Approval and Promulgation of Air Quality Implementation Plans; New Hampshire; Regional Haze State Implementation Plan for the Second Implementation Period

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R01-OAR-2023-0187; FRL-11554-02-R1]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Approval and Promulgation of Air Quality Implementation Plans; New Hampshire; Regional Haze State Implementation 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 (SIP) revision submitted by New Hampshire on May 5, 2022, as satisfying applicable requirements under the Clean Air Act (CAA) and EPA's Regional Haze Rule for the program's second implementation period. New Hampshire's SIP submission addresses 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 SIP submission also addresses other applicable requirements for the second implementation period of the regional haze program. EPA is taking this action pursuant to sections 110 and 169A of the Clean Air Act. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective December 9, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket Identification No. EPA-R01-OAR-2023-0187. 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">i.e.,</E> 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 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Region 1 Regional Office, Air and Radiation Division, 5 Post Office Square—Suite 100, Boston, MA. EPA requests that if at all possible, you contact the contact 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 legal holidays and facility closures due to COVID-19. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Eric Rackauskas, Air Quality Branch, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Region 1, 5 Post Office Square—Suite 100, (Mail code 5-MI), Boston, MA 02109—3912, tel. (617) 918-1628, email <E T="03">rackauskas.eric@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document whenever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background and Purpose</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Response to Comments</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 and Purpose</HD> On May 5, 2022, supplemented on September 21, 2023, <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services (NHDES) submitted a revision to its SIP to address regional haze for the second implementation period. NHDES made this SIP submission to satisfy the requirements of the CAA's regional haze program pursuant to CAA sections 169A and 169B and 40 CFR 51.308. This submission included an updated version of Env-A 2300, <E T="03">Mitigation of Regional Haze.</E> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  New Hampshire included a corrected Appendix W in a supplemental submission on September 21, 2023. </FTNT> On November 20, 2023, EPA published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) in which EPA proposed to approve New Hampshire's May 5, 2022, SIP submission (supplemented on September 21, 2023) as satisfying the regional haze requirements for the second implementation period contained in the CAA and 40 CFR 51.308. EPA is now determining that the New Hampshire regional haze SIP submission for the second implementation period meets the applicable statutory and regulatory requirements and is thus approving New Hampshire's submission into its SIP. Other specific requirements of the New Hampshire submittal and the rationale for EPA's proposed action are explained in the NPRM and will not be restated here. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Response to Comments</HD> In response to the NPRM, EPA received four sets of comments, including a comment letter signed by the National Parks Conservation Association, the Sierra Club, the Appalachian Mountain Club, and the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks (collectively, the “Conservation Groups” or the “Groups”), an anonymous comment, a comment letter from the Mid-Atlantic/Northeast Visibility Union (MANEVU), and a comment letter from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality's Division of Air Quality. Below, EPA summarizes significant comments and provides responses. The verbatim comments may be viewed under Docket ID Number EPA-R01-OAR-2023-0187 on the <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> website. <E T="03">Comment 1:</E> The Conservation Groups comment that EPA improperly relied on the fact that the Class I areas impacted by New Hampshire sources are below their respective Uniform Rate of Progress (URP) glidepaths to allow New Hampshire to avoid a “rigorous analysis,” and that EPA allows New Hampshire to use being below the URP as a “safe harbor” to avoid Regional Haze and Clean Air Act requirements. <E T="03">Response 1:</E> The comment appears to conflate two issues regarding rule requirements related to the URP glidepath. EPA has said that a Class I area's position below the URP glidepath is not a safe harbor—that is, being below the glidepath cannot be a basis for justifying a particular set of controls or decision not to require any controls. EPA did not “rely on the fact that the Class I areas impacted by New Hampshire sources are below their respective URP glidepaths” or consider the URP glidepaths in the context of New Hampshire's source selection or control measure determinations. Rather, on the only page of the NPRM the comment cites for support, EPA noted that the fact that the RPGs for the Class I areas are below their respective URP glidepaths means that the demonstrations that would otherwise be required under 51.308(f)(3)(ii)(A) and (B) are not triggered. These regulatory sections are, by their very terms, only applicable where a state establishes RPGs above the URP glidepath(s) for its Class I area(s). Thus, considering whether a particular Class I area is below the glidepath is entirely appropriate and, in fact, required in this context. <E T="03">Comment 2:</E> The Conservation Groups contend that the MANEVU visibility modeling and source selection threshold “used a 2% contribution threshold (or 3.0 Mm <E T="51">−1</E> visibility impact threshold) to target the largest sources of visibility impairment in the state.” Based on this threshold, New Hampshire identified only one unit at one source in the state for a four-factor analysis, and the Groups argue that EPA cannot rely on this source review to conduct a rigorous and meaningful source selection process. The Groups further comment that “EPA states multiple times in its proposed approval of New Hampshire's SIP Revision that it does not agree with the State's reliance on MANE-VU's source selection threshold . . . [y]et . . . attempts to excuse New Hampshire's flawed source selection process and approve the State's SIP Revision anyway by claiming that New Hampshire analyzed additional sources of visibility pollution in its SIP.” <E T="03">Response 2:</E> This comment also appears to conflate two issues—namely, the 2% contribution threshold MANEVU used to determine whether a state is reasonably anticipated to impact visibility at a Class I area and the 3.0 inverse megameters (Mm <E T="51">−1</E> ) threshold used in Ask 2 to target the largest individual sources across a multi-state region. To be clear, MANEVU considered a 2% threshold for use in determining whether emissions from a state as a whole contribute to visibility impairment in a Class I area. Here, New Hampshire concedes that emissions from the State exceed that threshold and therefore, by the State's admission, contribute to visibility impairment in Class I areas in New Hampshire, Maine, and New Brunswick (Canada). Thus, the 2% contribution threshold was of little import to New Hampshire's source selection process, as the State was above the threshold and did select numerous sources for review through the MANEVU Asks and federal land managers (FLMs) consultation process. As for the 3.0 Mm <E T="51">−1</E> threshold, the MANEVU states used it in one of the six Asks as just one means of selecting sources in a state for four-factor analysis. Other MANEVU Asks examined sources with impacts lower than 3.0 Mm <E T="51">−1</E> and, in several cases, resulted in New Hampshire considering the four factors for those sources. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  For example, MANEVU Ask 5 resulted in NHDES requesting a four-factor analysis for five combustion turbines in the State. See Appendix T of the New Hampshire submittal. </FTNT> As explained in the NPRM, EPA does not necessarily agree that the 3.0 Mm <E T="51">−1</E> visibility impact is a reasonable threshold for source selection. The RHR recognizes that, due to the nature of regional haze visibility impairment, numerous and sometimes relatively small sources may need to be selected and evaluated for imp ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 61k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━