Air Plan Approval; Michigan and Minnesota; Revision to Taconite Federal Implementation Plan

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R05-OAR-2024-0215; FRL-12351-01-R5]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Michigan and Minnesota; Revision to Taconite Federal Implementation Plan</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 finalize nitrogen oxide (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) and/or sulfur dioxide (SO <E T="52">2</E> ) limits for the indurating furnaces at five taconite facilities in accordance with the procedures set forth in the Federal implementation plan (FIP) addressing the requirement for best available retrofit technology (BART) at taconite facilities. EPA is also proposing to modify the Upper Predictive Limit (UPL) equations used to establish NO <E T="52">X</E> and SO <E T="52">2</E> emission limits under the FIP. Finally, EPA is proposing to revise reporting provisions to require reports to be submitted to EPA electronically. EPA is proposing these actions pursuant to sections 110 and 169A of the Clean Air Act (CAA). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before January 21, 2025. <E T="03">Virtual Public Hearing.</E> EPA will hold a virtual public hearing to solicit comments on December 19, 2024. The last day to pre-register to present at the hearing will be December 16, 2024. On December 16, 2024, EPA will post a general agenda for the hearing that will list pre-registered presenters in approximate order at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/mn/revision-taconite-regional-haze-federal-implementation-plan-mi-and-mn.</E> If you require the services of a translator or a special accommodation such as audio description/closed captioning, please pre-register for the hearing and describe your needs by December 11, 2024. For more information on the virtual public hearing, see <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> . </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R05-OAR-2024-0215 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> or via email to <E T="03">arra.sarah@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">the docket.</E> EPA may publish any comment received to its public docket. Do not submit to EPA's docket at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> any information you consider to be Confidential Business Information (CBI), Proprietary Business Information (PBI), 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. 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, PBI, or multimedia submissions, and general guidance on making effective comments, please visit <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Kathleen D'Agostino, Environmental Scientist, Air and Radiation Division (AR18J), Environmental Protection Agency, Region 5, 77 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60604, (312) 886-0266, <E T="03">dagostino.kathleen@epa.gov.</E> The EPA Region 5 office is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, excluding Federal holidays. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document whenever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Virtual Public Hearing</HD> EPA is holding a virtual public hearing to provide interested parties the opportunity to present data, views, or arguments concerning the proposal. EPA will hold a virtual public hearing to solicit comments on December 19, 2024. The hearing will convene at 9:00 a.m. Central Standard Time (CST) and will conclude at 1:00 p.m. CST, or 15 minutes after the last pre-registered presenter in attendance has presented if there are no additional presenters. EPA will announce further details, including information on how to register for the virtual public hearing, on the virtual public hearing website at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/mn/revision-taconite-regional-haze-federal-implementation-plan-mi-and-mn.</E> EPA will begin pre-registering presenters and attendees for the hearing upon publication of this document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . To pre-register to attend or present at the virtual public hearing, please use the online registration form available at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/mn/revision-taconite-regional-haze-federal-implementation-plan-mi-and-mn</E> or contact Mayesha Choudhury at 312-886-5909 or by email at <E T="03">choudhury.mayesha@epa.gov.</E> The last day to pre-register to present at the hearing will be December 16, 2024. On December 16, 2024, EPA will post a general agenda for the hearing that will list pre-registered presenters in approximate order at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/mn/revision-taconite-regional-haze-federal-implementation-plan-mi-and-mn.</E> Additionally, requests to present will be taken on the day of the hearing as time allows. EPA will make every effort to follow the schedule as closely as possible on the day of the hearing; however, please plan for the hearing to run either ahead of schedule or behind schedule. Each commenter will have 5 minutes to provide oral testimony. EPA encourages commenters to provide EPA with a copy of their oral testimony electronically by including it in the registration form or emailing it to <E T="03">choudhury.mayesha@epa.gov.</E> EPA may ask clarifying questions during the oral presentations but will not respond to the presentations at that time. Written statements and supporting information submitted during the comment period will be considered with the same weight as oral comments and supporting information presented at the virtual public hearing. EPA is asking all hearing attendees to pre-register, even those who do not intend to present. This will help EPA prepare for the virtual hearing. Please note that any updates made to any aspect of the hearing will be posted online at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/mn/revision-taconite-regional-haze-federal-implementation-plan-mi-and-mn.</E> While EPA expects the hearing to go forward as set forth above, please monitor our website or contact Mayesha Choudhury at 312-886-5909 or <E T="03">choudhury.mayesha@epa.gov</E> to determine if there are any updates. EPA does not intend to publish a document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> announcing updates. If you require the services of a translator or a special accommodation such as audio description/closed captioning, please pre-register for the hearing with Mayesha Choudhury at 312-886-5909 or <E T="03">choudhury.mayesha@epa.gov</E> and describe your needs by December 11, 2024. EPA may not be able to arrange accommodations without advance notice. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Requirements of the Clean Air Act and EPA's Regional Haze Rule</HD> In section 169A of the 1977 Amendments to the CAA, Congress created a program for protecting visibility in the nation's national parks and wilderness areas. This section of the CAA establishes as a national goal the “prevention of any future, and the remedying of any existing, impairment of visibility in mandatory Class I Federal areas  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> which impairment results from manmade air pollution.” Congress added section 169B to the CAA in 1990 to address regional haze issues. EPA promulgated a rule to address regional haze on July 1, 1999 (64 FR 35714), codified at 40 CFR part 51, subpart P (herein after referred to as the “Regional Haze Rule”). The Regional Haze Rule codified and clarified the BART provisions in the CAA and revised the existing visibility regulations to add provisions addressing regional haze impairment and to establish a comprehensive visibility protection program for Class I areas. The requirements for regional haze, found at 40 CFR 51.308 and 51.309, are included in EPA's visibility protection regulations at 40 CFR part 51, subpart P. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Areas designated as mandatory Class I Federal areas consist of national parks exceeding 6000 acres, wilderness areas and national memorial parks exceeding 5000 acres, and all international parks that were in existence on August 7, 1977. 42 U.S.C. 7472(a). In accordance with section 169A of the CAA, EPA, in consultation with the Department of Interior, promulgated a list of 156 areas where visibility is identified as an important value. 44 FR 69122 (November 30, 1979). The extent of a mandatory Class I area includes subsequent changes in boundaries, such as park expansions. 42 U.S.C. 7472(a). Although states and Tribes may designate as Class I additional areas which they consider to have visibility as an important value, the requirements of the visibility program set forth in section 169A of the CAA apply only to “mandatory Class I Federal areas.” Each mandatory Class I Federal area is the responsibility of a “Federal Land Manager.” 42 U.S.C. 7602(i). When we use the term “Class I area” in this action, we mean a “mandatory Class I Federal area.” </FTNT> Section 169A of the CAA directs states, or EPA if developing a FIP, to evaluate the use ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 104k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━