Air Plan Approval; Illinois; Alton Township 2010 Sulfur Dioxide Redesignation and Maintenance Plan

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Parts 52 and 81</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R05-OAR-2023-0498; FRL-12265-02-R5]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Illinois; Alton Township 2010 Sulfur Dioxide Redesignation and Maintenance Plan</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 approving Illinois' request to redesignate the Alton Township nonattainment area in Madison County, Illinois to attainment for the 2010 sulfur dioxide (SO <E T="52">2</E> ) National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS). EPA is also approving Illinois' maintenance plan for the area. Illinois submitted the request for approval on October 2, 2023. Additionally, EPA is taking final action to determine that the Alton Township area attained the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS by the September 12, 2021, attainment date, fulfilling EPA's obligation under the Clean Air Act (CAA) section 179(c) to determine whether the area attained the relevant NAAQS standard. EPA proposed to approve this action on October 8, 2024, and received no comments.December 30, 2024 </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective on January 29, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-R05-OAR-2023-0498. 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">i.e.,</E> Confidential Business Information (CBI), Proprietary Business Information (PBI), 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 either through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or at the Environmental Protection Agency, Region 5, Air and Radiation Division, 77 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60604. This facility is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, excluding Federal holidays. We recommend that you telephone Cecilia Magos, at (312) 886-7336, before visiting the Region 5 office. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Cecilia Magos, Air and Radiation Division (AR-18J), Environmental Protection Agency, Region 5, 77 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60604, (312) 886-7336, <E T="03">magos.cecilia@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document whenever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background Information</HD> On June 22, 2010 (75 FR 35520), EPA revised the primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS, establishing a new health-based 1-hour standard of 75 parts per billion (ppb). EPA promulgated designations for this standard in four rounds. On September 18, 2015, Illinois submitted its recommendations to EPA to designate certain areas of the state as part of the Round 2 designations. Illinois recommended a portion of southern Alton Township in Madison County be designated as nonattainment for the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS. EPA concurred with Illinois' analysis and published a final action designating the area as nonattainment for the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS effective September 12, 2016 (81 FR 45039). Illinois submitted an attainment plan for the Alton Township nonattainment area on December 3, 2018. The plan included computer modeling that included emissions from the Alton Steel Inc. (Alton Steel) facility in Alton, Illinois, and emissions from the Ameren Missouri-Sioux Energy Center (Ameren-Sioux) power plant in Missouri, located about 13 kilometers west-northwest of the nonattainment area. On March 14, 2019, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency issued Construction Permit #18020009 for the Alton Steel facility to operate a new ladle metallurgy facility (LMF) stack and to remove the downfacing vents that were contributing to modeled nonattainment at the facility. EPA included additional dispersion modeling to supplement Illinois' attainment demonstration to demonstrate that the emission limits required by the Illinois SIP and submitted for EPA approval provide for modeled concentrations meeting the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS. EPA approved Illinois' attainment plan revision on February 21, 2023 (88 FR 10464). On October 2, 2023, Illinois submitted a redesignation request and maintenance plan for the Alton Township nonattainment area for the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS. The submitted redesignation request and maintenance plan includes the Construction Permit issued to Alton Steel and the Consent Agreement for Ameren-Sioux that has been approved into the Missouri SIP (87 FR 68634, November 16, 2022) with accepted SO <E T="52">2</E> emissions limits. On October 8, 2024 (89 FR 81409), EPA proposed to approve the redesignation of the Alton Township area in Madison County, Illinois from nonattainment to attainment for the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS in accordance with Illinois' request submitted on October 2, 2023. EPA has determined the area is attaining the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS and that the improvement in air quality is due to permanent and enforceable SO <E T="52">2</E> emission reductions in the area. EPA is also approving Illinois' maintenance plan, which is designed to ensure that the area will continue to maintain attainment of the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS. Additionally, under section 179(c) of the CAA, EPA is required to determine whether a nonattainment area attained a standard by the applicable attainment date based on the area's air quality as of the attainment date. In this action, EPA is determining that the Alton Township area did attain the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS by the attainment date of September 12, 2021. An explanation of the CAA requirements, a detailed analysis of the revisions, and EPA's reasons for proposing approval were provided in the notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) and will not be restated here. The public comment period for this proposed rule ended on November 7, 2024. EPA received no comments on the proposal. Therefore, we are finalizing our action as proposed. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Final Action</HD> EPA is approving the redesignation of the Alton Township area from nonattainment to attainment, meeting the criteria under CAA section 107(d)(3)(E) for the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS in accordance with Illinois' October 2, 2023, request. EPA is determining that the area is attaining the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS and that the improvement in air quality is due to permanent and enforceable SO <E T="52">2</E> emission reductions in the area. On this basis, EPA is approving the redesignation request from Illinois for the area and changing the legal designation of the Alton Township area in Madison County at 40 CFR part 81 to attainment for the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS. EPA is also approving Illinois' maintenance plan under CAA section 175A. The maintenance plan demonstrates that the area will continue to maintain the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS and includes a process to develop contingency measures to remedy any future violations of the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS and procedures for evaluation of potential violations. This includes Illinois' commitment to provide EPA with an annual emissions report of the newly constructed Alton Steel LMF stack as part of Illinois' annual network plan submittal to provide ongoing verification of attainment. Finally, EPA is determining that the Alton Township area attained the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS by the September 12, 2021, attainment date addressing EPA's obligation under CAA section 179(c). <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</HD> Under the CAA, the Administrator is required to approve a SIP submission that complies with the provisions of the CAA and applicable Federal regulations. 42 U.S.C. 7410(k); 40 CFR 52.02(a). Thus, in reviewing SIP submissions, EPA's role is to approve state choices, provided that they meet the criteria of the CAA. Accordingly, this action merely approves state law as meeting Federal requirements and does not impose additional requirements beyond those imposed by state law. For that reason, this action: • Is not a significant regulatory action subject to review by the Office of Management and Budget under Executive Orders 12866 (58 FR 51735, October 4, 1993), and 14094 (88 FR 21879, April 11, 2023); • Does not impose an information collection burden under the provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act (44 U.S.C. 3501 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ); • Is certified as not having a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities under the Regulatory Flexibility Act (5 U.S.C. 601 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ); • Does not contain any unfunded mandate or significantly or uniquely affect small governments, as described in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (Pub. L. 104-4); • Does not have federalism implications as specified in Executive Order 13132 (64 FR 43255, August 10, 1999); • Is not subject to Executive Order 13045 (62 FR 19885, April 23, 1997) because it approves a state program; • Is not a significant regulatory action subject to Executive Order 13211 (66 FR 28355, May 22, 2001); and • Is not subject to requirements of section 12(d) of the National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act of 1995 (15 U.S.C. 272 note) because application of those requirements would be inconsistent with the CAA. In addition, the SIP is not approved to apply on any Indian reservation land or in any other area where EPA or an Indian ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 16k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━