Air Plan Approval; Georgia; Update to Materials Incorporated by Reference

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R04-OAR-2023-0501; FRL-12273-01-R4]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Georgia; Update to Materials Incorporated by Reference</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule; notification of administrative change. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is updating the materials that are incorporated by reference (IBR) into the Georgia State Implementation Plan (SIP). The regulations affected by this update have been previously submitted by Georgia and approved by EPA. In this notice, EPA is also notifying the public of corrections to the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) tables that identify material incorporated by reference into the Georgia SIP. This update affects the materials that are available for public inspection at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the EPA Regional Office. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This action is effective December 20, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The SIP materials whose incorporation by reference into 40 CFR part 52 is finalized through this action are available for inspection at the following locations: Environmental Protection Agency, Region 4, 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, GA 30303; and <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> To view the materials at the Region 4 Office, EPA requests that you email the contact listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section to schedule your inspection. The Regional Office's official hours of business are Monday through Friday 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., excluding Federal holidays. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Josue Ortiz Borrero, Air Regulatory Management Section, Air Planning and Implementation Branch, Air and Radiation Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 4, 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, Georgia 30303-8960. Mr. Josue Ortiz Borrero can be reached via telephone at (404) 562-8085 or via electronic mail at <E T="03">ortizborrero.josue@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> Each State has a SIP containing the control measures and strategies used to attain and maintain the national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS). The SIP is extensive, containing such elements as air pollution control regulations, emission inventories, monitoring networks, attainment demonstrations, and enforcement mechanisms. Each State must formally adopt the control measures and strategies in the SIP after the public has had an opportunity to comment on them and then submit the proposed SIP revisions to EPA. Once these control measures and strategies are approved by EPA, and after notice and comment, they are incorporated into the federally-approved SIP and are identified in part 52, “Approval and Promulgation of Implementation Plans,” title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations (40 CFR part 52). The full text of the State regulation approved by EPA is not reproduced in its entirety in 40 CFR part 52 but is “incorporated by reference.” This means that EPA has approved a given State regulation or specified changes to the given regulation with a specific effective date. The public is referred to the location of the full text version should they want to know which measures are contained in a given SIP. The information provided allows EPA and the public to monitor the extent to which a State implements a SIP to attain and maintain the NAAQS and to take enforcement action for violations of the SIP. The SIP is a living document which the State can revise as necessary to address the unique air pollution problems in the State. Therefore, EPA from time to time must take action on proposed revisions containing new or revised State regulations. A submission from a State can revise one or more rules in their entirety or portions of rules. The State indicates the changes in the submission (such as by using redline/strikethrough text) and EPA then takes action on the requested changes. EPA establishes a docket for its actions using a unique Docket Identification Number, which is listed in each action. These dockets and the complete submission are available for viewing on <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> On May 22, 1997 (62 FR 27968), EPA revised the procedures for incorporating by reference, into the Code of Federal Regulations, materials approved by EPA into each SIP. These changes revised the format for the identification of the SIP in 40 CFR part 52, streamlined the mechanisms for announcing EPA approval of revisions to a SIP, and streamlined the mechanisms for EPA's updating of the IBR information contained for each SIP in 40 CFR part 52. The revised procedures also called for EPA to maintain “SIP Compilations” that contain the federally approved regulations and source-specific permits submitted by each State agency. EPA generally updates these SIP Compilations on an annual basis. Under the revised procedures, EPA must periodically publish an informational document in the rules section of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notifying the public that updates have been made to a SIP Compilation for a particular State. EPA began applying the 1997 revised procedures to Georgia on May 21, 1999, <E T="03">see</E> 64 FR 27699, and is providing this notification in accordance with such procedures. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. EPA Action</HD> In this action, EPA is providing notice of an update to the materials incorporated by reference into the Georgia SIP as of September 1, 2024, and identified in 40 CFR 52.570(c). This update includes SIP materials submitted by Georgia and approved by EPA since the last IBR update. <E T="03">See</E> 88 FR 16564 (March 20, 2023). In addition, EPA is providing notice of the following corrections to 40 CFR 52.570(c): <HD SOURCE="HD2">Changes Applicable to Paragraph (c), Table (1), EPA-Approved Georgia Regulations</HD> A. Under 391-3-1-.02(7), “Prevention of Significant Deterioration of Air Quality (PSD),” the explanation column is reformatted to combine the two existing paragraphs into one cell. B. Under 391-3-1-.01, “Definitions,” the explanation column is revised to add the text “which were” before the text “approved on 12/4/2018” and before the text “approved on 2/2/1996,” as well as the text “which was” before the text “approved on 1/5/2017.” C. Under 391-3-1-.02(4), “Ambient Air Standards,” the explanation column is revised to add the text “which were” before the text “approved on 12/4/2018.” D. Under 391-3-1-.02(6), “Source Monitoring,” the explanation column is revised to add the text “which was” before the text “approved on 3/9/2022.” E. Under 391-3-1-.03(6), “Exemptions,” the explanation column is revised to replace the text “With the exception of” with the text “Except” and to add the text “, which is not approved into the SIP” after the current explanation. F. Under 391-3-1-.03(11), “Permit by Rule,” the explanation column is revised to add the text “which were” before the text “approved on 2/9/2010” and the text “which was” before the text “approved on 3/13/2000.” <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Good Cause Exemption</HD> EPA has determined that this action falls under the “good cause” exemption in section 553(b)(B) of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) which, upon finding “good cause,” authorizes agencies to dispense with public participation and section 553(d)(3) which allows an agency to make an action effective immediately (thereby avoiding the 30-day delayed effective date otherwise provided for in the APA). This administrative action simply codifies provisions which are already in effect as a matter of law in Federal and approved State programs and makes typographical/ministerial revisions to the tables in the CFR. Under section 553(b)(B) of the APA, an agency may find good cause where procedures are “impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest.” Public comment for this administrative action is “unnecessary” and “contrary to the public interest” since the codification (and corrections) only reflect existing law, combine two cells of a table, and revise explanations in the table for consistency. Immediate notice of this action in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> benefits the public by providing the public notice of the updated Georgia SIP Compilation and notice of corrections to the Georgia “Identification of Plan” portion of the CFR. Further, pursuant to section 553(d)(3), making this action immediately effective benefits the public by immediately updating both the SIP Compilation and the CFR “Identification of plan” section (which includes table entry corrections). <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Incorporation by Reference</HD> In this rule, EPA is finalizing regulatory text that includes incorporation by reference of regulations promulgated by Georgia, previously approved by EPA and federally effective before September 1, 2024, contained in “Georgia, Volume 1, 40 CFR 52.570(c), State Implementation Plan Compilation, EPA-Approved Georgia Regulations” and “Georgia, Volume 2, 40 CFR 52.570(d), State Implementation Plan Compilation, EPA-Approved Georgia Source-Specific Requirements.” EPA has made, and will continue to make, these materials generally available through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> and at the EPA Region 4 Office (please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section of this preamble for more information). <HD SOURCE="HD1">V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</HD> Under the Clean Air Act (CAA), the Administrator is required to approve a SIP submission that complies with the provisions of the CAA and applicable Federal regulations. <E T="03">See</E> ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 41k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━