Air Plan Approval; Kansas; Annual Emission Inventory and Fees

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Parts 52 and 70</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R07-OAR-2023-0462; FRL-11395-01-R7]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Kansas; Annual Emission Inventory and Fees</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 revisions to the State Implementation Plan (SIP) and Operating Permits Program and the 112(l)plan submitted by the State of Kansas on February 20, 2023. The revised Kansas rules update the Class I emission fee and emissions inventory regulations, establish a Class II fee schedule and ensure that Kansas's Operating Permits Program is adequately funded. Approval of these revisions ensures consistency between the State and federally-approved rules and does not impact air quality. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before February 14, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R07-OAR-2023-0462 to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions received must include the Docket ID No. for this rulemaking. Comments received will be posted without change to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. For detailed instructions on sending comments and additional information on the rulemaking process, see the “Written Comments” heading of the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> William Stone, Environmental Protection Agency, Region 7 Office, Air Permitting and Planning Branch, 11201 Renner Boulevard, Lenexa, Kansas 66219; telephone number: (913) 551-7714; email address: <E T="03">stone.william@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Written Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. What is being addressed in this document?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. What operating permit plan revisions are being proposed by EPA?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. What SIP revisions are being proposed by EPA?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Have the requirements for approval of a SIP and the operating permit plan revisions been met?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. What action is the EPA taking?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VII. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VIII. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Written Comments</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R07-OAR-2023-0462, at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> . The 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. 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, 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> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. What is being addressed in this document?</HD> The EPA is proposing to approve revisions to the Kansas SIP and the Operating Permits Program received on February 20, 2023. The revisions incorporate recent changes to Kansas Administrative Regulations (K.A.R.). The following regulations are amended: • K.A.R. 28-19-517. <E T="03">Class I operating permits; annual emission inventory and fees.</E> • K.A.R. 28-19-546. <E T="03">Class II operating permits; annual emission inventory and fees.</E> and • K.A.R. 28-19-564. <E T="03">Class II operating permits; permits-by-rule; sources with actual emissions less than 50 percent of major source thresholds.</E> The revisions restructure and update the Kansas Class I Operating Permit Program fee schedule for calendar year 2025 and beyond to bring in adequate revenue to support the Class I Operating Permit Program and establish a fee schedule for the Class II Federally Enforceable State Operating Permit (FESOP) Program. EPA proposes to find that these revisions meet the requirements of the Clean Air Act, do not impact the stringency of the SIP, and do not adversely impact air quality. The full text of these changes can be found in the State's submission, which is included in the docket for this action. On November 26, 2024, Kansas requested that EPA exclude the term “electronically” from two places in the February 20, 2023, submittal because KDHE's State and Local Emissions Inventory System (SLEIS) is not currently approved by the EPA to meet the Cross-Media Electronic Reporting Rule (CROMERR) at 40 CFR part 3. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. What operating permit plan revisions are being proposed by EPA?</HD> The EPA is proposing to approve the following revision to the Operating Permit Program: K.A.R. 28-19-517. <E T="03">Class I operating permits; annual emission inventory and fees.</E> The State amended K.A.R. 28-19-517(b) annual emission fee language to maintain the existing fee schedule of $1,000 base fee or $53 per ton criteria emissions fee for calendar year 2022, 2023 and 2024 and to establish a new fee schedule for calendar year 2025 and each subsequent year to be the sum of the facility fee, the hazardous air pollutant (HAP) emissions fee, and the criteria emissions fee. The revisions to K.A.R. 28-19-517(b)(2)(A) maintains the minimum $1,000 facility fee, but applies it in addition to the revised criteria emissions fee and new hazardous air pollutant (HAP) fee; all applied in calendar year 2025 and beyond. The revision to K.A.R. 28-19-517(b)(2)(B) establishes an annual hazardous air pollutant (HAP) fee of $80.00 per ton of total HAP emissions for calendar year 2025 and beyond. The revisions to K.A.R. 28-19-517(b)(2)(C) amends the existing criteria emissions fee from $53.00 (effective through calendar year 2024) to $56.00 per ton of criteria emissions for calendar year 2025 and beyond. EPA finds these changes meet the requirements of 40 CFR part 70 and do not negatively impact the stringency of the Operating Permit Program. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. What SIP revisions are being proposed by EPA?</HD> The EPA is proposing the following revisions to the Kansas SIP: K.A.R. 28-19-546. <E T="03">Class II operating permits; annual emission inventory and</E> fees: The State amended K.A.R. 28-19-546 by adding new paragraphs (a) through (d) to align with the Class I annual emissions inventory and fee regulation K.A.R. 28-19-517. New paragraph (b) establishes annual emission fees beginning in calendar year 2025 of $56 per ton of criteria emissions and $80 per ton of HAP emissions. New paragraph (c) describes the submittal requirements for both inventory and fees and new paragraph (d) adds late fee and refund language. EPA finds this change meets the requirements of CAA section 110 and does not negatively impact the stringency of the SIP. K.A.R. 28-19-564. <E T="03">Class II operating permits; permits-by-rule; sources with actual emissions less than 50 percent of major source thresholds:</E> The State amended K.A.R. 28-19-564 paragraph (e) to require all permits-by-rule Class II sources and those with actual emissions less than 50 percent of major source thresholds to submit annual emissions inventory and fees by April 1 of each year (currently February 15) as required by the proposed K.A.R. 28-19-546. EPA finds this change meets the requirements of CAA section 110 and does not negatively impact the stringency of the SIP. <HD SOURCE="HD1">V. Have the requirements for approval of a SIP and the operating permit plan revisions been met?</HD> The State submission has met the public notice requirements for SIP submissions in accordance with 40 CFR 51.102. The submission also satisfied the completeness criteria of 40 CFR part 51, appendix V. The State provided public notice on this SIP revision from August 25, 2022, to November 3, 2022, and received four comments. Kansas did not revise the rule based on public comment prior to submitting to EPA, as noted in the State submission included in the docket for this action. In addition, as explained above the revision meets the substantive SIP requirements of the CAA, including section 110 and implementing regulations. <HD SOURCE="HD1">VI. What action is the EPA taking?</HD> We are processing this as a proposed action because we are soliciting comments on this proposed action. Final rulemaking will occur after consideration of any comments. <HD SOURCE="HD1">VII. Incorporation by Reference</HD> In this document, the EPA is proposing to include regulatory text in an EPA final rule that includes incorporation by reference. In accordance with requirements of 1 CFR 51.5, the EPA is finalizing the incorporation by reference of K.A.R. 28-19-546 and K.A.R. 28-19-564 as discussed in sections II and IV of this preamble and set forth below in the proposed amendments to 40 CFR part 52. The EPA has made, and will continue to make, these materials generally available through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> and at the ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━