Approval of Source-Specific Air Quality Implementation Plan; New York; Lehigh Cement Company LLC

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR> 40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R02-OAR-2023-0242; FRL 12441-01-R2]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Approval of Source-Specific Air Quality Implementation Plan; New York; Lehigh Cement Company LLC</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to approve a revision to the State of New York's State Implementation Plan (SIP) for the ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) related to a Source-specific SIP (SSSIP) revision for Lehigh Cement Company LLC, located at 313 Warren Street, Glens Falls, New York (the Facility). The EPA is proposing to find that the control options in this SSSIP revision implement Reasonably Available Control Technology (RACT) with respect to nitrogen oxide (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) emissions from the relevant Facility source, which is identified as one Portland cement kiln (the Kiln). This SSSIP revision is intended to implement NO <E T="52">X</E> RACT for the relevant Facility source in accordance with the requirements for implementation of the 2008 and 2015 ozone NAAQS. This proposed action will not interfere with ozone NAAQS requirements and meets all applicable requirements of the Clean Air Act (CAA). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before January 27, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket Number EPA-R02-OAR-2023-0242, at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Although listed in the index, some information is not publicly available, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> Confidential Business Information (CBI) 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 electronically through <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or withdrawn. The EPA may publish any comment received to its public docket. Do not submit electronically any information you consider to be 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, such as 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> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Stephanie Lin, Air Programs Branch, Environmental Protection Agency, Region 2 Office, 290 Broadway, 25th Floor, New York, New York 10007-1866, 212-637-3711, or by email at <E T="03">lin.stephanie@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. The EPA's evaluation of New York's submission and RACT analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Environmental Justice Considerations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Ground Level Ozone Formation</HD> Ground level ozone is predominantly a secondary air pollutant created by chemical reactions that occur when ozone precursors, including nitrogen oxides (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) and volatile organic compounds (VOC), chemically react in the presence of sunlight. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Emissions from industrial facilities are anthropogenic sources of ozone precursors. The potential for ground-level ozone formation tends to be highest during months with warmer temperatures and stagnant air masses. Ozone levels are thus generally higher during the summer months, which is often referred to as “the ozone season.” In New York, the ozone season is generally considered to be between April 15 and October 15, while the non-ozone season is generally considered to be between October 16 and April 14. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">Primary standards</E> provide public health protection, including protecting the health of “sensitive” populations such as asthmatics, children, and the elderly. <E T="03">Secondary standards</E> provide public welfare protection, including protection against decreased visibility and damage to animals, crops, vegetation, and buildings. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Ozone Nonattainment</HD> A geographic area of the United States that is not meeting the primary or secondary National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for ozone is described as a nonattainment area. Nonattainment areas are classified as either Marginal, Moderate, Serious, Severe, or Extreme. With respect to this proposed action, there are two relevant ozone NAAQS standards. First, on March 12, 2008, the EPA promulgated a revision to the ozone NAAQS, setting both the primary and secondary standards at 0.075 parts per million (ppm) averaged over an 8-hour time frame (2008 8-hour Ozone Standard). <E T="03">See</E> 73 FR 16436 (March 27, 2008). Second, on October 1, 2015, the EPA lowered these standards to 0.070 ppm averaged over an 8-hour time frame (2015 8-hour Ozone Standard). <E T="03">See</E> 80 FR 65292 (October 26, 2015). The State of New York has two ozone nonattainment areas: (1) Jamestown, and (2) the New York Metro Area, <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> consisting of the Bronx County, Kings County, Nassau County, New York County, Queens County, Richmond County, Rockland County, Suffolk County, Westchester County. Under CAA section 184, the State of New York is located within the Ozone Transport Region (OTR), which means that it is subject to statewide RACT requirements. This Facility is not located in an ozone nonattainment area, but it is still required to implement RACT because it is located within the OTR. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  The New York Metro Area is part of the greater nonattainment area <E T="03">New York-N. New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-CT.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Federal RACT Requirements</HD> RACT is defined as the lowest emission limit that a source is capable of meeting through the application of control technology that is reasonably available considering technological and economic feasibility. The CAA section 182, Plan Submissions and Requirements, requires States with ozone nonattainment areas to include in their statewide SIPs, among other things, provisions to require the implementation of RACT. CAA section 184(b)(2)  <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> sets forth the requirement to establish control measures to implement RACT for major sources of VOC located in the OTR. For major sources of NO <E T="52">X</E> , the CAA section 182(f)(1) also applies, “The plan provisions required under this subpart for major stationary sources of volatile organic compounds shall also apply to major stationary sources (as defined in section 7602 of this title and subsections (c), (d), and (e) of this section) of oxides of nitrogen.” The State of New York is located within the OTR, and thus the State is required to implement RACT for all major sources of NO <E T="52">X</E> within the State. RACT for a particular source is determined on a case-by-case basis, considering the technological and economic circumstances of the individual source. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  CAA 182(f)(1) also states: The plan provisions required under this subpart for major stationary sources of volatile organic compounds shall also apply to major stationary sources (as defined in section 7602 of this title and subsections (c), (d), and (e) of this section) of oxides of nitrogen. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">NYSDEC RACT Requirements</HD> The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) RACT regulations require applicable facilities to meet certain requirements, referred to as “presumptive RACT requirements.” These presumptive requirements generally require sources to implement emission limits, control efficiency requirements, specific control technologies, averaging plans, and/or fuel/raw material switching practices. In some instances, the presumptive RACT requirements may not be technologically or economically feasible for a certain source, and the State can make a source-specific RACT determination, which is submitted to the EPA as a SSSIP. The SSSIP should include the facility's RACT plan that demonstrates how the facility will implement RACT. The SSSIP will also include the applicable CAA title V operating permit conditions that address RACT requirements. These permit conditions for the Facility will become part of the Federally enforceable SIP upon the EPA's final approval of this SSSIP. Under existing NYSDEC RACT regulations, facilities are required to assess all technologically feasible control options that meet the State's cost threshold. The cost threshold for NYSDEC RACT requirements is found under NYSDEC 2013 policy, “DAR-20 Economic and Technical Analysis for Reasonably Available Control Technology (RACT).” Under this policy, facilities must consider in their RACT determinations control technologies that remove VOC or NO <E T="52">X</E> emissions up to a certain cost threshold, expressed in a dollar amount per ton of ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 27k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━