Air Plan Approval; District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia; Determination of Attainment by the Attainment Date and Clean Data Determination for the Washington, DC-MD-VA Nonattainment Area for the 2015 Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R03-OAR-2022-0987; FRL-10551-01-R3]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia; Determination of Attainment by the Attainment Date and Clean Data Determination for the Washington, DC-MD-VA Nonattainment Area for the 2015 Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards</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 determine that the Washington, DC-MD-VA nonattainment area (the Washington Area or the Area) has attained the 2015 8-hour ozone national ambient air quality standards (2015 ozone NAAQS) by the applicable attainment date of August 3, 2024. Accompanying this proposed determination of attainment by the attainment date is a re-proposed clean data determination (CDD) under the EPA's Clean Data Policy. If finalized, this action will address the EPA's obligation under Clean Air Act (CAA) sections 179(c) and 181(b)(2) to determine whether the Washington Area attained the 2015 ozone NAAQS by the August 3, 2024 attainment date and, as set forth in the EPA's Clean Data Policy, suspend the obligation of the District of Columbia (DC), the State of Maryland (MD), and the Commonwealth of Virginia (VA) to submit certain attainment planning requirements for as long as the Area continues to attain the 2015 ozone NAAQS. As part of this rulemaking, the EPA also proposes to take final agency action on an exceptional events request submitted by the District of Columbia on March 20, 2024, and concurred on by the EPA on July 17, 2024. The proposed attainment determination and CDD are based upon the EPA's concurrence on the exceptional events demonstration. This action is being taken under the CAA. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written 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-R03-OAR-2022-0987 at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> or via email to <E T="03">talley.david@epa.gov.</E> For comments submitted at <E T="03">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> For either manner of submission, 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, please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. For the full EPA public comment policy, information about CBI or multimedia submissions, and general guidance on making effective comments, please visit <E T="03">www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Ian Neiswinter, 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) 814-2011. Mr. Neiswinter can also be reached via electronic mail at <E T="03">neiswinter.ian@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This proposed determination is based upon quality-assured, quality-controlled, and certified ambient air monitoring data from 2021 to 2023 available in the EPA's Air Quality System (AQS) database. Neither this proposed attainment determination nor CDD redesignates the Washington Area to attainment for the 2015 ozone NAAQS. The Area remains designated nonattainment until such time as DC, MD, and VA submit a request for redesignation pursuant to 107(d)(3) of the CAA and the EPA determines that the area meets the CAA requirements for redesignation to attainment and takes action to redesignate the Area. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> On October 26, 2015 (80 FR 65292), the EPA promulgated a revised primary and secondary ozone NAAQS to provide requisite increased protection of public health and welfare, respectively. In that action, the EPA strengthened both standards from 0.075 parts per million (ppm) to 0.070 ppm and retained the indicator (ozone), averaging time (8-hour), and form (annual fourth-highest daily maximum, averaged over three years) of the existing standards. Effective August 3, 2018 (83 FR 25776, June 4, 2018), the EPA designated 52 areas throughout the country as nonattainment for the 2015 ozone NAAQS, including the Washington Area, <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> which was classified as a Marginal nonattainment area. This designation was based on quality-assured, quality-controlled, and certified air quality monitoring data from calendar years 2014 to 2016. The EPA established the attainment date for Marginal 2015 ozone NAAQS nonattainment areas as 3 years from the effective date of the final designations, meaning the Washington Area had an attainment date of August 3, 2021. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  The Washington Area consists of the following counties/cities: Calvert County, Charles County, Frederick County, Montgomery County, and Prince George's County in Maryland; Alexandria city, Arlington County, Fairfax County, Fairfax city, Falls Church city, Loudoun County, Manassas Park city, Manassas city, Prince William County in Virginia; and all of the District of Columbia. <E T="03">See</E> 40 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 81.309, 81.321, and 81.347. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 83 FR 10376 (March 9, 2018) and 40 CFR 51.1303(a). </FTNT> Effective November 7, 2022 (87 FR 60897), the EPA determined that 22 Marginal areas or portions of areas failed to attain the standard by the applicable Marginal attainment date, including the Washington Area. In that action, the EPA reclassified the Washington Area as Moderate nonattainment for the 2015 ozone NAAQS because it failed to attain the standard by the attainment date of August 3, 2021. That designation was based on quality-assured, quality-controlled, and certified ambient air monitoring data from calendar years 2018 to 2020. In that same action, the EPA established the Moderate attainment date as August 3, 2024. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 87 FR 60897 (November 7, 2022). </FTNT> On February 1, 2023 (88 FR 6688), the EPA proposed a CDD for the Washington Area based on quality-assured, quality-controlled, and certified ambient air quality monitoring data showing the Area attained the 2015 ozone NAAQS based on 2019 to 2021 data. The EPA did not finalize that action due to a monitored violation of the 2015 ozone NAAQS prior to final approval. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> On March 20, 2024, the Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE) on behalf of DC submitted an exceptional events (EE) demonstration to show that the ozone concentration recorded at the McMillan monitor (AQS Site ID #110010043) on June 29, 2023, was influenced by wildfires. The EPA concurred on this request on July 17, 2024. The EPA's Exceptional Events Rule and DOEE's exceptional events demonstration are discussed in more detail in section II of this document. Air monitoring data from 2021 to 2023, which pursuant to EPA's concurrence on the DOEE demonstration now excludes the June 29, 2023, exceptional events influenced monitor day, indicates that the Washington Area has attained the 2015 ozone NAAQS by the attainment date of August 3, 2024. In light of this supplemental information that shows continued attainment in the time following the 2023 CDD proposal, the EPA is also re-proposing a CDD for the area. The EPA is including this proposed rulemaking in the same docket as the February 1, 2023 proposed CDD for the Washington Area. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  The EPA initially noted this violation based on preliminary data, which was later certified. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">See www.regulations.gov/search/docket?filter=EPA-R03-OAR-2022-0987.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Exceptional Events Demonstration</HD> Congress has recognized that it may not be appropriate for the EPA to use certain monitoring data collected by the ambient air quality monitoring network and maintained in the EPA's AQS database in certain regulatory determinations. Thus, in 2005, Congress provided the statutory authority for the exclusion of data influenced by “exceptional events” meeting specific criteria by adding section 319(b) to the CAA and granted the EPA with the authority to propose regulations to review and manage air quality monitoring data influenced by exceptional events. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  Under CAA section 319(b), an exceptional event means an event that: (i) affects air quality; (ii) is not reasonably controllable or preventable; (iii) is an event caused by human activity that is unlikely to recur at a particular location or a natural event; and (iv) is determined by the EPA under the process established in regulations promulgated by the EPA in accordance with section 319(b)(2) to be an exceptional event. For the purposes of section 319(b), an exceptional event does not include: (i) stagnation of air masses or meteorological inversions; (ii) a meteorolog ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 41k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━