Approval and Promulgation of Implementation Plans; State of California; Coachella Valley; Extreme Attainment Plan for 1997 8-Hour Ozone Standards

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R09-OAR-2023-0448; FRL-11677-03-R9]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Approval and Promulgation of Implementation Plans; State of California; Coachella Valley; Extreme Attainment Plan for 1997 8-Hour Ozone Standards</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 taking final action to approve elements of a state implementation plan (SIP) submittal from the State of California to meet Clean Air Act (CAA) “Extreme” nonattainment area requirements for the 1997 8-hour ozone national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) in the Riverside Co. (Coachella Valley), CA nonattainment area (“Coachella Valley”). We are specifically approving the reasonable further progress (RFP) demonstration and the vehicle miles traveled demonstration. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective February 20, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-R09-OAR-2023-0448. 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. If you need assistance in a language other than English or if you are a person with a disability who needs a reasonable accommodation at no cost to you, please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Tom Kelly, Geographic Strategies and Modeling Section (AIR-2-2), EPA Region IX, 75 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, CA 94105; phone: (415) 972-3856; or email: <E T="03">kelly.thomasp@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. Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Public Comments and the EPA's Responses</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. The EPA's Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Proposed Action</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Summary</HD> On April 16, 2024, <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> the EPA proposed to approve two SIP submittals from the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD or “District”) and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) addressing the Extreme area planning requirements for the 1997 ozone NAAQS in Coachella Valley. The first submittal, the “Final Coachella Valley Extreme Area Plan for the 1997 8-Hour Ozone Standard” (“Coachella Valley Ozone Plan” or “Plan”), <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> was prepared by the SCAQMD and submitted by CARB on December 29, 2020. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> We proposed to approve all elements of the Plan except the reasonably available control technology (RACT) demonstration, which we plan to address in a subsequent rulemaking. The second submittal, the “2020 Coachella Valley Vehicle Miles Traveled Emissions Offset Demonstration” (“VMT Offset Demonstration”), <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> was prepared by CARB and submitted on March 18, 2021. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> We proposed to approve the entire VMT Offset Demonstration. Our proposed action contains more information on the two submittals and our evaluation. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  89 FR 26817. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  SCAQMD, “Final Coachella Valley Extreme Area Plan for the 1997 8-Hour Ozone Standard,” December 2020. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  Letter dated December 28, 2020, from Richard W. Corey, Executive Officer, CARB, to John W. Busterud, Regional Administrator, EPA Region 9 (submitted electronically December 29, 2020). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  CARB, Staff Report, “2020 Coachella Valley Vehicle Miles Traveled Emissions Offset Demonstration,” release date January 22, 2021. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  Letter dated March 15, 2021, from Richard W. Corey, Executive Officer, CARB, to Deborah Jordan, Acting Regional Administrator, EPA Region 9 (submitted electronically March 18, 2021). </FTNT> On June 12, 2024, we finalized our proposed action on certain portions of the Coachella Valley Ozone Plan. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> Specifically, we finalized approval of the reasonably available control measures demonstration, the attainment demonstration, and the State's demonstration that it has satisfied the clean fuels for boilers requirement for the Coachella Valley nonattainment area. Our June 12, 2024, notice stated that we intended to take final action on the remaining VMT Offset Demonstration and RFP demonstration in a future rulemaking. We are finalizing approval of these elements in this notice. <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  89 FR 49815. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Correction</HD> In summarizing the State's photochemical modeling and the associated control measures, the EPA's proposed rule incorrectly stated that the Coachella Valley control strategy for the 1997 ozone NAAQS relies on aggregate emissions reduction commitments from the “Final 2016 Air Quality Management Plan” (“2016 AQMP”). <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> While the Coachella Valley Ozone Plan discusses rules addressing the area's progress related to commitments needed for the area to meet the 2008 ozone NAAQS by 2026, the emissions reductions associated with these rules are not reflected in the area's inventory, and the Plan does not rely on the commitments to attain the 1997 ozone NAAQS in 2023. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  89 FR 26817, 26826. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>  See Coachella Valley Ozone Plan, pp. 4-4 through 4-17. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Public Comments and the EPA's Responses</HD> The EPA's proposed action provided a 30-day public comment period. During this period, we received comments from Air Law for All (ALFA), dated May 16, 2024. These comments relate to our proposed action on the RFP demonstration. No comments were received on other parts of the proposal. The comments are summarized and addressed below. <E T="03">Comment #1</E> : ALFA criticizes the EPA's proposal to decline to act on the area's contingency measures and new source review (NSR) submittals for the 1997 ozone NAAQS. The commenter argues that the EPA lacks discretion to act on selected portions of submittals when the 18-month statutory deadline for action has passed. The commenter states that CAA section 110(k) does not explicitly grant the EPA authority to act on selected portions of submittals, and argues that when an agency exercises discretion, it must give permissible reasons for doing so. The commenter asserts that the EPA has not given a permissible reason for acting on only portions of the submittal and speculates that the EPA has done so only to delay disapproval of the provisions and avoid starting the associated sanctions and federal implementation plan clocks. The commenter also points out that the EPA noted in the proposal that the State has not yet submitted certain required portions of the plan, and states that EPA has not offered an explanation for not making a finding of failure to submit for those missing portions of the attainment plan. <E T="03">Response to Comment #1</E> : As a general matter, comments regarding SIP elements not addressed in the proposed rule are outside the scope of this action. The EPA intends to address all required planning elements for the Coachella Valley for the 1997 ozone NAAQS in subsequent actions. <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>  For example, in addition to the contingency measures submittal noted previously, the EPA recently received the State's submittal to address the fee requirements of CAA section 185 for the Coachella Valley. Letter from Steven S. Cliff, CARB, to Martha Guzman, EPA, dated August 9, 2024, and submitted electronically on August 13, 2024. </FTNT> While the EPA has a statutory deadline by which to act on all SIP submittals under CAA section 110(k)(2), the EPA is not obligated to act on all SIP submittals or all SIP elements for a nonattainment area in the same action. The EPA routinely takes separate actions on submittals or portions of submittals that address unique CAA requirements. <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> The EPA strives to meet all statutory deadlines; however, the EPA acknowledges that we are sometimes delayed due to resource limitations and other practical constraints. <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>  See, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> 85 FR 8181 (February 13, 2020), 85 FR 11817 (February 27, 2020) (acting separately on Imperial Valley RACT element and ozone plan, respectively, for the 2008 ozone NAAQS). </FTNT> With respect to the Coachella Valley contingency measures, the EPA notes that CARB and the SCAQMD previously made a submittal addressing the contingency measures requirement for the 1997 ozone NAAQS that was subsequently withdrawn, <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> and the EPA has no obligation to act on withdrawn submittals. The EPA's current approach for evaluating contingency measures submittals has been shaped by several recent court decisions. <SU>12</SU> <FTREF/> In response to these decisions, the EPA has issued the draft guidance cited in our propos ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 40k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━