Air Plan Disapproval; West Virginia; Regional Haze State Implementation Plan for the Second Implementation Period

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R03-OAR-2024-0625; FRL-10253-01-R3]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Disapproval; West Virginia; Regional Haze State Implementation Plan for the Second Implementation Period</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 disapprove a revision to West Virginia's State Implementation Plan (SIP) submitted by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WV DEP) on August 12, 2022. The SIP was submitted to satisfy applicable requirements under the Clean Air Act (CAA) and EPA's Regional Haze Rule (RHR) for the program's second planning period. If finalized, disapproval does not start a mandatory sanctions clock. The EPA is taking this action pursuant to sections 110 and 169A of the Clean Air Act. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before February 20, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R03-OAR-2024-0625 at <E T="03">www.regulations.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 <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> . For either manner of submission, 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, 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 or multimedia submissions, and general guidance on making effective comments, please visit <E T="03">www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Adam Yarina, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 3, 1600 John F. Kennedy Boulevard, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103-2852, at (215) 814-2108, or by email at <E T="03">yarina.Adam@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">I. What action is the EPA proposing?</HD> The EPA is proposing to disapprove West Virginia's Regional Haze plan for the second planning period. As required by sections 169A and 169B of the CAA, the Federal RHR at 40 CFR 51.308 calls for State and Federal agencies to work together to improve visibility in 156 national parks and wilderness areas. The rule requires the States, in coordination with the EPA, the U.S. National Parks Service (NPS), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), and other interested parties, to develop and implement air quality protection plans to reduce the pollution that causes visibility impairment in mandatory Class I Federal areas. Visibility impairing pollutants include fine and coarse particulate matter (PM) ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> sulfates, nitrates, organic carbon, elemental carbon, and soil dust) and their precursors ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> sulfur dioxide (SO <E T="52">2</E> ), oxides of nitrogen (NO <E T="52">X</E> ), and, in some cases, volatile organic compounds (VOC) and ammonia (NH <E T="52">3</E> )). As discussed in further detail below, the EPA is proposing to find that West Virginia has submitted a Regional Haze plan that does not meet the statutory and regulatory Regional Haze requirements for the second planning period. The State's 2022 submission can be found in the docket for this action. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background and Requirements for Regional Haze Plans</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Regional Haze Background</HD> In the 1977 CAA Amendments, Congress created a program for protecting visibility in the nation's mandatory Class I Federal areas, which include certain national parks and wilderness areas. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> CAA section 169A. The CAA establishes as a national goal the “prevention of any future, and the remedying of any existing, impairment of visibility in mandatory class I Federal areas which impairment results from manmade air pollution.” CAA section 169A(a)(1). The CAA further directs the EPA to promulgate regulations to assure reasonable progress toward meeting this national goal. CAA section 169A(a)(4). On December 2, 1980, the EPA promulgated regulations to address visibility impairment in mandatory Class I Federal Areas (hereinafter referred to as “Class I Areas”) that is “reasonably attributable” to a single source or small group of sources. (45 FR 80084, December 2, 1980). These regulations, codified at 40 CFR 51.300 through 51.307, represented the first phase of the EPA's efforts to address visibility impairment. In 1990, Congress added section 169B to the CAA to further address visibility impairment, specifically, impairment from Regional Haze. CAA 169B. The EPA promulgated the RHR, codified at 40 CFR 51.308, <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> on July 1, 1999. (64 FR 35714, July 1, 1999). These Regional Haze regulations are a central component of the EPA's comprehensive visibility protection program for Class I Areas. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Areas statutorily designated as mandatory Class I Federal Areas consist of national parks exceeding 6,000 acres, wilderness areas and national memorial parks exceeding 5,000 acres, and all international parks that were in existence on August 7, 1977. CAA 162(a). There are 156 mandatory Class I Areas. The list of areas to which the requirements of the visibility protection program apply is in 40 CFR part 81, subpart D. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  In addition to the generally applicable Regional Haze provisions at 40 CFR 51.308, the EPA also promulgated regulations specific to addressing Regional Haze visibility impairment in Class I Areas on the Colorado Plateau at 40 CFR 51.309. The latter regulations are applicable only for specific jurisdictions' Regional Haze plans submitted no later than December 17, 2007, and thus are not relevant here. </FTNT> Regional Haze is visibility impairment that is produced by a multitude of anthropogenic sources and activities which are located across a broad geographic area and that emit pollutants that impair visibility. Visibility impairing pollutants include fine and coarse PM ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> sulfates, nitrates, organic carbon, elemental carbon, and soil dust) and their precursors ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> SO <E T="52">2</E> , NO <E T="52">X</E> , and, in some cases, VOC and NH <E T="52">3</E> ). Fine particle precursors react in the atmosphere to form fine PM (PM <E T="52">2.5</E> ), which impairs visibility by scattering and absorbing light. Visibility impairment reduces the perception of clarity and color, as well as visible distance. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  There are several ways to measure the amount of visibility impairment, <E T="03">i.e.,</E> haze. One such measurement is the deciview, which is the principal metric used by the RHR. Under many circumstances, a change in one deciview will be perceived by the human eye to be the same on both clear and hazy days. The deciview is unitless. It is proportional to the logarithm of the atmospheric extinction of light, which is the perceived dimming of light due to its being scattered and absorbed as it passes through the atmosphere. Atmospheric light extinction (bext.) is a metric used for expressing visibility and is measured in inverse megameters (Mm-1). The EPA's Guidance on Regional Haze State Implementation Plans for the Second Implementation Period (“2019 Guidance”) offers the flexibility for the use of light extinction in certain cases. Light extinction can be simpler to use in calculations than deciviews, since it is not a logarithmic function. See, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> 2019 Guidance at 16, 19, <E T="03">www.epa.gov/visibility/guidance-regional-haze-state-implementation-plans-second-implementation-period,</E> The EPA Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, Research Triangle Park (August 20, 2019). The formula for the deciview is 10 ln (bext.)/10 Mm-1). 40 CFR 51.301. </FTNT> To address Regional Haze visibility impairment, the 1999 RHR established an iterative planning process that requires both States in which Class I Areas are located and States “the emissions from which may reasonably be anticipated to cause or contribute to any impairment of visibility” in a Class I Area to periodically submit SIP revisions to address such impairment. CAA section 169A(b)(2);  <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> see also 40 CFR 51.308(b), (f) (establishing submission dates for iterative Regional Haze SIP revisions); (64 FR 35768, July 1, 1999). Under the CAA, each SIP submission must contain “a long-term (ten to fifteen years) strategy for making reasonable progress toward meeting the national goal,” CAA section 169A(b)(2)(B); the initial round of SIP submissions also had to address the statutory requirement that certain older, larger sources of visibility impairing pollutants install and operate the best available retrofit technology (BART). CAA section 169A(b)(2)(A); 40 CFR 51.308(d), (e). States' first Regional Haze SIPs were due by December 17, 2007, 40 CFR 51.308(b), with subsequent SIP s ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 183k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━