Air Plan Disapproval; Texas; Control of Air Pollution From Visible Emissions and Particulate Matter

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R06-OAR-2021-0029; FRL-12218-02-R6]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Disapproval; Texas; Control of Air Pollution From Visible Emissions and Particulate Matter</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> Pursuant to the Federal Clean Air Act (CAA, the Act), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is disapproving a revision to the Texas State Implementation Plan (SIP) submitted by the State of Texas through the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) on August 20, 2020 (2020 SIP revision). The 2020 SIP revision addresses emissions during planned Maintenance, Startup and Shutdown (MSS) activities for certain Electric Generating Units (EGUs) and includes requirements intended to address visible emissions (opacity) and Particulate Matter (PM) emissions during planned MSS activities. The requirements are included in eight Agreed Orders (AOs) issued by TCEQ to the affected EGUs and provided in the 2020 SIP revision. EPA determined that the requirements contained in these AOs do not meet the CAA enforceability requirements or the CAA requirement that emission limitations must apply on a continuous basis. We are taking this action in accordance with section 110 of the Act. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective on January 21, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-R06-OAR-2021-0029. 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 or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Certain other material, such as copyrighted material, is not placed on the internet. Publicly available docket materials are available electronically through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Michael Feldman, Regional Haze and SO <E T="52">2</E> Section, EPA Region 6 Office, 1201 Elm Street, Suite 500, Dallas, Texas 75270, (214) 665-9793, <E T="03">Feldman.Michael@epa.gov.</E> Please call or email the contact listed above if you need alternative access to material indexed but not provided in the docket. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document “we,” “us,” and “our” means the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background and Summary of Bases for Disapproval</HD> The background for this action is discussed in detail in our September 3, 2024, proposal (89 FR 71237). In that document, we proposed to disapprove a revision to the SIP submitted by the State of Texas through the TCEQ on August 20, 2020, that addresses emissions during planned MSS activities for specified EGUs and includes requirements intended to address visible emissions (opacity) and PM emissions during planned MSS activities at these specified EGUs. The 2020 SIP revision and included AOs were intended to address concerns regarding the applicability of two long standing Texas rules during periods of MSS. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Texas included in the 2020 SIP revision the State's interpretation of these rules, taking the position that the numerical opacity and PM limits have never applied to coal fired EGUs using ESPs during periods of MSS because of the technical limitations on the control technology. This interpretation was first provided by TCEQ in 2015 as part of a Title V action;  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> this is the first time the interpretation has been included as part of a SIP revision. The State's regulatory language contains no indication that the rules do not apply to this specific subset of sources during MSS. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Specifically: 30 Texas Administrative Code (TAC) 111.111 (originally adopted as Texas Air Control Board (TACB) Regulation I, Rule 103), which limits opacity; and 30 TAC 111.153(b) (originally adopted as TACB Regulation I, Rule 105.31), which limits particulate matter emissions from solid fuel fired-steam generators to 0.3 lbs/million Btu averaged over a two-hour period. TACB Regulation I, Rules 103 and 105.31 were approved by EPA on May 31, 1972 (37 FR 10895); these rules were subsequently revised (amendments most recently approved May 8, 1996 (61 FR 20732), and April 28, 2009 (74 FR 19144)), which renumbered and recodified these rules to what they are today. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  See letter, from Steve Hagle, Deputy Director, Office of Air, TCEQ to Gina McCarthy, Administrator, EPA, dated December 2, 2015 (setting forth TCEQ's interpretation that the opacity and PM emission limitations in 30 TAC 111.111 and 30 TAC 111.153(b) never applied to periods of planned MSS activities at coal-fired EGUs equipped with ESPs as a control device). </FTNT> In the instant SIP revision, Texas provided Agreed Orders that contain operational requirements and work practices that would apply during periods of MSS at EGU's equipped with ESPs. Texas also provided historic ambient particulate matter monitoring data, explaining that even though under its interpretation, these rules have never applied during MSS, there have not been any violations of PM NAAQS measured anywhere near these sources. EPA has considered three interrelated provisions of the Clean Air Act (CAA) in assessing the approvability of this SIP submission. First, the requirement under CAA section 110(a)(2)(A) which requires that SIPs include “enforceable emission limitations and other control measures, means, or techniques (including economic incentives such as fees, marketable permits, and auctions of emissions rights), as well as schedules and timetables for compliance, as may be necessary or appropriate to meet the applicable requirements of this chapter.” Second, under CAA section 302(k), “emission limitation” and “emission standard” mean a requirement established by the State or the Administrator which limits the quantity, rate, or concentration of emissions of air pollutants on a continuous basis, including any requirement relating to the operation or maintenance of a source to assure continuous emission reduction, and any design, equipment, work practice or operational standard promulgated under this chapter. Finally, 110(l) provides that the Administrator shall not approve a revision of a plan if the revision would interfere with any applicable requirement concerning attainment and reasonable further progress (as defined in section 7501 of this title), or any other applicable requirement of this chapter. In our September 3, 2024, proposal (89 FR 71237), we proposed disapproval of this SIP revision because these AOs were not enforceable as required by CAA section 110 and did not provide for continuous limitation of emissions as required by CAA section 302(k). Our review under 302(k) in the proposed action was based on language in the SIP revision that seems to clearly indicate the reason Texas submitted these agreed orders was to make these MSS requirements federally enforceable so that emission limitations apply on a continuous basis as required under 302(k). As discussed in detail in the response to comments, Texas provided comments on our proposed action indicating that it did not intend that these emission restrictions be considered emission limits as defined by Section 302. After careful review of all comments, we are finalizing our disapproval. We are finding that the agreed orders are not enforceable as required by 110(a)(2)(A). The rules are not enforceable because the requirements do not clearly demark as to when start up ends and compliance with the 30 TAC chapter 111 numerical limits is required, and during startup and shutdown, the work practice requirements for when an ESP must be engaged or removed from service are overly vague and do not define specific conditions to identify when and what steps must be followed to engage and operate the ESPs during these events. For periods of maintenance, the only requirement is to follow good air pollution control practices and safe operating practices. We are also determining that it is necessary or appropriate for these measures to be considered emission limitations as defined by 302(k) and thus must be continuous. Clearly this is supported by the explanation accompanying the SIP submission that indicated this revision was provided to make the limits continuous under 302(k). Texas commented, however, on our proposed action that it was not its intent that these agreed orders be considered as emission limitations. As discussed fully in our comment response on this matter, EPA disagrees. First, Texas indicates these limits are used in the permitting context to implement BACT which under the States and EPA definition of BACT must be continuous. Second, these AOs as written would allow for emissions that could threaten the State's ability to comply with the requirements of the CAA, and the NAAQS in particular. Given that on a lbs/hour basis, these MSS emissions can be much higher than emissions during normal controlled operation, it is necessary and appropriate that measures be in place to provide for attainment and maintenance of the NAAQS. This conclusion is supported by modeling evidence provided by a commenter which suggests that, in fact, uncontrolled emissions during MSS could result in violations of the PM NAAQS. We are finding that the Agreed Orders do not provide for continuous emission limitation as required by 302(k). During MSS, the AOs have various requirements intended to limit the duration of the MSS though as discussed in our proposal and further in the response to comments, the limits on duration are often not cl ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 126k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━