Revisions to the Federal Implementation Plan for the Billings/Laurel, Montana, Sulfur Dioxide Area

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R08-OAR-2023-0587; FRL-11571-02-R8]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Revisions to the Federal Implementation Plan for the Billings/Laurel, Montana, Sulfur Dioxide Area</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 revising a Federal Implementation Plan (FIP) applicable to sulfur dioxide (SO <E T="52">2</E> ) emissions from four sources located in Billings and Laurel, Montana. Specifically, the EPA is revising a portion of the FIP promulgated by the EPA in 2008 (2008 Billings/Laurel SO <E T="52">2</E> FIP) by removing a provision which contained an affirmative defense for exceedances of flare emission limits during malfunctions, startups, and shutdowns. The EPA is taking this action pursuant to the Clean Air Act (CAA). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective on February 18, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-R08-OAR-2023-0587. 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">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 through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> or please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section for additional availability information. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Adam Clark, Air and Radiation Division, EPA, Region 8, Mail code 8ARD-IO, 1595 Wynkoop Street, Denver, Colorado, 80202-1129, telephone number: (303) 312-7104, email address: <E T="03">clark.adam@epa.gov</E> . </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document wherever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> The background for this action is discussed in detail in our October 15, 2024, proposal (89 FR 82948). In that document we proposed to revise the 2008 Billings/Laurel SO <E T="52">2</E> FIP by removing the portion of the FIP found at 40 CFR 52.1392(i), titled “Affirmative defense provisions for exceedances of flare emission limits during malfunctions, startups, and shutdowns.” We received one comment on this proposal. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Response to Comments</HD> <E T="03">Comment:</E> The EPA received one comment on this proposal from an individual commenter. The commenter expressed support for the EPA's proposed action, noting the harms of SO <E T="52">2</E> pollution and the importance of protecting the communities near impacted sources. <E T="03">Response:</E> The EPA acknowledges this supportive comment. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Final Action</HD> The EPA is revising the 2008 Billings/Laurel SO <E T="52">2</E> FIP by removing section 52.1392(i) and all of the provisions therein, including paragraphs sections 52.1392 (i)(1)-(3). <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Environmental Justice Considerations</HD> The EPA defines environmental justice (EJ) as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The EPA further defines the term “fair treatment” to mean that “no group of people should bear a disproportionate burden of environmental harms and risks, including those resulting from the negative environmental consequences of industrial, governmental, and commercial operations or programs and policies.”  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> Recognizing the importance of these considerations to local communities, the EPA conducted an EJ screening analysis around the location of the facilities associated with this action to evaluate environmental and demographic indicators for the areas impacted by this final action. However, the EPA is providing the information associated with this analysis for informational purposes only. The information provided herein is not a basis of this action. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See https://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice/learn-about-environmental-justice</E> . </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  Id. </FTNT> The EPA conducted the screening analyses using EJScreen, an EJ mapping and screening tool that provides the EPA with a nationally consistent dataset and approach for combining various environmental and demographic indicators. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> The EJScreen tool presents these indicators at a census block group (CBG) level or a larger user-specified “buffer” area that covers multiple CBGs. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> An individual CBG is a cluster of contiguous blocks within the same census tract and generally contains between 600 and 3,000 people. EJScreen is not a tool for performing in-depth risk analysis, but is instead a screening tool that provides an initial representation of indicators related to EJ and is subject to uncertainty in some underlying data ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> some environmental indicators are based on monitoring data which are not uniformly available; others are based on self-reported data). <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> For informational purposes, we have summarized EJScreen data within larger “buffer” areas covering multiple block groups and representing the average resident within the buffer areas surrounding the facilities. EJScreen environmental indicators help screen for locations where residents may experience a higher overall pollution burden than would be expected for a block group with the same total population in the U.S. These indicators of overall pollution burden include estimates of ambient particulate matter (PM <E T="52">2.5</E> ) and ozone concentration, a score for traffic proximity and volume, percentage of pre-1960 housing units (lead paint indicator), and scores for proximity to Superfund sites, risk management plan (RMP) sites, and hazardous waste facilities. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> EJScreen also provides information on demographic indicators, including percent of low-income, communities of color, linguistic isolation, and less than high school education. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  The EJSCREEN tool is available at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/ejscreen</E> . </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/about/glossary.html</E> . </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  In addition, EJSCREEN relies on the five-year block group estimates from the U.S. Census American Community Survey. The advantage of using five-year over single-year estimates is increased statistical reliability of the data ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> lower sampling error), particularly for small geographic areas and population groups. For more information, <E T="03">see https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2020/acs/acs_general_handbook_2020.pdf</E> . </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  For additional information on environmental indicators and proximity scores in EJSCREEN, <E T="03">see</E> “EJSCREEN Environmental Justice Mapping and Screening Tool: EJSCREEN Technical Documentation,” chapter 3 and appendix C (September 2019) at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2021-04/documents/ejscreen_technical_document.pdf</E> . </FTNT> The EPA prepared EJScreen reports covering buffer areas of approximately five kilometers around the four facilities subject to the 2008 Billings/Laurel SO <E T="52">2</E> FIP. From those reports, no facilities showed EJ indices greater than the 80th national percentiles. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> The full, detailed EJScreen reports are provided in the docket for this rulemaking. <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  For a place at the 80th percentile nationwide, that means 20 percent of the U.S. population has a higher value. The EPA identified the 80th percentile filter as an initial starting point for interpreting EJScreen results. The use of an initial filter promotes consistency for the EPA's programs and regions when interpreting screening results. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Executive Order 12866: Regulatory Planning and Review and Executive Order 14094: Modernizing Regulatory Review</HD> This action is exempt from review under Executive Order 12866, as amended by Executive Order 14094, as it is not a rule of general applicability. This action specifically applies to 4 facilities in the State of Montana. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Paperwork Reduction Act</HD> This action does not impose an information collection burden under the provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), because it revises the reporting requirements for 4 facilities in the State of Montana. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA)</HD> I certify that this action will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities under the RFA. This action will not impose any requirements on small entities as no small entities are subject to the requirements of this rule. <HD SOURCE="HD2">D. Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA)</HD> This action does not contain an unfunded mandate of $100 million or more as described in UMRA, 2 U.S.C. 1531-1538, and does not significantly or uniquely affect small governments. This action imposes no enforceable duty on any State, local, or Tribal governments or the private sector. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 15k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━