated April 9, 2024, and received by EPA on April 10, 2024, included four redacted title V permits incorporating the FIP requirements for the EGUs equipped with SCR at Keystone, Conemaugh, Homer City, and Montour. EPA has reviewed these permits and determined that the permits incorporate the same emission limits, monitoring, testing, recordkeeping, reporting, work practices and other requirements for these EGUs found in EPA's FIP. The permits are listed in Table 1 in this document. These submissions and permits are part of the docket for this rule making and are available online at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> <GPOTABLE COLS="4" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s75,16,r50,xs90"> <TTITLE>Table 1—List of Title V permits incorporating the Requirements of the August 31, 2022, Federal Implementation Plan</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Source name</CHED> <CHED H="1">Title V permit No.</CHED> <CHED H="1">County</CHED> <CHED H="1">Permit effective date</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Conemaugh</ENT> <ENT>32-0059</ENT> <ENT>Indiana</ENT> <ENT>March 14, 2024.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Homer City</ENT> <ENT>32-00055</ENT> <ENT>Indiana</ENT> <ENT>March 14, 2024.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Keystone</ENT> <ENT>03-00027</ENT> <ENT>Armstrong</ENT> <ENT>March 14, 2024.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Montour</ENT> <ENT>47-00001</ENT> <ENT>Montour</ENT> <ENT>March 14, 2024.</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> The title V permits in the April 10, 2024, SIP submissions for Keystone and Conemaugh also contain case-by-case RACT limits for certain gas or oil-fired auxiliary boilers at these facilities. However, EPA is not taking action at this time on the case-by-case RACT limits in these permits for two auxiliary boilers at Keystone (Source IDs 037 and 038) and two at Conemaugh (Source IDs 039 and 041). These auxiliary boilers were not subject to the presumptive RACT limit in 25 Pa. Code 129.97(g)(1)(viii) for which EPA issued a final disapproval in August 2022. As explained in the proposed action, EPA's assessment regarding the approvability of the RACT limits and other requirements for these EGUs found in Pennsylvania's SIP submission is substantially the same as the justification and analysis in the record EPA created for its FIP. EPA provided an in-depth discussion of the methodology and reasoning for setting the FIP limits for each of these EGUs in EPA's proposed FIP (87 FR 31798, May 25, 2022), the associated technical support document supporting the proposed FIP, and in responses to comments received on the proposed FIP and published with the final FIP action (87 FR 53381, August 31, 2022). EPA has put the technical support document for EPA's FIP into the docket for this action. The <E T="04">Federal Register</E> documents for the proposed and final FIP are available at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> under docket number EPA-R03-OAR-2022-0347 and in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> at the citations provided in the prior sentence. EPA is not aware of any change in the facts since the FIP was finalized that would alter any of the limits or requirements or EPA's analysis supporting the FIP. Other specific requirements of Pennsylvania's April 10, 2024, submittal and the rationale for EPA's proposed action are explained in the NPRM and will not be restated here. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. EPA's Response to Comments Received</HD> EPA received three comments on the July ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 33k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━