Air Plan Approval; Connecticut; New Haven and Fairfield Counties Second 10-Year Limited Maintenance Plan for the 2006 24-Hour PM2.5 Standard

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R01-OAR-2024-0117; FRL-12283-02-R1]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT> Air Plan Approval; Connecticut; New Haven and Fairfield Counties Second 10-Year Limited Maintenance Plan for the 2006 24-Hour PM <E T="0735">2.5</E> Standard </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 State Implementation Plan (SIP) revision submitted by the State of Connecticut. On May 9, 2023, and supplemented on February 21, 2024, the State submitted a Limited Maintenance Plan (LMP) for the 2006 24-hour PM <E T="52">2.5</E> National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for New Haven and Fairfield Counties (New Haven-Fairfield). This revision provides for the maintenance of the 2006 24-hour PM <E T="52">2.5</E> NAAQS through the end of the second 10-year portion of the maintenance period. Additionally, EPA finds the LMP to be adequate since it meets the appropriate transportation conformity requirements. The intended effect of this action is to approve Connecticut's LMP for the 2006 24-hour PM <E T="52">2.5</E> NAAQS for the New Haven- Fairfield maintenance area into the Connecticut SIP. This action is being taken in accordance with the Clean Air Act. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective on December 16, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket Identification No. EPA-R01-OAR-2024-0117. 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> Ayla Martinelli, 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) 918-1057, email <E T="03">martinelli.ayla@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. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background and Purpose</HD> On December 14, 2009, EPA designated the New Haven-Fairfield area as nonattainment for the 2006 PM <E T="52">2.5</E> NAAQS (74 FR 58688). Subsequently, on October 24, 2013, EPA redesignated the New Haven-Fairfield area to attainment for the 2006 PM <E T="52">2.5</E> NAAQS (78 FR 58467). On September 27, 2024, EPA published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for the State of Connecticut (89 FR 79189). The NPRM proposed approval of the State's second, 10-year LMP for the 2006 PM <E T="52">2.5</E> standard for the New Haven-Fairfield area. The formal SIP revision was submitted by Connecticut on May 9, 2023, and supplemented on February 21, 2024. The New Haven-Fairfield LMP for the 2006 PM <E T="52">2.5</E> NAAQS submitted by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CT DEEP) is designed to maintain the 2006 PM <E T="52">2.5</E> NAAQS within this area through the end of the second ten-year portion of the maintenance period. EPA is approving the plan because it meets all applicable requirements under CAA sections 110 and 175A. We are also finding the LMP to be adequate as it pertains to transportation conformity requirements. Other specific requirements of the LMP and the rationale for EPA's action are explained in the NPRM and will not be restated here. One public comment was received on the NPRM. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Response to Comments</HD> EPA received one comment during the comment period. The comment we received supports the final approval of the proposed action. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Final Action</HD> EPA is approving the Connecticut LMP for the New Haven-Fairfield area for the 2006 24-hour PM <E T="52">2.5</E> NAAQS as a revision to the Connecticut SIP. EPA is also finding the LMP to be adequate as it pertains to transportation conformity requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</HD> Under the Clean Air Act, the Administrator is required to approve a SIP submission that complies with the provisions of the Act and applicable Federal regulations. 42 U.S.C. 7410(k); 40 CFR 52.02(a). Thus, in reviewing SIP submissions, EPA's role is to approve state choices, provided that they meet the criteria of the Clean Air Act. Accordingly, this action merely approves state law as meeting Federal requirements and does not impose additional requirements beyond those imposed by state law. For that reason, this action: • Is not a significant regulatory action subject to review by the Office of Management and Budget under Executive Orders 12866 (58 FR 51735, October 4, 1993) and 13563 (76 FR 3821, January 21, 2011); • Does not impose an information collection burden under the provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act (44 U.S.C. 3501 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ); • Is certified as not having a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities under the Regulatory Flexibility Act (5 U.S.C. 601 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ); • Does not contain any unfunded mandate or significantly or uniquely affect small governments, as described in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (Pub. L. 104-4); • Does not have federalism implications as specified in Executive Order 13132 (64 FR 43255, August 10, 1999); • Is not an economically significant regulatory action based on health or safety risks subject to Executive Order 13045 (62 FR 19885, April 23, 1997); • Is not a significant regulatory action subject to Executive Order 13211 (66 FR 28355, May 22, 2001); and • Is not subject to requirements of Section 12(d) of the National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act of 1995 (15 U.S.C. 272 note) because application of those requirements would be inconsistent with the Clean Air Act. In addition, the SIP is not approved to apply on any Indian reservation land or in any other area where EPA or an Indian tribe has demonstrated that a tribe has jurisdiction. In those areas of Indian country, the rule does not have tribal implications and will not impose substantial direct costs on tribal governments or preempt tribal law as specified by Executive Order 13175 (65 FR 67249, November 9, 2000). Executive Order 12898 (Federal Actions To Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations, 59 FR 7629, Feb. 16, 1994) directs Federal agencies to identify and address “disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects” of their actions on communities with environmental justice (EJ) concerns to the greatest extent practicable and permitted by law. EPA defines EJ as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.” EPA further defines the term fair treatment to mean that “no group of people should bear a disproportionate burden of environmental harms and risks, including those resulting from the negative environmental consequences of industrial, governmental, and commercial operations or programs and policies.” CT DEEP did not evaluate environmental justice considerations as part of its SIP submittal; the CAA and applicable implementing regulations neither prohibit nor require such an evaluation. EPA did not perform an EJ analysis and did not consider EJ in this action. Due to the nature of the action being taken here, this action is expected to have a neutral to positive impact on the air quality of the affected area. Consideration of EJ is not required as part of this action, and there is no information in the record inconsistent with the stated goal of E.O. 12898 of achieving environmental justice for communities with EJ concerns. The Congressional Review Act, 5 U.S.C. 801 <E T="03">et seq.,</E> as added by the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996, generally provides that before a rule may take effect, the agency promulgating the rule must submit a rule report, which includes a copy of the rule, to each House of the Congress and to the Comptroller General of the United States. EPA will submit a report containing this action and other required information to the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, and the Comptroller General of the United States prior to publication of the rule in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . A major rule cannot take effect until 60 days after it is published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . This action is not a “major rule” as defined by 5 U.S.C. 804(2). ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 13k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━