Air Plan Disapproval; Texas; Attainment Demonstrations for the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston-Galveston-Brazoria Nonattainment Areas

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R06-OAR-2020-0162; FRL-12488-01-R6]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Disapproval; Texas; Attainment Demonstrations for the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston-Galveston-Brazoria Nonattainment Areas</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> Pursuant to the Federal Clean Air Act (CAA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to disapprove revisions to the Texas State Implementation Plan (SIP). The revisions were submitted by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ or State) on July 10, 2015, August 5, 2016, December 29, 2016, and May 13, 2020, and address certain CAA requirements for the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) and Houston-Galveston-Brazoria (HGB) nonattainment areas for the 2008 ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS or standard). Specifically, the EPA is proposing to disapprove the attainment demonstrations and the associated reasonably available control measures (RACM) analyses and motor vehicle emission budgets (budgets) in the submitted revisions. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before January 22, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket No. EPA-R06-OAR-2020-0162, at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or via email to <E T="03">tsui-bowen.alethea@epa.gov</E> . Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> . The EPA may publish any comment received to its public docket. Do not submit electronically any information you consider to be Confidential Business Information (CBI) 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. The 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 Alethea Tsui-Bowen, 214-665-7555, <E T="03">tsui-bowen.alethea@epa.gov</E> . For the full EPA public comment policy, information about CBI or multimedia submissions, and general guidance on making effective comments, please visit <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets</E> . <E T="03">Docket:</E> The index to the docket for this action is available electronically at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> . While all documents in the docket are listed in the index, some information may not be publicly available due to docket file size restrictions or content ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> CBI). <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Ms. Alethea Tsui-Bowen, EPA Region 6 Office, Infrastructure and Ozone Section, 214-665-7555, <E T="03">tsui-bowen.alethea@epa.gov</E> . We encourage the public to submit comments via <E T="03">https://www.regulations.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 wherever “we” or “our” is used, we mean the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. What is the EPA proposing?</HD> The EPA is proposing to disapprove attainment demonstrations for the DFW area submitted to EPA on July 10, 2015, August 5, 2016, and May 13, 2020. The July 2015 and August 2016 SIP revisions address the DFW Moderate nonattainment area for the 2008 ozone NAAQS and the May 2020 SIP revision addresses the DFW Serious nonattainment area for the 2008 ozone NAAQS. We are also proposing to disapprove attainment demonstrations for the HGB area submitted to EPA on December 29, 2016, and May 13, 2020. The December 2016 SIP revision addresses the HGB Moderate nonattainment area for the 2008 ozone NAAQS and the May 2020 SIP revision addresses the HGB Serious nonattainment area for the 2008 ozone NAAQS. We are also proposing to disapprove the RACM associated with these submitted attainment demonstrations as well as the NO <E T="52">X</E> and VOC motor vehicle emissions budgets (or “budgets”) associated with these submitted attainment demonstrations and included as part of the SIP. We are proposing to disapprove these SIP submissions because the DFW and HGB areas failed to attain the 2008 ozone NAAQS by the July 20, 2018, Moderate attainment date and subsequently failed to attain the 2008 ozone NAAQS by the July 20, 2021, Serious attainment date. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  The EPA determined that the DFW and HGB Moderate areas failed to meet the 2008 ozone NAAQS by the applicable July 20, 2018, attainment date and these areas were reclassified as Serious by operation of law (84 FR 44238, August 23, 2019). Subsequently, EPA determined that the DFW and HGB Serious areas failed to meet the 2008 ozone NAAQS by the applicable July 20, 2021, attainment date and these areas were reclassified as Severe by operation of law (87 FR 60926, October 7, 2022). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. The 2008 Ozone NAAQS and the DFW and HGB Areas</HD> Ground-level ozone, or smog, which harms human health and the environment, is formed when volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and oxides of nitrogen (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) interact in the presence of sunlight. Motor vehicle exhaust and industrial emissions, gasoline vapors, chemical solvents and natural sources emit VOCs and NO <E T="52">X</E> . Urban areas tend to have high levels of ground-level ozone, but areas without significant industrial activity and with relatively low vehicular traffic are also subject to increased ozone levels because wind carries ozone and its precursors hundreds of miles from their sources. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  More information on ground-level ozone is available at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/ground-level-ozone-pollution/ground-level-ozone-basics</E> . </FTNT> Repeated exposure to ozone pollution may cause lung damage. Even at very low concentrations, ground-level ozone triggers a variety of health problems including aggravated asthma, reduced lung capacity, and increased susceptibility to respiratory illnesses like pneumonia and bronchitis. It can also have detrimental effects on plants and ecosystems. CAA section 109 requires the EPA to establish primary and secondary NAAQS for certain air pollutants and also establishes provisions for the review and revision of such NAAQS. Primary standards are designed to provide requisite protection of public health while secondary standards are designed to provide requisite protection of public welfare. The EPA has set NAAQS for six common air pollutants, including ozone. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  For more about the NAAQS, please visit <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/naaqs</E> . </FTNT> On March 27, 2008, the EPA published a rule in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> revising the levels of the primary and the secondary ozone NAAQS to 0.075 parts per million (ppm). <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> On May 21, 2012, the EPA designated and classified the 10-county DFW area (Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, Johnson, Kaufman, Parker, Rockwall, Tarrant and Wise counties) as Moderate nonattainment and designated and classified the eight-county HGB area (Brazoria, Chambers, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Liberty, Montgomery, and Waller counties) as Marginal nonattainment for the 2008 ozone NAAQS (77 FR 30088). The HGB Marginal area was initially given an attainment date of no later than December 31, 2015, and the DFW Moderate area was initially given an attainment date of no later than December 31, 2018 (77 FR 30160, May 21, 2012). <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  73 FR 16436 (March 27, 2008). </FTNT> On December 23, 2014, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (“D.C. Circuit”) issued a decision, among other things, that we did not have statutory authority under the CAA to extend attainment deadlines to the end of the calendar year. <E T="03">NRDC</E> v. <E T="03">EPA,</E> 777 F.3d 456, 464-69 (D.C. Cir. 2014). Consistent with the Court's decision to vacate that portion of the rule, we modified the attainment deadlines for all nonattainment areas for the 2008 ozone NAAQS and set the attainment deadline for such areas to run from the effective date of designation, which was July 20, 2012 (80 FR 12264, March 6, 2015). Therefore, the HGB Marginal attainment date was modified to no later than July 20, 2015, and the DFW Moderate attainment date was modified to no later than July 20, 2018 (80 FR 12264). For the HGB area, the TCEQ requested a one-year extension to the Marginal attainment date, which EPA approved (81 FR 26697, May 4, 2016). However, the HGB area did not attain the 2008 ozone NAAQS by the July 20, 2016, attainment date and was thus reclassified as Moderate (81 FR 90207, December 14, 2016). The DFW and HGB areas did not meet the Moderate attainment date and were accordingly reclassified as Serious with an attainment date of no later than July 20, 2021 (84 FR 44238, August 23, 2019). Subsequently, the DFW and HGB areas did not meet the Serious attainment date and were thus reclassified as Severe (87 FR 60926, October 7, 2022). <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  On October 26, 2015 (80 FR 65292), the EPA published a rule in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> revising the level of the ozone NAAQS to 0.070 ppm and retaining all the other elements of the NAAQS (“the 2015 ozone NAAQS”). On May 4 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 36k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━