Finding of Failure To Attain and Reclassification of the Missouri Portion of the St. Louis Nonattainment Area as Serious for the 2015 Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 81</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R07-OAR-2024-0540; FRL-12405-01-R7]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Finding of Failure To Attain and Reclassification of the Missouri Portion of the St. Louis Nonattainment Area as Serious for the 2015 Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards</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 determining that the Missouri portion of the St. Louis, MO-IL bi-State nonattainment area failed to attain the 2015 ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) by the applicable attainment date. The effect of failing to attain by the applicable attainment date is that the area will be reclassified by operation of law to “Serious” nonattainment for the 2015 ozone NAAQS on December 31, 2024, the effective date of this final rule. This action fulfills the EPA's obligation under the Clean Air Act (CAA) to determine whether ozone nonattainment areas attained the NAAQS by the attainment date and to publish a document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> identifying each area that is determined as having failed to attain and identifying the reclassification. The corresponding action for the Illinois portion of the St. Louis, MO-IL bi-State area is being taken separately. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective on December 31, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-R07-OAR-2024-0540. 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 through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section for additional information. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Wendy Vit, Environmental Protection Agency, Region 7 Office, Air and Radiation Division, 11201 Renner Boulevard, Lenexa, Kansas 66219; telephone number: (913) 551-7697; email address: <E T="03">vit.wendy@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Overview of Action</HD> The EPA is required to determine whether areas designated nonattainment for an ozone NAAQS attained the standard by the applicable attainment date, and to take certain steps for areas that failed to attain (see CAA section 181(b)(2)). The EPA's determination of attainment for the 2015 ozone NAAQS is based on a nonattainment area's design value (DV) as of the attainment date. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  A DV is a statistic used to compare data collected at an ambient air quality monitoring site to the applicable NAAQS to determine compliance with the standard. The data handling conventions for calculating DVs for the 2015 ozone NAAQS are specified in appendix U to 40 CFR part 50. The DV for the 2015 ozone NAAQS is the 3-year average of the annual fourth highest daily maximum 8-hour average ozone concentration. The DV is calculated for each air quality monitor in an area, and the DV for an area is the highest DV among the individual monitoring sites located in the area. </FTNT> The 2015 ozone NAAQS is met at an EPA regulatory monitoring site when the DV does not exceed 0.070 parts per million (ppm). For the Moderate nonattainment areas for the 2015 ozone NAAQS addressed in this action, the attainment date was August 3, 2024. Because the DV is based on the three most recent, complete calendar years of data, attainment must occur no later than December 31 of the year prior to the attainment date ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> December 31, 2023, in the case of Moderate nonattainment areas for the 2015 ozone NAAQS). As such, the EPA's determinations for each area are based upon the complete, quality-assured, and certified ozone monitoring data from calendar years 2021, 2022, and 2023. This action addresses the Missouri portion of the St. Louis bi-State nonattainment area (hereafter St. Louis area) that was classified as Moderate for the 2015 ozone NAAQS as of the Moderate area attainment date of August 3, 2024. Table 1 provides a summary of the DVs and the EPA's air quality-based determinations for the St. Louis area. <GPOTABLE COLS="3" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s100,18,r50"> <TTITLE>Table 1—Summary of Nonattainment Areas in Missouri Classified as Moderate for the 2015 Ozone NAAQS</TTITLE> <ENT I="01">St. Louis</ENT> <ENT>0.074</ENT> <ENT>Failed to attain.</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> The EPA is finding that the St. Louis area as shown in table 1 did not attain by the attainment date, because the 2021-2023 DVs are greater than 0.070 ppm. If the EPA determines that a nonattainment area classified as Moderate failed to attain by the attainment date, CAA section 181(b)(2)(B) requires the EPA to publish a document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , no later than 6 months following the attainment date, identifying each such area and identifying the applicable reclassification. Under CAA section 181(b)(2)(A), the effect of this determination is that the St. Louis area will be reclassified by operation of law as Serious on the effective date of this final rule. The reclassified area will then be subject to the Serious area requirement to attain the 2015 ozone NAAQS as expeditiously as practicable, but not later than August 3, 2027. Upon reclassification, stationary air pollution sources in the St. Louis ozone nonattainment areas will be subject to Serious ozone nonattainment area New Source Review (NSR) and title V permit requirements. The source applicability thresholds for major sources and major source modification emissions will be 50 tons per year (tpy) for volatile organic compounds (VOC) and nitrogen oxides (NO <E T="52">X</E> ). For new and modified major stationary sources subject to review under Missouri regulation 10 CSR 10-6.060, in the EPA approved State implementation plan (SIP), <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> VOC and NO <E T="52">X</E> emission increases from the proposed construction of the new or modified major stationary sources must be offset by emission reductions by a minimum offset ratio of 1.20 to 1 (see CAA section 182(c)(10)). <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  Specifically, we are referring to the EPA-approved Missouri regulation 10 Code of State Regulations (CSR) 10-6.060, titled “Construction Permits Required.” Most recently revised and approved into Missouri's SIP on August 11, 2022 (85 FR 49530). </FTNT> Once reclassified as Serious, Missouri must submit to the EPA the SIP revisions for this area that satisfies the statutory and regulatory requirements applicable to Serious areas established in CAA section 182(c) and in the 2015 Ozone NAAQS SIP Requirements Rule (see 83 FR 62998, December 6, 2018). The EPA is establishing deadlines for submitting SIP revisions for newly reclassified areas in a separate action. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. What is the background for this action?</HD> On October 26, 2015, the EPA issued its final action to revise the NAAQS for ozone to establish a new 8-hour standard ( <E T="03">see</E> 80 FR 65452, October 26, 2015). In that action, the EPA promulgated identical tighter primary and secondary ozone standards designed to protect public health and welfare that specified an 8-hour ozone level of 0.070 ppm. Specifically, the standards require that the 3-year average of the annual fourth highest daily maximum 8-hour average ozone concentration may not exceed 0.070 ppm. Effective on August 3, 2018, the EPA designated 52 areas throughout the country as nonattainment for the 2015 ozone NAAQS (see 83 FR 25776, June 4, 2018). As part of that action, the EPA designated the St. Louis, MO-IL bi-State area as Marginal nonattainment for the 2015 Ozone NAAQS. The area included Boles Township of Franklin County, St. Charles County, St. Louis County, and St. Louis City in Missouri, and Madison and St. Clair Counties in Illinois. As part of that same action, EPA designated Jefferson County and the remaining portion of Franklin County, in Missouri, and Monroe County in Illinois, as attainment/unclassifiable. On July 10, 2020, the District of Columbia Circuit Court remanded the Jefferson County, Missouri, and Monroe County, Illinois, designations (among other designations) to the EPA. The Court upheld EPA's designation of Boles Township as nonattainment and the remainder of Franklin County as attainment/unclassifiable. In response to the Court remand, the EPA revised the Jefferson County, Missouri, and Monroe County, Illinois, designation to nonattainment on May 26, 2021 (86 FR 31438). In a separate action, the EPA assigned classification thresholds and attainment dates based on the severity of an area's ozone problem, determined by the area's DV (see 83 FR 10376, May 8, 2018). The EPA established the attainment date for Marginal, Moderate, and Serious nonattainment areas as 3 years, 6 years, and 9 years, respectively, from the effective date of the final designations. Thus, the attainment date for Marginal nonattainment areas for the 2015 ozone NAAQS was August 3, 2021, the attainment date for Moderate areas was August 3, 2024, and the attainment date for Serious areas is August 3, 2027. On October 7, 2022 (87 FR 60897), the EPA determined that 22 areas, including the St. Louis area addressed in this action, did not attain the standards by the Marginal attainme ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 33k characters. 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