Air Plan Approval; Ohio; Moderate Attainment Plan Elements for the Cleveland Area for the 2015 Ozone Standard

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R05-OAR-2022-0983; FRL-11757-01-R5]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Ohio; Moderate Attainment Plan Elements for the Cleveland Area for the 2015 Ozone Standard</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 the following portions of Ohio's State Implementation Plan (SIP) submission for the Cleveland 2015 ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS or standard) Moderate nonattainment area: the base year emissions inventory, the reasonable further progress (RFP) demonstration, the motor vehicle inspection and maintenance (I/M) program, and the nonattainment new source review (NNSR) program. EPA is proposing to approve these portions of the State's submission as a SIP revision pursuant to section 110 and part D of the CAA and EPA's regulations. EPA is also initiating the adequacy process and proposing approval of the 2023 motor vehicle emissions budgets (budgets) associated with the Cleveland Moderate ozone nonattainment RFP demonstration. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before February 3, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R05-OAR-2022-0983 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> or via email to <E T="03">arra.sarah@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 the docket. EPA may publish any comment received to its public docket. Do not submit to EPA's docket at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> any information you consider to be Confidential Business Information (CBI), Proprietary Business Information (PBI), 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, PBI, 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> Kathleen D'Agostino, Air and Radiation Division (AR18J), Environmental Protection Agency, Region 5, 77 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60604, (312) 886-1767, <E T="03">dagostino.kathleen@epa.gov.</E> The EPA Region 5 office is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, excluding Federal holidays. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document whenever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean EPA. This <E T="02">supplementary information</E> section is arranged as follows: <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Evaluation of Ohio's Submittal</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. 2017 Base Year Emissions Inventory</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. 15% RFP Plan</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Motor Vehicle Emission Budgets</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Motor Vehicle Inspection and Maintenance (I/M) Program</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. NNSR Review</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Environmental Justice Considerations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> On December 28, 2015, EPA promulgated a revised 8-hour ozone NAAQS of 0.070 parts per million (ppm). <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Promulgation of a revised NAAQS triggers a requirement for EPA to designate all areas of the country as nonattainment, attainment, or unclassifiable for the NAAQS. For the ozone NAAQS, this also involves classifying any nonattainment areas at the time of designation. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> Ozone nonattainment areas are classified based on the severity of their ozone levels as determined based on the area's “design value,” which represents air quality in the area for the most recent 3 years. The classifications for ozone nonattainment areas are Marginal, Moderate, Serious, Severe, and Extreme. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  80 FR 65292, October 26, 2015, codified at 40 CFR 50.19. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  CAA sections 107(d)(1) and 181(a)(1). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  CAA section 181(a)(1). </FTNT> Areas that EPA designates nonattainment for the ozone NAAQS are subject to the general nonattainment area planning requirements of CAA section 172 and the ozone-specific planning requirements of CAA section 182. Ozone nonattainment areas in the lower classification levels have fewer and/or less stringent mandatory air quality planning and control requirements than those in higher classifications. In EPA's December 6, 2018, rule, “Implementation of the 2015 National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Ozone: Nonattainment Area State Implementation Plan Requirements,” known as the “SIP Requirements Rule,” EPA set forth nonattainment area requirements for the 2015 ozone NAAQS. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> These requirements are codified at 40 CFR part 51 subpart CC. For Marginal areas, a State is required to submit a baseline emissions inventory, adopt provisions into the SIP requiring emissions statements from stationary sources, and implement a NNSR program for the relevant ozone NAAQS. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> For Moderate areas, a State needs to comply with the Marginal area requirements, plus additional Moderate area requirements, including the requirement to submit a modeled demonstration that the area will attain the NAAQS as expeditiously as practicable but no later than 6 years after designation, the requirement to submit an RFP plan, the requirement to adopt and implement certain emissions controls, such as Reasonably Available Control Technology (RACT) and I/M, and the requirement for greater emissions offsets for new or modified major stationary sources under the State's NNSR program. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  83 FR 62998, December 6, 2018. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  CAA section 182(a). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  CAA section 182(b). </FTNT> Effective August 3, 2018, EPA designated the Cleveland area as a Marginal nonattainment area for the 2015 ozone NAAQS. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> The Cleveland area includes Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina, Portage, and Summit Counties. On October 7, 2022, pursuant to section 181(b)(2) of the CAA, EPA determined that the Cleveland area failed to attain the 2015 ozone NAAQS by the August 3, 2021, Marginal area attainment deadline and thus reclassified the area from Marginal to Moderate nonattainment. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> In that action, EPA established January 1, 2023, as the due date for the State to submit all Moderate area nonattainment plan SIP requirements applicable to newly reclassified areas. <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  83 FR 25776, June 4, 2018. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>  87 FR 60897, October 7, 2022. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Evaluation of Ohio's Submittal</HD> Ohio submitted a SIP revision on December 21, 2022, to address Moderate area requirements for the Cleveland area under the 2015 ozone NAAQS. The submittal contained a number of nonattainment plan elements, including a 2017 base year emissions inventory for volatile organic compounds (VOC) and oxides of nitrogen (NO <E T="52">X</E> ), a 15% RFP plan with 2023 VOC and NO <E T="52">X</E> motor vehicle emissions budgets, an I/M program certification, and a NNSR certification, and each of these is covered in further detail below. The submission also included an attainment demonstration, a reasonably available control measures demonstration, and contingency measures, which will be addressed in a separate action. Ohio's SIP submission and associated supporting documents are available in the docket for this action, at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> Docket ID No. EPA-R05-OAR-2022-0983. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. 2017 Base Year Emissions Inventory</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD3">1. Background</HD> CAA sections 172(c)(3) and 182(a)(1), 42 U.S.C. 7502(c)(3) and 7511a(a)(1), require States to develop and submit, as SIP revisions, comprehensive, accurate, and complete emissions inventories for all areas designated as nonattainment for the ozone NAAQS. This requirement is codified at 40 CFR 51.1315, and the term “base year inventory” is defined at 51.1300(p). For ozone, the base year inventory is an estimation of actual emissions of VOC and NO <E T="52">X</E> from all sources within the boundaries of the nonattainment area. The regulation at 40 CFR 51.1315(a) requires that the selected inventory year be consistent with the baseline year for the RFP plan as required by 40 CFR 51.1310(b), which states that the baseline emissions inventory shall be the emissions inventory for the most recent calendar year for which a complete triennial inventory is required to be submitted to EPA under the provisions of subpart A of 40 CFR part 51, Air Emissions Reporting Requirements, 40 CFR 51.1 through 50. For areas designated as nonattainment in 2018, the most recent triennial inventory year conducted for the National Emissions Inventory (NEI) pursuant to the Air Emissions Reporting Requirements (AERR) rule is ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 78k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━