Approval and Promulgation of Air Quality Implementation Plans; Maryland; Nitrogen Oxides Ozone Season Emissions Caps for Non-Trading Large Nitrogen Oxides Units; Amendments

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR> 40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R03-OAR-2024-0512; FRL-12099-01-R3]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Approval and Promulgation of Air Quality Implementation Plans; Maryland; Nitrogen Oxides Ozone Season Emissions Caps for Non-Trading Large Nitrogen Oxides Units; Amendments</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to approve a State implementation plan (SIP) revision submitted by the State of Maryland. This revision (Maryland Submittal #24-01) pertains to the re-allocation of nitrogen oxides (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) ozone season emission caps for large non-electric generating units (non-EGUs, affected units). The amendment also updates a cross reference to the Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR). This action is being taken under the Clean Air Act (CAA). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before January 27, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R03-OAR-2024-0512 at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> or via email to <E T="03">talley.david@epa.gov.</E> For comments submitted at <E T="03">Regulations.gov,</E> follow the online instructions for submitting comments. Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from <E T="03">Regulations.gov.</E> For either manner of submission, 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. 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 the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. 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">www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Amber Iglesias, Planning & Implementation Branch (3AD30), Air & Radiation Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region III, 1600 John F. Kennedy Boulevard, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103. The telephone number is (202) 564-3175. Ms. Iglesias can also be reached via electronic mail at <E T="03">iglesias.amber@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> On June 10, 2024, the State of Maryland, through the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE), submitted for approval into the Maryland SIP amendments to the Code of Maryland Regulation (COMAR) 26.11.40- <E T="03">NO</E> <E T="54">X</E> <E T="03">Ozone Season Emission Caps for Non-Trading Large NO</E> <E T="54">X</E> <E T="03">Units</E> to EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> On October 27, 1998 (63 FR 57356), EPA finalized the “Finding of Significant Contribution and Rulemaking for Certain States in the Ozone Transport Assessment Group Region for Purposes of Reducing Regional Transport of Ozone”—commonly called the NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call. The NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call, issued pursuant to section 110 of the CAA, was designed to mitigate significant transport of NO <E T="52">X</E> one of the precursors of ozone. EPA developed the NO <E T="52">X</E> Budget Trading Program, an allowance trading program that States could adopt to meet their obligations under the NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call. The NO <E T="52">X</E> Budget Trading Program allowed electric generating units (EGUs) greater than 25 megawatts and industrial non-electric generating units, such as boilers and turbines, with a rated heat input greater than 250 million British thermal units per hour (MMBtu/hr), referred to as “large non-EGUs,” to participate in a regional NO <E T="52">X</E> cap and trade program. Of specific relevance to this action, the NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call also established specific reduction requirements for other non-EGUs, including cement kilns and stationary internal combustion (IC) engines. On January 10, 2001 (66 FR 1866), EPA approved into the Maryland SIP two Maryland regulations, COMAR 26.11.29— <E T="03">NO</E> <E T="54">X</E> <E T="03">Reduction and Trading Program,</E> and COMAR 26.11.30— <E T="03">Policies and Procedures Relating to Maryland's NO</E> <E T="54">X</E> <E T="03">Reduction and Trading Program,</E> to meet the requirements of the NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call. Under the approved trading program, large EGUs and large non-EGUs in Maryland participated in a regional cap and trade program that was administered by EPA. On May 12, 2005 (70 FR 25162), EPA promulgated the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), to address transported emissions that significantly contributed to downwind States' nonattainment and maintenance of the 1997 ozone and fine particulate matter (PM <E T="52">2.5</E> ) National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). CAIR required 28 States, including Maryland, to reduce emissions of NO <E T="52">X</E> and sulfur dioxide (SO <E T="52">2</E> ), which are precursors to ozone and PM <E T="52">2.5</E> . Under CAIR, EPA developed separate cap and trade programs for annual NO <E T="52">X</E> , ozone season NO <E T="52">X</E> , and annual SO <E T="52">2</E> emissions. On April 28, 2006 (71 FR 25328), EPA also promulgated Federal implementation plans (FIPs) requiring the EGUs in each affected State, but not large non-EGUs, to participate in the CAIR trading programs. Subsequent to these actions, States needed to assess their NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call requirements and take other regulatory action as necessary to ensure that their obligations for the large non-EGUs continued to be met either through submission of a CAIR SIP or other NO <E T="52">X</E> regulation. States could comply with the requirements of CAIR by either remaining on the FIP, which applied only to EGUs, or by submitting a CAIR SIP revision that included EGUs as trading sources and the NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call covered non-EGUs either as trading sources, or subject to non-trading NO <E T="52">X</E> control regulations. EPA discontinued administration of the NO <E T="52">X</E> Budget Trading Program in 2009 upon the start of the CAIR trading programs. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call requirements continued to apply, however, and EGUs that were formerly trading under the NO <E T="52">X</E> Budget Trading Program continued to meet their NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call requirements under the generally more stringent requirements of the CAIR ozone season trading program. EPA has implementing regulations for the NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call at 40 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 51.121. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  CAIR was subsequently vacated and remanded. <E T="03">See</E> North Carolina v. EPA, 531 F.3d 896 (D.C. Cir. 2008), modified by 550 F.3d 1176 (remanding CAIR). CAIR was replaced with the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, or CSAPR (76 FR 48208, August 8, 2011), which, after legal challenges, was implemented starting in January 2015. The NO <E T="52">X</E> Ozone Season Trading Program under CSAPR was replaced in Maryland and most other States by a new trading program for ozone season NO <E T="52">X</E> under the CSAPR Update rule in January 2017 (81 FR 74504, October 26, 2016). </FTNT> In Maryland, Luke Paper Mill (formerly the Westvaco pulp and paper mill) had the only non-EGUs sources that had been covered under the NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call and participated in the NO <E T="52">X</E> Budget Trading Program. When the CAIR NO <E T="52">X</E> Ozone Season trading program replaced the NO <E T="52">X</E> Budget Trading Program, Maryland adopted the CAIR program as it applied to large EGUs, but chose not to include the non-EGU sources at Luke as participants in the CAIR NO <E T="52">X</E> Ozone Season trading program. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> Instead, in 2010, Maryland adopted COMAR 26.11.14.07— <E T="03">Control of Emissions from Kraft Pulp Mills,</E> which, among other requirements, included provisions that address the NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call non-EGU requirements in Maryland through a NO <E T="52">X</E> ozone season tonnage cap of 947 tons for the Luke non-EGU sources and monitoring, recordkeeping, and reporting in accordance with 40 CFR part 75. EPA conditionally approved COMAR 26.11.14.07 into the Maryland SIP on August 30, 2016 (81 FR 59486) and took final approval on July 17, 2017 (82 FR 32641). <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  CAIR was superseded upon implementation of the CSAPR program. Maryland rescinded its CAIR regulation (COMAR 26.11.28) and submitted a SIP revision to EPA that sought removal of the regulation in its entirety from the approved Maryland SIP. On July 17, 2017 (82 FR 32641), EPA approved the SIP revision removing the CAIR regulation from Maryland's SIP. </FTNT> In October 2018, Maryland adopted a COMAR 26.11.40— <E T="03">NO</E> <E T="54">X</E> <E T="03">Ozone Season Emission Caps for Non-Trading Large NO</E> <E T="54">X</E> <E T="03">Units.</E> This regulation established NO <E T="52">X</E> ozone season tonnage caps and NO <E T="52">X</E> monitoring requirements for large non-EGUs in the State that were not covered under the CSAPR NO <E T="52">X</E> Ozone Season Group 2 Trading Program. The purpose of COMA ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 22k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━