Air Plan Partial Approval and Partial Disapproval; North Dakota; Regional Haze State Implementation Plan for the Second Implementation Period

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R08-OAR-2023-0495; FRL-12052-02-R8]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Partial Approval and Partial Disapproval; North Dakota; Regional Haze State Implementation Plan for the Second Implementation Period</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 partially approving and partially disapproving a regional haze state implementation plan (SIP) revision submitted by the State of North Dakota on August 11, 2022 (North Dakota's 2022 SIP submission) to address applicable requirements under the Clean Air Act (CAA) and the EPA's Regional Haze Rule (RHR) for the regional haze program's second implementation period. The EPA is taking this action pursuant to the CAA. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective January 2, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-R08-OAR-2023-0495. 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">e.g.,</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 availability information. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Joe Stein, Air and Radiation Division, EPA, Region 8, Mailcode 8ARD-IO, 1595 Wynkoop Street, Denver, Colorado 80202-1129, telephone number: (303) 312-7078, email address: <E T="03">stein.joseph@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document “we,” “us,” and “our” means the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. What is being addressed in this document?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Summary of the Proposed Action, Public Comments, and the EPA's Reasons for Final Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Final Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. What is being addressed in this document?</HD> The EPA is partially approving and partially disapproving North Dakota's regional haze plan for the second planning period. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> As required by section 169A of the CAA, the RHR calls for State and Federal agencies to work together to improve visibility in 156 national parks and wilderness areas, known as mandatory Class I Federal areas. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> The rule requires the States, in coordination with the EPA, the National Park Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Forest Service, and other interested parties, to develop and implement air quality protection plans to reduce the pollution that causes visibility impairment in mandatory Class I Federal areas. Visibility impairing pollutants include fine and coarse particulate matter (PM) ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> sulfates, nitrates, organic carbon, elemental carbon, and soil dust) and their precursors ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> sulfur dioxide (SO <E T="52">2</E> ), oxides of nitrogen (NO <E T="52">X</E> ), and, in some cases, volatile organic compounds (VOC) and ammonia (NH <E T="52">3</E> )). As discussed in further detail in our proposed rule, in this document, and in the accompanying Response to Comments (RTC) document, the EPA finds that North Dakota submitted a regional haze SIP that does not meet all the statutory and regulatory requirements for the regional haze second planning period. The State's submission, the proposed rule, and the RTC document can be found in the docket for this action. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  The EPA uses the terms “implementation period” and “planning period” interchangeably. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 40 CFR part 81, subpart D. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Summary of the Proposed Action, Public Comments, and the EPA's Reasons for Final Action</HD> On August 11, 2022, North Dakota submitted a revision to its SIP to address regional haze for the second implementation period, in accordance with the requirements of the CAA's regional haze program established by CAA sections 169A and 169B and 40 CFR 51.308. On July 10, 2024, the EPA proposed to disapprove certain provisions of North Dakota's 2022 SIP submission. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> Specifically, we proposed to disapprove the portions of North Dakota's 2022 SIP submission relating to 40 CFR 51.308(f)(2): long-term strategy; 40 CFR 51.308(f)(3): reasonable progress goals; and 40 CFR 51.308(i): Federal Land Manager (FLM) consultation. We also proposed to approve the portions of North Dakota's 2022 SIP submission relating to 40 CFR 51.308(f)(1): calculations of baseline, current, and natural visibility conditions, progress to date, and the uniform rate of progress (URP); 40 CFR 51.308(f)(4): reasonably attributable visibility impairment; 40 CFR 51.308(f)(5) and 40 CFR 51.308(g): progress report requirements; and 40 CFR 51.308(f)(6): monitoring strategy and other implementation plan requirements. Consistent with section 110(k)(3) of the CAA, the EPA may partially approve portions of a submittal if those elements meet all applicable requirements and may disapprove the remainder so long as the elements are fully separable. Our public comment period closed on August 9, 2024. Our July 10, 2024, proposed rule provided background on the requirements of the CAA and RHR, a summary of North Dakota's regional haze SIP submittals and related EPA actions, and the EPA's rationale for its proposed action. That background and rationale will not be restated in full here, although we briefly summarize the reasons for our partial disapproval of North Dakota's 2022 SIP submission in the paragraphs that follow. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  89 FR 56693 (July 10, 2024). </FTNT> In CAA section 169A(a)(1), Congress established the national goal of preventing any future and remedying any existing impairment of visibility in mandatory Class I Federal areas that results from manmade (anthropogenic) air pollution. The core component of a regional haze SIP submission for the second implementation period is a long-term strategy for making reasonable progress toward meeting that national goal. CAA section 169A(b)(2)(B), 40 CFR 51.308(f)(2). A state's long-term strategy must address regional haze in each Class I area within the state's borders and each Class I area outside the state that may be affected by emissions originating from within the state. It “must include the enforceable emissions limitations, compliance schedules, and other measures that are necessary to make reasonable progress, as determined pursuant to (f)(2)(i) through (iv).” 40 CFR 51.308(f)(2). The amount of progress that is “reasonable progress” is based on applying the four statutory factors in CAA section 169A(g)(1)—the costs of compliance, the time necessary for compliance, the energy and non-air quality environmental impacts of compliance, and the remaining useful life of any potentially affected sources  <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> —in an evaluation of potential control measures for sources of visibility impairing pollutants, which is referred to as a “four-factor” analysis. In developing its long-term strategy, the state must document the technical basis, including modeling, monitoring, cost, engineering, and emissions information, on which it is relying to determine the measures that are necessary to make reasonable progress. 40 CFR 51.308(f)(2)(iii). <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  CAA section 169A(g)(1); 40 CFR 51.308(f)(2)(i). </FTNT> As detailed in section 3.A. of the RTC document, the CAA authorizes the EPA to substantively review states' SIP submissions for compliance with the statute and EPA's regulations to ensure progress towards the national visibility goal for Class I areas. Congress charged the EPA with exercising “federal oversight” over SIP submissions and “review[ing] all SIPs to ensure that the plans comply with the statute.” <E T="03">Oklahoma</E> v. <E T="03">EPA,</E> 723 F.3d 1201, 1204 (10th Cir. 2013); <E T="03">see also id.</E> at 1207-08 (citing CAA Sections 110( <E T="03">l</E> ), 110(a)(2)(J), and 169A(b)(2)). The “EPA is left with more than the ministerial task of routinely approving SIP submissions.” <E T="03">North Dakota</E> v. <E T="03">EPA,</E> 730 F.3d 750, 761 (8th Cir. 2013). Instead, the Agency's “review of a SIP extends not only to whether the state considered the necessary factors in its determination, but also to whether the determination is one that is reasonably moored to the CAA's provisions” and is “based on `reasoned analysis.' ” <E T="03">Id.</E> at 761, 766 (citing <E T="03">Alaska Dep't of Envt. Conservation</E> v. <E T="03">EPA,</E> 540 U.S. 461 (2004)); <E T="03">see also Wyoming</E> v. <E T="03">EPA,</E> 78 F.4th 1171, 1180-81 (10th Cir. 2023) (noting that “the Act provides for substantive and careful EPA review” of SIP submissions and that “the EPA does not have to accept unreasonable analyses”). For the reasons stated in the proposed rule, this document, and in the RTC document, the EPA concludes that North Dakota's 2022 SIP submission does not meet all the requirements of the CAA and RHR. As detailed at length in our proposed rule and in the RTC document, we conclude that North Dakota's long-term strategy does not meet the requirements of CAA section 169A(b)(2) and 40 CFR 51.308( ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 40k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━