Air Plan Partial Approval and Partial Disapproval; North Carolina; Second Period Regional Haze Plan

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R04-OAR-2022-0786; FRL-10405-02-R4]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Partial Approval and Partial Disapproval; North Carolina; 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 in part and disapproving in part a regional haze State Implementation Plan (SIP) revision submitted by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, Division of Air Quality (DAQ), dated April 4, 2022 (“Haze Plan” or “2022 Plan”) under the Clean Air Act (CAA or Act) and EPA's Regional Haze Rule (RHR) for the regional haze program's second planning period. North Carolina's 2022 SIP submission was submitted to address the requirement that states must periodically revise their long-term strategies 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-2022-0786. 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 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> Michele Notarianni, Multi-Air Pollutant Coordination 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. Ms. Notarianni can be reached via telephone at (404) 562-9031 or electronic mail at <E T="03">notarianni.michele@epa.gov</E> . </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> On April 4, 2022, the North Carolina DAQ submitted a revision to its SIP to address regional haze for the second planning period. DAQ 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. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Subsequently, North Carolina submitted a letter, dated July 30, 2024 (Commitment Letter), requesting partial conditional approval of its Haze Plan and committing to submit a SIP revision containing specific enforceable measures no later than one year from the effective date of a final conditional approval action. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> Through a notice of proposed rulemaking published on August 20, 2024, (89 FR 67341) (hereinafter referred to as the NPRM), EPA proposed to approve in part and conditionally approve in part North Carolina's April 4, 2022, SIP submission addressing the regional haze requirements for the second planning period contained in the CAA and 40 CFR 51.308. Comments on the NPRM were due on or before September 19, 2024. EPA received four sets of relevant comments on the NPRM. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  In a letter dated August 15, 2022, EPA found that North Carolina's Haze Plan meets the completeness criteria outlined in 40 CFR part 51, appendix V. A completeness determination does not constitute a finding on the merits of the submission or whether it meets the relevant criteria for SIP approval. The August 15, 2022, letter is included in the docket for this rulemaking. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  The Commitment Letter is in the docket for this rulemaking. </FTNT> After reviewing the entirety of the record including comments submitted, EPA is now taking final action to approve in part and disapprove in part North Carolina's Haze Plan. Specifically, EPA is approving the portions of the Haze Plan addressing the requirements of 40 CFR 51.308(f)(1), (f)(4) through (6), and (g)(1) through (5). EPA is disapproving the portions of the Haze Plan addressing the requirements of 40 CFR 51.308(f)(2) and (3) and (i)(2) through (4) due to the inadequate record associated with the four-factor analysis (FFA) for Domtar Paper, LLC (Domtar) located in Plymouth, North Carolina, as described in more detail in section II. EPA is not finalizing its previously proposed conditional approval. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> Therefore, the issues identified as part of the proposed conditional approval and in the Commitment Letter are now subsumed under the broader partial disapproval. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  Under CAA section 110(k)(4), EPA may conditionally approve a SIP revision based on a commitment from a state to adopt specific enforceable measures by a date certain, but not later than one year from the date of conditional approval of the plan revision. In its Commitment Letter, the State committed to submit a SIP revision containing specific enforceable measures no later than one year from the effective date of a final conditional approval action. Because EPA is not finalizing the proposed conditional approval, North Carolina is not required to submit that SIP revision. </FTNT> Disapproving a SIP submission establishes a two-year deadline for EPA to promulgate a Federal Implementation Plan (FIP) to address the relevant requirements under CAA section 110(c), unless EPA approves a subsequent SIP submission that meets these requirements. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> Therefore, EPA will be obligated under CAA section 110(c)(1) to promulgate a FIP within two years after the effective date of this partial disapproval, unless the State submits, and EPA approves, a SIP revision that satisfies the requirements of 40 CFR 51.308(f)(2) and (3) and (i)(2) through (4). <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  North Carolina's Haze Plan was not submitted to address a requirement of part D, title I of the CAA, and is not required in response to a finding of substantial inadequacy as described in CAA section 110(k)(5) (SIP Call), so the partial disapproval will not trigger any offset or highway sanctions clocks. <E T="03">See</E> CAA section 179(a). </FTNT> This final action represents a logical outgrowth of the proposal, following EPA's proposed partial approval and partial conditional approval, and receipt of public comments. EPA specifically solicited comments on the adequacy of DAQ's analyses, including the FFAs, determination of controls necessary for reasonable progress, and the adequacy of the submitted permit conditions, including associated monitoring, recordkeeping, and reporting, and whether the State met the requirements of 40 CFR 51.308(f)(2)(i) through (iv). <E T="03">See</E> 89 FR 67358. Through this solicitation of comment, the public was on notice that EPA was specifically interested in the public's perspective on its conclusions and may ultimately change its conclusions. A logical outgrowth of a proposal is to refrain from taking the proposed step. <E T="03">See Am. Iron & Steel Inst.</E> v. <E T="03">EPA,</E> 886 F.2d 390, 400 (D.C. Cir. 1989). For action on SIP submittals, EPA is required to act, so the Agency may not refrain from acting. As such, it is reasonable to view a disapproval as a logical outgrowth of a proposed approval (or proposed conditional approval) if comments cause EPA to change its proposed conclusions. Consistent with CAA section 110(k)(3), EPA may approve in part portions of the SIP submittal if those portions meet all applicable requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Response to Comments</HD> In response to the NPRM, EPA received comment letters from the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), Sierra Club, the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, Center for Biological Diversity, and Southern Environmental Law Center (collectively referred to as the “Conservation Groups”); U.S. National Park Service (NPS); and 7 Directions of Service, Blue Ridge Outdoors Magazine, Center for Biological Diversity, CleanAIRE NC, Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, Dogwood Alliance, Forest Keeper, Friends of Big Ivy, I Heart Pisgah, Mountain True, NPCA, North Carolina Black Alliance, and Toxic Free North Carolina (collectively referred to as the “Organizations”). Additionally, EPA received comments from two members of the public. One set of comments from a member of the public is not relevant to this action, and the other set of comments is addressed below. All comments received are available in the docket for this action. A summary of the significant comments received from these commenters and EPA's responses to these comments is below. <E T="03">Comment 1:</E> The Conservation Groups contend that EPA's proposal t ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 213k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━