Air Plan Approval; Georgia; Second Period Regional Haze Plan

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R04-OAR-2023-0220; FRL-10407-02-R4]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Georgia; Second Period Regional Haze Plan</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 Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Environmental Protection Division (GA EPD), dated August 11, 2022 (“Haze Plan” or “2022 Plan”), as satisfying applicable requirements under the Clean Air Act (CAA or Act) and EPA's Regional Haze Rule (RHR) for the regional haze program's second planning period. Georgia's SIP submission addresses the requirement that states must periodically revise their long-term strategies (LTS) for making reasonable progress toward the national goal of preventing any future, and remedying any existing, anthropogenic impairment of visibility, including regional haze, in mandatory Class I Federal areas (hereinafter referred to as “Class I areas”). The SIP submission also addresses other applicable requirements for the second planning period of the regional haze program. EPA is taking this action pursuant to sections 110 and 169A of the Act. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective December 23, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket Identification No. EPA-R04-OAR-2023-0220. All documents in the docket are listed on the <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> website. Although listed in the index, some information may not be publicly available, <E T="03">i.e.,</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 either electronically through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> or in hard copy at the Air Regulatory Management Section, Air Planning and Implementation Branch, Air and Radiation Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 4, 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, Georgia 30303-8960. EPA requests that, if at all possible, you contact the person 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 Federal holidays. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Estelle Bae, Air Permitting Section, Air Planning and Implementation Branch, Air and Radiation Division, Region 4, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, Georgia 30303-8960. The telephone number is (404) 562-9143. Ms. Bae can also be reached via electronic mail at <E T="03">bae.estelle@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> On August 11, 2022, GA EPD submitted a revision to its SIP to address regional haze for the second planning period. <E T="51">1 2</E> <FTREF/> GA EPD made this SIP submission to satisfy the requirements of the CAA's regional haze program pursuant to CAA sections 169A and 169B and 40 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 51.308. EPA has determined that the Georgia regional haze SIP submission for the second planning period meets the applicable statutory and regulatory requirements and is thus approving Georgia's submission into its SIP. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  The August 11, 2022, SIP submission, with exception of the supporting modeling files and CBI, is included in the docket for this rulemaking. Due to size and compatibility limitations of the Federal Docket Management System, the supporting modeling files for Georgia's Regional Haze Plan are instead available at the EPA Region 4 office. To request these files, please contact the person listed in this rulemaking under the section titled <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . <SU>2</SU>  On November 1, 2023, Georgia supplemented its August 11, 2022, Haze Plan by submitting the final permits for each of the three sources selected for an emissions control analysis. This supplemental submission, received November 1, 2023, along with GA EPD's November 17, 2023, clarification email, is included in the docket for this action. </FTNT> Through a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM), published on June 3, 2024 (89 FR 47481), EPA proposed to approve Georgia's Haze Plan as satisfying the regional haze requirements for the second planning period contained in the CAA and 40 CFR 51.308. EPA described its rationale for proposing approval of the Haze Plan in the June 3, 2024, NPRM. Comments on the June 3, 2024, NPRM were due on or before July 3, 2024. EPA received two sets of comments on the NPRM. One set of comments received is not relevant to this action, and the other set of comments is addressed below. Both sets of comments are available in the docket for this action. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Response to Comments</HD> In response to the NPRM, EPA received a comment letter signed by the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), Sierra Club, the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, and the Southern Environmental Law Center. Collectively, these groups will be referred to as the “Commenters.” In general, the Commenters state in their comment letter that Georgia, in its SIP submittal, and EPA, in its proposed approval of the SIP submittal, failed to satisfy the requirements of the Act and the RHR. The Commenters thus request that EPA disapprove Georgia's SIP revision. Summaries of the significant comments received from the Commenters and EPA's responses to these comments are below. <E T="03">Comment 1:</E> The Commenters state that in 2021 they informed the Visibility Improvement State and Tribal Association of the Southeast (VISTAS) and EPA via letter of “significant errors” in the visibility modeling conducted by VISTAS for the VISTAS states—including Georgia—and that EPA did not acknowledge these errors in the NPRM. These alleged errors are addressed in Comments 1.a through 1.c below. <E T="03">Comment 1a:</E> The Commenters contend that the VISTAS modeling significantly underpredicted the contribution of sulfates to visibility impairment at Class I areas on the 20 percent most impaired days and that this underprediction, while prevalent across all seasons, was largest during the summer months. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> The Commenters also assert that these errors resulted in the modeling not meeting VISTAS' model performance goals and modeling acceptance criteria for a number of Class I areas. The Commenters further assert that although Georgia claims that it corrected for this underprediction through the use of relative response factors (RRFs), neither Georgia nor EPA assessed whether use of RRFs adequately corrected for errors in the modeling. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  Areas statutorily designated as mandatory Class I Federal areas consist of national parks exceeding 6,000 acres, wilderness areas and national memorial parks exceeding 5,000 acres, and all international parks that were in existence on August 7, 1977. CAA 162(a). There are 156 mandatory Class I areas. The list of areas to which the requirements of the visibility protection program apply is in 40 CFR part 81, subpart D. </FTNT> <E T="03">Response 1.a:</E> Regarding the 2021 letter described by the Commenters, <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> EPA disagrees with the Commenters that there are significant flaws in Georgia's 2028 visibility modeling that resulted in excluding major sources of haze-forming pollution from evaluation via Four-Factor Analyses (FFAs) for the second planning period. As the Commenters state, Georgia relied upon the photochemical visibility modeling performed by VISTAS to project the impact of the State's 2028 sulfur dioxide (SO <E T="52">2</E> ) and nitrogen oxide (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) emissions on visibility in both in-state and out-of-state Class I areas. VISTAS performed the modeling in accordance with the principles described within EPA's “Modeling Guidance for Demonstrating Air Quality Goals for Ozone, PM <E T="52">2.5</E> and Regional Haze” (2018 Modeling Guidance). <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> In 2018, EPA approved  <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> the Quality Assurance Project Plan prepared by VISTAS for performing the modeling and also reviewed and provided comments on the VISTAS Modeling Protocol. EPA also reviewed the VISTAS final modeling reports and data relied upon by Georgia and found them acceptable. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  Exhibit 10 of the Conservation Groups' comments contains the May 12, 2021, letter regarding the VISTAS regional haze modeling for the second planning period. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  “Modeling Guidance for Demonstrating Air Quality Goals for Ozone, PM <E T="52">2.5</E> and Regional Haze,” EPA 454/R-18-009, November 29, 2018, (hereafter “2018 Modeling Guidance”) is available at: <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2020-10/documents/o3-pm-rh-modeling_guidance-2018.pdf.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  The April 3, 2018, Quality Assurance Project Plan for the VISTAS II Regional Haze Project is located in Appendix A-1 of the Haze Plan. </FTNT> The Commenters assert that, due to errors, the modeling failed to meet VISTAS' model performance goals and modeling acceptance criteria for a number of Class I areas. Specifically, the Commenters assert that the VISTAS modeling significantly underpredicted the contribution of sulfate to visibility impairment on the 20 percent most impaired days and that the largest underprediction was durin ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 220k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━