Reconsideration of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Particulate Matter; Correction

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Parts 50 and 58</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OAR-2015-0072; FRL-8635.1-02-OAR]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2060-AW48</RIN> <SUBJECT>Reconsideration of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Particulate Matter; Correction</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule; correction and correcting amendment. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is correcting a final rule published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on March 6, 2024, that became effective on May 6, 2024. The final rule revised the primary annual PM <E T="52">2.5</E> standard by lowering the level from 12.0 µg/m <SU>3</SU> to 9.0 µg/m <SU>3</SU> , retained the current primary 24-hour PM <E T="52">2.5</E> standard and the primary 24-hour PM <E T="52">10</E> standard, retained the secondary 24-hour PM <E T="52">2.5</E> standard, secondary annual PM <E T="52">2.5</E> standard, and secondary 24-hour PM <E T="52">10</E> standard, and finalized revisions to the Air Quality Index (AQI) and monitoring requirements for the national ambient air quality standards for particulate matter (PM NAAQS). After publication, the EPA became aware of an error in the preamble text regarding the due date for infrastructure State implementation plan (infrastructure SIP) submissions for the 2024 p.m. NAAQS. With this action, the EPA is clarifying the due date for infrastructure SIP submissions for the 2024 p.m. NAAQS. The EPA is also correcting inadvertent errors in the PM <E T="52">2.5</E> monitoring regulatory text. These corrections do not include any substantive changes to the final rule. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This correction is effective on December 19, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for the final rule under Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2015-0072. All documents in the docket are listed on the <E T="03">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 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. Publicly available docket materials are available electronically through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Mr. Tim Hanley, Air Quality Assessment Division, Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Mail Code C304-06, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711; telephone: (919) 541-4417; email: <E T="03">hanley.tim@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. General Information</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. What is the authority for this action?</HD> The EPA is correcting the deadline for infrastructure SIP submissions under its authority provided in section 110(a)(1) of the Clean Air Act (CAA) (42 U.S.C. 7410), which directs the States to submit their implementation plans within 3 years after promulgation of a primary or secondary NAAQS. The EPA is also acting under the authority provided by CAA sections 103, 105, 110, 114, 301, 311, 314, and 319, which direct the EPA to develop and implement measures to conduct ambient air quality surveillance. Under this authority, this action implements minor, non-substantive typographical and technical corrections to conform the 40 CFR part 58 regulatory text to the rule's preamble and remedies regulatory text formatting errors. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. What corrective action is the Agency taking?</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD3">Correction to Preamble of March 6 Final Rule</HD> In the proposed rule published on January 27, 2023 (88 FR 5558), the preamble states that “Under CAA sections 110(a)(1), all states are required to make these infrastructure SIP submissions within 3 years after promulgation of a new or revised primary standard.” However, in the final rule published on March 6, 2024 (89 FR 16202), the preamble incorrectly and inadvertently states that “Under CAA section 110(a)(1), all States are required to make these infrastructure SIP submissions within three years after the effective date of a new or revised primary standard. While the CAA authorizes the EPA to set a shorter time for States to make these SIP submissions, the EPA is requiring submission of infrastructure SIPs within three years of the effective date of this revised primary annual PM <E T="52">2.5</E> NAAQS.” Pursuant to CAA section 110(a)(1), infrastructure SIP submissions are not due within three years of the effective date, but within three years of the promulgation of a new or revised NAAQS. The EPA has traditionally held that “promulgation” means the signature and widespread dissemination of a final rulemaking in the context of the NAAQS. Per this standard practice, because the EPA promulgated (signed and made available on the EPA's website) the reconsideration of the PM <E T="52">2.5</E> NAAQS on February 7, 2024, infrastructure SIP submissions are due by no later than February 7, 2027. To be consistent with the CAA and the proposed rule, the EPA is correcting the last two sentences of the first paragraph of <E T="03">B. Section 110(a)(1) and (2) Infrastructure SIP Requirements</E> in the final rule preamble. <HD SOURCE="HD3">Correction</HD> In FR Doc. 2024-02637, at 89 FR 16202 in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> of March 6, 2024, on page 16367, in the second column, the last two sentences of the first paragraph of <E T="03">B. Section 110(a)(1) and (2) Infrastructure SIP Requirements</E> are corrected to read as follows: “Under CAA section 110(a)(1), all States are required to make these infrastructure SIP submissions within three years after the promulgation date of a new or revised primary standard. While the CAA authorizes the EPA to set a shorter time for States to make these SIP submissions, the EPA is requiring submission of infrastructure SIPs within three years of the promulgation date of this revised primary annual PM <E T="52">2.5</E> NAAQS.” <HD SOURCE="HD3">Correcting Amendments to 40 CFR Parts 50 and 58</HD> The EPA is also making several corrections to inadvertent errors in the PM <E T="52">2.5</E> monitoring regulatory text as described below. After publication, it was realized that the EPA did not add promulgated § 50.20 to the 40 CFR 50.3 list of sections containing PM <E T="52">2.5</E> standards, which was inconsistent with past NAAQS regulations. Therefore, in 40 CFR 50.3, the EPA is adding § 50.20 to its list of sections containing PM <E T="52">2.5</E> standards to be consistent with all existing PM <E T="52">2.5</E> standards and methods. The EPA proposed to adjust the minimum value required by appendix A, section 3.2.4, to be considered valid sample pairs for the PM <E T="52">2.5</E> Performance Evaluation Program (PEP) from 3 µg/m <SU>3</SU> to 2 µg/m <SU>3</SU> (88 FR 5665, January 27, 2023). In section 3.2.4 of appendices A and B to part 58, the EPA finalized 2 µg/m <SU>3</SU> for the quality assurance program that assesses PM <E T="52">2.5</E> network bias. However, in the final rule, section 4(c)(5) in appendix A and section 4(b)(5) and (c) in appendix B, which provides the PM <E T="52">2.5</E> limit for use in bias assessments, was not updated to reflect the finalized 2 µg/m <SU>3</SU> for PM <E T="52">2.5</E> and instead states the previous 3 µg/m <SU>3</SU> , which is inconsistent with section 3.2.4 in the two appendices. Within the PM NAAQS, the same criteria should be used for PM <E T="52">2.5</E> for consistency. Therefore, the EPA is correcting section 4(c)(5) of appendix A and section 4(b)(5) and (c) of appendix B to part 58 to be consistent with section 3.2.4 of appendices A and B to part 58. In the PM NAAQS Reconsideration proposed rule (88 FR 5665, January 27, 2023), the EPA proposed to revise equation 6 in section 4.2.1 of appendices A and B to part 58. The proposed equation 6 had a plus sign in the denominator. However, in the final rule, the EPA inadvertently published equation 6 with a minus sign in the denominator instead of a plus sign. Therefore, the EPA is correcting the denominator in equation 6 of section 4.2.1 in appendices A and B by changing the minus sign to a plus sign, which is consistent with what was proposed. In section 2.2.2 in appendix C to part 58, the EPA is correcting a typo by replacing “multijusinstincional” with “multijurisdictional.” Appendix C to part 58 of the final rule's regulatory text had an incorrect instruction to remove and reserve sections 2.4 and 2.4.1 and remove sections 2.4.1. through 2.4.1.7. The EPA's intention was to reserve all of section 2.4, which includes sections 2.4.1 through 2.4.6 and their subsections, and to remove sections 2.4.1.1 through 2.4.1.7. However, due to the EPA's confusing instructions, only sections 2.4 and 2.4.1 were reserved. To correct this issue, the EPA is reserving sections 2.4.2 through 2.4.6 of appendix C to part 58, including their subsections, so that all of section 2.4 is reserved as intended. Also, when the EPA reserved section 2.4 in appendix C to part 58, the EPA revoked language associated with Approved Regional Methods (ARMs). However, after publication, several mentions of the revoked term “ARM” and references to the reserved section 2.4 were left in appendices A and C to part 58. To correct this issue, the EPA is removing the revoked term “ARM” and references to the reserved section 2.4 from section 3.2.4.2 in appendix A to part 58 and sections 2.7.1, 2.8.4, 2.7.6, 2.8.1, 2.8.5, and 3.1 in appendix C to part 58. Lastly, after pub ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 36k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━