Outer Continental Shelf Air Regulations; Amendment to State Requirements Incorporated by Reference; Massachusetts

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 55</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R01-OAR-2024-0367; FRL-12222-02-R1]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT> Outer Continental Shelf Air Regulations; Amendment to State Requirements Incorporated by Reference; Massachusetts</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 updating a portion of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Air Regulations. Requirements applying to OCS sources located within 25 miles of states' seaward boundaries must be updated periodically to remain consistent with the requirements of the corresponding onshore area (COA), as mandated by the Clean Air Act. The portion of the OCS air regulations that is being updated pertains to the requirements for OCS sources for which Massachusetts is the designated COA. This final rule removes two Commonwealth of Massachusetts provisions from the compilation of requirements incorporated by reference in the Code of Federal Regulations and listed in the appendix to the Federal OCS air regulations. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective on January 27, 2025. The incorporation by reference of a certain publication listed in this rule is approved by the Director of the Federal Register as of January 27, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket Identification No. EPA-R01-OAR-2024-0367. 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> 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 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Region 1 Regional Office, Air and Radiation Division, 5 Post Office Square—Suite 100, Boston, MA. EPA requests that if at all possible, you contact 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 legal holidays and facility closures due to COVID-19. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Patrick Collins, Air and Radiation Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Region 1, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Region 1 Regional Office, Air and Radiation Division, 5 Post Office Square—Suite 100, Boston, MA 02109, (617) 918-1196, <E T="03">collins.patrick@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">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background and Purpose</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Final Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background and Purpose</HD> On September 4, 1992, the EPA promulgated 40 CFR part 55,1 which established requirements to control air pollution from OCS sources in order to attain and maintain federal and state ambient air quality standards and to comply with the provisions of part C of title I of the Clean Air Act (CAA). The regulations at 40 CFR part 55 apply to all OCS sources offshore of the states except those located in the Gulf of Mexico west of 87.5 degrees longitude. Section 328 of the CAA requires that for such sources located within 25 miles of a state's seaward boundary, the requirements shall be the same as would be applicable if the sources were located in the COA. Because the OCS requirements are based on onshore requirements, and onshore requirements may change, section 328(a)(1) of the CAA requires that the EPA update the OCS requirements as necessary to maintain consistency with onshore requirements. On September 17, 2008 (73 FR 53718), the EPA finalized a consistency update of the OCS air regulations pertaining to the requirements of OCS sources in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The update was the result of a Notice of Intent (NOI) being submitted on December 7, 2007 by Cape Wind Associates, LLC. The rules incorporated by reference into Appendix A of 40 CFR part 55 were applicable provisions of 310 Code of Massachusetts Regulations (CMR) 4.00: Timely Action Schedule and Fee Provisions; 310 CMR 6.00: Ambient Air Quality Standards for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; 310 CMR 7.00: Air Pollution Control; and 310 CMR 8:00: The Prevention and/or Abatement of Air Pollution Episode and Air Pollution Incident Emergencies. On August 24, 2010 (75 FR 51968), the EPA finalized a consistency update of the OCS regulations pertaining to the requirements of OCS sources in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This update was the result of EPA's annual review of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts regulations. The rules incorporated by reference into Appendix A of 40 CFR part 55 were updates and new requirements of 310 CMR 4.00: Timely Action Schedule and Fee Provisions; 310 CMR 6.00: Ambient Air Quality Standards for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; 310 CMR 7.00: Air Pollution Control; and 310 CMR 8:00: The Prevention and/or Abatement of Air Pollution Episode and Air Pollution Incident Emergencies. A similar action occurred on November 13, 2018 (83 FR 56259) after the submittal of an NOI on December 11, 2017 by Vineyard Wind, LLC, leading to further updates to Appendix A of 40 CFR part 55. The rules incorporated through this action were applicable provisions of 310 CMR 4.00: Timely Action Schedule and Fee Provisions; 310 CMR 6.00: Ambient Air Quality Standards for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; 310 CMR 7.00: Air Pollution Control; and 310 CMR 8.00: The Prevention and/or Abatement of Air Pollution Episode and Air Pollution Incident Emergencies, as amended through March 9, 2018. Lastly, on November 15, 2022 (87 FR 68364) the EPA finalized action to incorporate updates to 40 CFR part 55 after receipt of an NOI on September 9, 2021 by Sunrise Wind, LLC. This final rule incorporated applicable provisions of 310 CMR 4.00: Timely Action Schedule and Fee Provisions; 310 CMR 6.00: Ambient Air Quality Standards for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; and 310 CMR 7.00: Air Pollution Control, as amended through March 5, 2021. EPA has received subsequent NOIs for projects and conducted periodic reviews of Massachusetts regulations to ensure all applicable requirements for OCS sources as they relate to attainment and maintenance of federal or state ambient air quality standards and the requirements of part C of title I of the CAA are incorporated by reference into the Massachusetts section of Appendix A in 40 CFR part 55. These evaluations have not led to additional requirements incorporated by reference into Appendix A, because either a Massachusetts regulation did not change or because any changes to a previously incorporated regulation were not applicable to the attainment and maintenance of federal or state ambient air quality standards for OCS sources. However, through EPA's implementation of the OCS air permitting program, we have become aware that 310 CMR 4.03: Annual Compliance Assurance Fee and 310 CMR 7.12: U Source Registration are unnecessarily incorporated into Appendix A of 40 CFR part 55. These two regulations are either (1) implemented by existing EPA programs and thus duplicative or (2) not rationally related to the attainment or maintenance of federal or state ambient air quality standards or to the requirements of part C of title I of the CAA. EPA is removing these previously approved regulations incorporated into Appendix A of 40 CFR part 55 since our last amendment on November 15, 2022. See 87 FR 68364. The specific requirements of the consistency update and the rationale for EPA's action are explained in the September 11, 2024, NPRM (89 FR 73617). One comment was received but is not germane to the EPA's action; the comment is available at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> under the Docket for this action (Docket ID No. EPA-R01-OAR-2024-0367). <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Final Action</HD> The EPA is taking final action to remove two regulations currently incorporated by reference in Appendix A of Part 55 for OCS sources where the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the COA. The regulations that the EPA is removing are specific provisions within: (1) 310 CMR 4.00: Timely Action Schedule and Fee Provisions; and (2) 310 CMR 7.00: Air Pollution Control. Based on a review of Part 55 (1) 310 CMR 4.03: Annual Compliance Assurance Fee is duplicative of existing federal rules and (2) 310 CMR 7.12: U Source Registration is no longer determined to be rationally related to the attainment and maintenance of Federal or State ambient air quality standards or to the requirements of part C of title I of the Act. Further, these changes are being made to ensure consistency of the OCS permitting program in accordance with Part 55 requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Incorporation by Reference</HD> In this rule, the EPA is finalizing regulatory text that includes incorporation by reference. In accordance with the requirements of 1 CFR 51.5, the EPA is finalizing the incorporation by reference of “Commonwealth of Massachusetts Requirements Applicable to OCS Sources,” dated September 11, 2024, which provides the text of the MassDEP air rules in effect as of September 11, 2024, that would apply to OCS source. The EPA has made, and will continue to make, these materials available through ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━