Air Plan Approval; AK; Updates to Materials Incorporated by Reference

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R10-OAR-2024-0511; FRL-12384-01-R10]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; AK; Updates to Materials Incorporated by Reference</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule; administrative change. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is updating the materials that are incorporated by reference (IBR) into the Alaska State Implementation Plan (SIP). The regulations affected by this update have been previously submitted by the State of Alaska and approved by the EPA. In this final rule, the EPA is also notifying the public of corrections and clarifying changes in the Code of Federal Regulations tables that identify the materials incorporated by reference into the Alaska SIP. This update affects the materials that are available for public inspection at the National Archives and Records Administration and the EPA Regional Office. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective January 17, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The SIP materials for which incorporation by reference into 40 CFR part 52 is finalized through this action are available for inspection at the following locations: Environmental Protection Agency, Region 10, 1200 Sixth Avenue, Suite 155, Seattle, WA 98101; and <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> To view the materials at the Region 10 Office, the EPA requests that you email 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 Federal holidays. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Kristin Hall, EPA Region 10, 1200 Sixth Avenue—Suite 155, Seattle, WA 98101, at (206) 553-6357, or <E T="03">hall.kristin@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> Each State has a SIP containing the control measures and strategies used to attain and maintain the national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS). The SIP is extensive, containing such elements as air pollution control regulations, emission inventories, monitoring networks, attainment demonstrations, and enforcement mechanisms. Each State must formally adopt the control measures and strategies in the SIP after the public has had an opportunity to comment on them and then submit the proposed SIP revisions to the EPA. Once these control measures and strategies are approved by EPA, and after notice and comment, they are incorporated into the federally approved SIP and are identified in part 52, “Approval and Promulgation of Implementation Plans,” of title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations (40 CFR part 52). The full text of the State regulation approved by the EPA is not reproduced in its entirety in 40 CFR part 52 but is “incorporated by reference.” This means that the EPA has approved a given State regulation or specified changes to the given regulation with a specific effective date. The public is referred to the location of the full text version should they want to know which measures are contained in a given SIP. The information provided allows the EPA and the public to monitor the extent to which a State implements a SIP to attain and maintain the NAAQS and to take enforcement action for violations of the SIP. The SIP is a living document which the State can revise as necessary to address the unique air pollution problems in the State. Therefore, the EPA from time to time must take action on proposed revisions containing new or revised State regulations. A submission from a State can revise one or more rules in their entirety, or portions of rules. The State indicates the changes in the submission (such as by using redline/strikethrough text) and the EPA then takes action on the requested changes. The EPA establishes a docket for its actions using a unique Docket Identification Number, which is listed in each action. These dockets and the complete submission are available for viewing on <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> On May 22, 1997 (62 FR 27968), the EPA revised the procedures for incorporating by reference, into the CFR, materials approved by the EPA into each SIP. These changes revised the format for the identification of the SIP in 40 CFR part 52, streamlined the mechanisms for announcing the EPA approval of revisions to a SIP, and streamlined the mechanisms for the EPA's updating of the IBR information contained for each SIP in 40 CFR part 52. The revised procedures also called for the EPA to maintain “SIP Compilations” that contain the federally approved regulations and source-specific permits submitted by each State agency. The EPA generally updates these SIP Compilations every few years. Under the revised procedures, the EPA must periodically publish an informational document in the rules section of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notifying the public that updates have been made to a SIP Compilation for a particular State. The EPA began applying the 1997 revised procedures to the Alaska SIP on April 10, 2014 (79 FR 19820). The EPA subsequently published updates to the IBR materials for Alaska on December 8, 2017 (82 FR 57836) and December 12, 2022 (87 FR 75932). <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Approved and Incorporated by Reference Regulatory Materials</HD> Since the last IBR update, the EPA approved and incorporated by reference regulatory materials into the Alaska SIP at 40 CFR 52.70(c): <HD SOURCE="HD3">1. Action on March 22, 2023 (88 FR 2873):</HD> • 18 AAC 50.035 (documents, procedures, and methods adopted by reference), except (a)(6), (a)(9), and (b)(4) (State effective 4/16/2022); • 18 AAC 50.040 (Federal standards adopted by reference), except (a), (b), (c), (d), (e), (g), (j), and (k) (State effective 4/16/2022); • 18 AAC 50.270 (electronic submission requirements) (State effective 9/7/2022); • 18 AAC 50.275 (consistency of reporting methodologies) (State effective 9/7/2022); and • 18 AAC 50.400 (permit administration fees), except (a), (b), (c), and (i) (State effective 9/7/2022). <HD SOURCE="HD3">2. Action on August 9, 2023 (88 FR 53793):</HD> • 18 AAC 50.025 (establishing geographic areas that may need additional pollution control because of special circumstances) (State effective 4/16/2022); • 18 AAC 50.502 (establishing which types of stationary sources must obtain minor construction and/or operating permits) (State effective 4/14/2022); • 18 AAC 50.540 (outlining the required contents of an application for a minor construction and/or operating permit) State effective 4/14/2022); and • 18 AAC 50.542 (establishing the process the state uses to review permit applications from sources, conduct public notice and comment, and issue permits) (State effective 4/14/2022). <HD SOURCE="HD3">3. Action on December 5, 2023 (88 FR 84626):</HD> • 18 AAC 50.075 (solid fuel-fired heating device visible emission standards), except (d)(2) (State effective 11/18/2020). <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Regulatory Materials Removed From Incorporation by Reference</HD> Since the last IBR update, the EPA also removed the following regulatory materials from the Alaska SIP at 40 CFR 52.70(c): <HD SOURCE="HD3">1. Action on August 9, 2023 (88 FR 53793):</HD> • 18 AAC 50.080 (regulating water vapor emissions from industrial sources that may form ice fog) (State effective 1/18/1997). <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. EPA Action </HD> In this action, the EPA is providing notification of an update to the materials incorporated by reference into the Alaska SIP as of October 1, 2024, and identified in 40 CFR 52.70(c). This update includes SIP materials submitted by Alaska and approved by the EPA since the last IBR update. <E T="03">See</E> 87 FR 75932 (December 12, 2022). <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Good Cause Exemption</HD> The EPA has determined that this action falls under the “good cause” exemption in section 553(b)(3)(B) of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) which, upon finding “good cause,” authorizes agencies to dispense with public participation and section 553(d)(3) which allows an agency to make an action effective immediately (thereby avoiding the 30-day delayed effective date otherwise provided for in the APA). This administrative action simply codifies provisions which are already in effect as a matter of law in Federal and approved State programs, makes corrections and clarifying changes to the tables in the CFR, and makes ministerial changes to the prefatory heading to the tables in the CFR. Under section 553 of the APA, an agency may find good cause where procedures are “impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest.” Public comment for this administrative action is “unnecessary” and “contrary to the public interest” since the codification (and corrections) only reflect existing law. Immediate notice of this action in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> benefits the public by providing the public notification of the updated Alaska SIP Compilation and notification of corrections to the Alaska “Identification of Plan” portion of the CFR. Further, pursuant to section 553(d)(3), making this action immediately effective benefits the public by immediately updating both the SIP Compilation and the CFR “Identification of plan” section (which includes table entry corrections). <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Incorporation by Reference</HD> In this document, the EPA is finalizing regulatory text that includes incorporation by reference. In accordance with requirements of 1 CFR 51.5, the EPA is finalizing the incorporation by reference of regulations promulgated by Alaska, previously approved by the EPA and federally effective before October 1, 2024, contained in 40 CFR 52.70 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 73k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━