Air Plan Approval; Connecticut; Approval of State Implementation Plan Requirements for the 2008 Ozone Standard

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R01-OAR-2024-0051; FRL-12403-01-R1]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Connecticut; Approval of State Implementation Plan Requirements for the 2008 Ozone Standard</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 State Implementation Plan (SIP) revisions submitted by the State of Connecticut. The SIP revisions are for the Connecticut portion of the New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-CT Serious ozone nonattainment area for the 2008 ozone standard. The revisions pertain to requirements relating to reasonable further progress (RFP) plans, an Enhanced vehicle emissions inspection and maintenance (I/M) program, transportation conformity, and a clean fuels for motor vehicles program. EPA is also starting the adequacy process for the motor vehicle emissions budgets included in the RFP SIP revision. This action is being taken under the Clean Air Act. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before December 23, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R01-OAR-2024-0051 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> or via email to: <E T="03">mcconnell.robert@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">https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> 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> Bob McConnell, Environmental Engineer, Air Quality Branch, (Mail Code 5-MD), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 1, 5 Post Office Square, Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109-3912; (617) 918-1046; <E T="03">mcconnell.robert@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</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Description of State's Submittals</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Evaluation of State's Submittals</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Reasonable Further Progress Plans</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. RFP Motor Vehicle Emissions Budgets/Transportation Conformity</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Inspection and Maintenance (I/M) Program</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Clean Fuels Program</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> On March 12, 2008, the EPA revised both the primary and secondary National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for ozone to a level of 0.075 parts per million (ppm) (annual fourth-highest daily maximum 8-hour average concentration, averaged over three years) to provide increased protection of public health and the environment (73 FR 16436, March 27, 2008). The 2008 ozone NAAQS retains the same general form and averaging time as the 0.08 ppm NAAQS set in 1997, but is set at a more protective level. Under the EPA's regulations at 40 CFR part 50, the 2008 8-hour ozone NAAQS is attained when the 3-year average of the annual fourth highest daily maximum 8-hour average ambient air quality ozone concentrations is less than or equal to 0.075 ppm. <E T="03">See</E> 40 CFR 50.15. Effective July 20, 2012, the EPA designated as nonattainment any area that was violating the 2008 8-hour ozone NAAQS based on the three most recent years (2008-2010) of air monitoring data (77 FR 30088, May 21, 2012). With that rulemaking, three counties within Connecticut, Fairfield, Middlesex, and New Haven Counties, were included within a nonattainment area described as the New York-N. New Jersey-Long Island NY-NJ-CT area and were designated as a Marginal ozone nonattainment area. For brevity, in the remainder of this notice we refer to this area as the NY-NJ-CT area. Areas that were designated as Marginal nonattainment were required to attain the 2008 8-hour ozone NAAQS no later than July 20, 2015, based on 2012-2014 monitoring data. On May 14, 2016 (81 FR 26697), the EPA published its determination that the NY-NJ-CT area, as well as other nonattainment areas in the country, had failed to attain the 2008 8-hour ozone NAAQS by the Marginal area attainment deadline, and so these areas were reclassified to Moderate ozone nonattainment areas. <E T="03">See</E> 40 CFR 81.306. Moderate areas were required to attain the 2008 8-hour ozone NAAQS by no later than six years after the effective date of designations, or July 20, 2018. <E T="03">See</E> 40 CFR 51.903. Subsequently, on August 23, 2019 (84 FR 44238), the EPA published its determination that the NY-NJ-CT area, as well as other nonattainment areas in the country, had failed to attain the 2008 8-hour ozone NAAQS by the Moderate area attainment deadline, and so these areas were reclassified as Serious ozone nonattainment areas. Serious areas were required to attain the 2008 8-hour ozone NAAQS by no later than nine years after the effective date of designations, or July 20, 2021. Furthermore, on October 7, 2022 (87 FR 60926), the EPA published its determination that the NY-NJ-CT area, as well as other nonattainment areas in the country, had failed to attain the 2008 8-hour ozone NAAQS by the Serious area attainment deadline, and so these areas were reclassified as Severe ozone nonattainment areas. Severe areas are required to attain the 2008 8-hour ozone NAAQS by no later than 15 years after the effective date of designations, or July 20, 2027. <E T="03">See</E> 40 CFR 51.903. However, Connecticut's SIP submittal, and EPA's proposed approval, relates to obligations under the CAA as a result of the area's prior reclassification to Serious. Additional SIP obligations are anticipated from the State as a result of the area's most recent reclassification to Severe. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Description of State's Submittals</HD> Clean Air Act (CAA) section 182, subpart 2, outlines SIP requirements applicable to ozone nonattainment areas in each classification category. Requirements for each type of classification area were established under the provisions of the EPA's ozone implementation rule for the 2008 8-hour ozone NAAQS (40 CFR part 51, subpart AA). Examples of these requirements include submission of a reasonable further progress plan, and controls on stationary sources that represent reasonably available control technology (RACT). On June 23, 2022, Connecticut submitted SIP revisions required due to the State's classification as a Serious nonattainment area for the 2008 ozone standard that included an RFP plan with motor vehicle emissions budgets (“budgets”), the I/M program certification, and a certification that the State's previously adopted clean fuels program continues to meet CAA requirements. EPA is proposing approval of these items for the reasons articulated below. Connecticut's June 23, 2022, submittal also contained other SIP revisions, but today we are proposing action on only the items mentioned above. On November 17, 2022, Connecticut submitted a supplement to the June 23, 2022 SIP submittal; the November 17, 2022 supplement consists of a modeling analysis comparing the Connecticut I/M program to the Federal Enhanced I/M performance standard. On December 12, 2023, Connecticut submitted a clarification letter as a supplement to the June 23, 2022 RFP SIP submittal. The December 12, 2023 supplement clarified that motor vehicle emissions budgets were being submitted only for the Connecticut portion of the NY-NJ-CT nonattainment area. The December 12, 2023 supplement also included a revised version of the RFP plan to replace section 9 of the June 23, 2022 SIP submittal. The RFP plan contained within Connecticut's submittal documents showed that a nine percent (9%) reduction in ozone precursor emissions occurred over the three-year time period from 2018 to 2020 relative to emissions in 2011. Table 9-2 of the State's submittal illustrates the oxides of nitrogen (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emiss ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 34k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━