Air Plan Approval; Washington; Spokane Regional Clean Air Agency, General Air Quality Regulations

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R10-OAR-2024-0433: FRL-12248-01-R10]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Washington; Spokane Regional Clean Air Agency, General Air Quality Regulations</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 revisions to the Washington State Implementation Plan (SIP) that were submitted by the Department of Ecology (Ecology) in coordination with the Spokane Regional Clean Air Agency (SRCAA). In 2021, the EPA approved a comprehensive update to the SRCAA general air quality regulations in the SIP, which include new source review permitting requirements as well as other general requirements for sources regulated under SRCAA's jurisdiction. In this action, the EPA proposes to approve additional updates to the SRCAA general air quality regulations promulgated since our comprehensive approval in 2021. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before December 16, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R10-OAR-2024-0433 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. Recodification of the Washington Clean Air Act and Other Miscellaneous Revisions</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Revision to the Source Categories Subject to Registration</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Revision to Minor New Source Review Permitting Applicability Thresholds</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Use of Woodstoves During Emergency Power Outages</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. The EPA's Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Proposed Revisions to the Incorporation by Reference Section of the SIP</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Approved But Not Incorporated by Reference Regulations</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> On May 10, 2021, the EPA approved a comprehensive update of the general air quality regulations, codified in SRCAA Regulation I, into the SIP (86 FR 24718). Under the Washington Clean Air Act, local clean air agencies may adopt equally stringent or more stringent requirements to apply in lieu of Ecology's Statewide general air quality regulations for sources regulated under the local agency's jurisdiction, if they so choose. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> SRCAA's jurisdiction covers the geographic area of Spokane County, with certain exceptions. By statute, SRCAA does not have authority for sources under the jurisdiction of the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC). See Revised Code of Washington Chapter 80.50. Under the applicability provisions of Washington Administrative Code (WAC) 173-405-012, 173-410-012, and 173-415-012, SRCAA does not have jurisdiction for kraft pulp mills, sulfite pulping mills, and primary aluminum plants. For these sources, Ecology retains Statewide, direct jurisdiction. Ecology and EFSEC also retain Statewide, direct jurisdiction for issuing permits under the Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) program for major stationary sources in attainment areas. Lastly, SRCAA does not have jurisdiction on Indian reservations and any other area where the EPA or an Indian tribe has demonstrated that a tribe has jurisdiction. The regulations approved and incorporated by reference into the SIP for SRCAA's specific jurisdiction can be found at 40 CFR 52.2470(c), <E T="03">Table 9—Additional Regulations Approved for the Spokane Regional Clean Air Agency (SRCAA) Jurisdiction.</E> The version of Regulation I approved in the SIP includes updates promulgated by SRCAA effective as of September 1, 2020. SRCAA subsequently promulgated an update to Regulation I effective July 15, 2023 (Washington State Register 23-12-060 included in the docket for this action). <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  See our February 24, 2021 proposed rulemaking (86 FR 11204). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Recodification of the Washington Clean Air Act and Other Miscellaneous Revisions</HD> Effective June 11, 2020, the State legislature recodified the Washington Clean Air Act from Revised Code of Washington (RCW) 70.94 to RCW 70A.15. Local air agencies were encouraged to update affected rules to reflect new statutory references by July 1, 2025. This change affected SRCAA sections 1.01, 1.04, 2.01, 2.03, 2.04, 2.05, 2.08, 2.11, 2.12, 4.04, 5.02, 5.04, 5.05, 5.07, 5.08, 5.10, 5.13, 6.04, 8.03, 8.07, 8.08, 8.09, and 8.10, which were submitted for reapproval in the SIP. In addition to the recodification, SRCAA made other generally minor typographical and formatting changes. Comprehensive redline/strikeout versions of each updated section of Regulation I are included in the docket for this action, as well as the EPA's analysis of the revisions proposed for approval in this action. Therefore, the relatively minor citation updates, formatting changes, and typographical revisions are not restated here. The most substantive proposed change, other than the changes described in sections I.B. and I.C. of this preamble, relates to Regulation I, section 2.08 <E T="03">Falsification of Statements or Documents, and Treatment of Documents.</E> Previously, as part of the 2021 comprehensive update, SRCAA submitted only subsections (E) and (F) because they had direct corollaries in the WAC. In this update, SRCAA submitted, and the EPA is proposing to approve subsections (A) through (D) which contain additional provisions regarding the treatment of documents, the prevention of falsifying documents, and the prohibition against making false or misleading statements to an authorized representative of the SRCAA Board of Directors. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Revision to the Source Categories Subject to Registration</HD> Effective March 9, 2023, as part of Washington State Register 23-05-21 included in the docket for this action, SRCAA removed marijuana producers and processors from the list of source categories subject to regulation under SRCAA section 4.04. We note that in our prior approval of SRCAA Regulation I, the EPA did not include the marijuana provisions in subsections (A)(3)(u), (A)(3)(v), and (A)(5)(e)(9) formerly contained in SRCAA section 4.04, because provisions related to odor and nuisance are outside the scope of the SIP (86 FR 24718, May 10, 2021). However, removal of these provisions affected the codification of citations for other provisions approved in the SIP. Therefore, the EPA is proposing to approve the updated version of section 4.04, including the minor typographical and statutory citation revisions discussed above in section I.A. of this preamble, to reflect the recodification of citations for the remaining SIP-approved provisions in section 4.04. SRCAA also made a minor revision to section 5.02 <E T="03">New Source Review Applicability and When Required</E> to reflect the removal of marijuana producers and processors in subsection (I)(1)(b). While this provision is also outside the scope of the SIP, removal of subsection (I)(1)(b) resulted in recodification of the former subsection (I)(1)(c), discussed below in section I.C. of this preamble, to (I)(1)(b). <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Revision to Minor New Source Review Permitting Applicability Thresholds</HD> As discussed in the proposed rulemaking for our 2021 update of Regulation I in the SIP, SRCAA uses a registration-based, source category approach in section 4.04 <E T="03">Stationary Sources and Source Categories Subject to Registration</E> for determining minor new source review (NSR) applicability under Regulation I, Article V <E T="03"> New Source Review for Stationary Sources and Portable Sources </E> ( <E T="03">see</E> 86 FR 11204, February 24, 2021, at page 11206). Under subsection 5.02(I), not all source categories subject to registration require NSR permits. In our 2021 update, SRCAA did not submit, and the EPA did not approve, subsection 5.02(I) <E T="03">Stationary Sources Exempt from Article V</E> because the source categories at the time related primarily to the regulation of odor and air toxics which are not criteria pollutants and which are outside the scope of the SIP. As part of SRCAA's update to Regulation I, SRCAA added a new provision (c) under subsection 5.02(I)(1) related to surface coating, which could impact ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 27k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━