Finding of Failure To Attain and Reclassification of an Area in Utah as Serious for the 2015 Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 81</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R08-OAR-2024-0552; FRL-12458-01-R8]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Finding of Failure To Attain and Reclassification of an Area in Utah 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 Northern Wasatch Front, UT 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, 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 Moderate area 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. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective January 8, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-R08-OAR-2024-0552. 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> Confidential Business Information (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> Amanda Brimmer, Air and Radiation Division, EPA, Region 8, Mailcode 8ARD-AQ-R, 1595 Wynkoop Street, Denver, Colorado 80202-1129, telephone number: (303) 312-6323, email address: <E T="03">brimmer.amanda@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document wherever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean the EPA. <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 Moderate nonattainment areas for the 2015 ozone NAAQS, such as the area 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 before the attainment date ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> December 31, 2023, in the case of Moderate nonattainment areas for the 2015 ozone NAAQS). Accordingly, the EPA's determinations for each Moderate area are based upon the complete, quality-assured, and certified ozone monitoring data from calendar years 2021, 2022, and 2023. This action addresses the Northern Wasatch Front area in Utah, which was classified as Moderate for the 2015 ozone NAAQS as of the Moderate area attainment date of August 3, 2024. The EPA is finding that the Northern Wasatch Front Moderate area did not attain by the attainment date, because the area's 2021-2023 DV was 0.077 ppm which is greater than 0.070 ppm. Under CAA section 181(b)(2)(A), the effect of this determination is that this 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. As a result of the area's reclassification as Serious, Utah must submit to the EPA the state implementation plan (SIP) revisions for this area that satisfy 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 these 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). 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). Consistent with CAA section 181(a), 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 Northern Wasatch Front area addressed in this action, did not attain the standards by the Marginal attainment date, and these areas were reclassified as Moderate by operation of law. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. What is the statutory authority for this action?</HD> The statutory authority for this determination is provided by the CAA, as amended (42 U.S.C. 7401 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ). Relevant portions of the CAA include sections 107, 181 and 182. CAA section 107(d) provides that when the EPA establishes or revises a NAAQS, the agency must designate areas of the country as nonattainment, attainment, or unclassifiable based on whether each area is not meeting (or is contributing to air quality in a nearby area that is not meeting) the NAAQS, meeting the NAAQS, or cannot be classified as meeting or not meeting the NAAQS, respectively. Subpart 2 of part D of title I of the CAA governs the classification, state planning, and emissions control requirements for any areas designated as nonattainment for a revised primary ozone NAAQS. In particular, CAA section 181(a)(1) requires each area designated as nonattainment for a revised ozone NAAQS to be classified at the same time as the area is designated based on the extent of the ozone problem in the area (as determined based on the area's DV). Classifications for ozone nonattainment areas are “Marginal,” “Moderate,” “Serious,” “Severe,” and “Extreme,” in order of stringency. CAA section 182 provides the specific attainment planning and additional requirements that apply to each ozone nonattainment area based on its classification. Section 181(b)(2)(A) of the CAA provides that within 6 months following the applicable attainment date, the EPA must determine whether an ozone nonattainment area attained the ozone standard based on the area's DV as of that date. Under CAA section 181(a)(5) and 40 CFR 51.1307, on application by any state, the EPA may grant a 1-year extension to the attainment date when certain criteria are met. One criterion for a first attainment date extension is that an area's fourth highest daily maximum 8-hour value for the attainment year must not exceed the level of the standard. If an area fails to attain the ozone NAAQS by the applicable attainment date and is not granted a 1-year attainment date extension, CAA section 181(b)(2)(A) requires the EPA to make the determination that an ozone nonattainment area failed to attain the ozone standard by the applicable attainment date, and requires the area to be reclassified by operation of law to the higher of: (1) the next higher classification for the area, or (2) the classification applicable to the area's DV as of the determination of failure to attain. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> Section 181(b)(2)(B) of the CAA requires the EPA to publish the determination of failure to attain and accompanying reclassification in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> no later th ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 31k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━