Approval of Source-Specific Air Quality Implementation Plan; New York; Lehigh Cement Company LLC

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R02-OAR-2023-0242; FRL 12441-02-R2]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Approval of Source-Specific Air Quality Implementation Plan; New York; Lehigh Cement Company LLC</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 approving a revision to the State of New York's State Implementation Plan (SIP) for the ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) related to a Source-specific SIP (SSSIP) revision for Lehigh Cement Company LLC, located at 313 Warren Street, Glens Falls, New York (the Facility). The control options in this SSSIP revision implement Reasonably Available Control Technology (RACT) with respect to nitrogen oxide (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) emissions from the relevant Facility source, which is identified as one Portland cement kiln (the Kiln). This action is being taken in accordance with the requirements of the Clean Air Act (CAA) for implementation of the 2008 and 2015 ozone NAAQS. The EPA proposed to approve this rule on December 26, 2024, and received no comments. This final action will not interfere with ozone NAAQS requirements and meets all applicable requirements of the CAA. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective on May 5, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID Number EPA-R02-OAR-2023-0242. 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> Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) (formerly referred to as 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 electronically through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Stephanie Lin, Air Programs Branch, Environmental Protection Agency, Region 2 Office, 290 Broadway, 25th Floor, New York, New York 10007-1866, 212-637-3711, or by email at <E T="03">lin.stephanie@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. What is the background for this action?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. What comments were received in response to the EPA's proposed action?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. What action is the EPA taking?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. What is the background for this action?</HD> On December 26, 2024, the EPA published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that proposed to approve a State Implementation Plan (SIP) revision submitted by the State of New York on July 1, 2022, for purposes of a Portland cement manufacturing and quarry facility operated by Lehigh Cement Company LLC, located in Glens Falls, New York. ( <E T="03">See</E> 89 FR 104946.) This Lehigh Cement SSSIP is intended to implement NO <E T="52">X</E> RACT for the Kiln for purposes of the 2008 and 2015 ozone NAAQS. This Lehigh Cement SSSIP replaces and withdraws the Lehigh Cement SSSIPs that were submitted by the State on September 16, 2008, and December 18, 2013. In this SSSIP submittal, the EPA has reviewed the RACT determination for the Kiln for consistency with the CAA and the EPA regulations, as interpreted through EPA actions and guidance. The State's July 1, 2022 SIP submittal consists of a cover letter, Title V permit application proof, the 2021 NO <E T="52">X</E> RACT re-evaluation, consent decree, and the 2020 NO <E T="52">X</E> RACT analysis. The source at issue in this action is a short, dry preheater Kiln. NYSDEC RACT regulations establish RACT requirements for this source in 6 NYCRR Subpart 220-1, “Portland Cement Plants,” last approved in the New York SIP by the EPA on July 12, 2013. However, 6 NYCRR Subpart 220-1 does not establish presumptive NO <E T="52">X</E> RACT emission limits for cement kilns due to the uniqueness of cement manufacturing operations. Instead, under 6 NYCRR Subpart 220-1.6(b), the Facility must submit a RACT analysis along with the Air Title V Facility Permit application that proposes a RACT emission limit(s) and identifies the procedures and monitoring equipment to be used to demonstrate compliance with the proposed RACT emission limit(s). Here, NYSDEC determined that the Facility's analysis adequately evaluated RACT. Such source-specific determinations must be submitted to the EPA as a SSSIP. In November 2010, the Facility conducted a NO <E T="52">X</E> RACT analysis for the Kiln (Emission Unit 0-UKILN) specifically applicable under the federally approved 6 NYCRR Subpart 220-1.6(b). The RACT analysis included the following: (1) an identification of available NO <E T="52">X</E> control technologies; (2) projected effectiveness of each control technology identified; (3) costs for installation and operation of each technology; and (4) determination of the control technology and emission limit selected as RACT. Lehigh installed and is operating a selective non-catalytic reduction (SNCR) system to meet NO <E T="52">X</E> RACT as a result of their 2010 NO <E T="52">X</E> RACT analysis. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> In addition, the federally approved version of 6 NYCRR Subpart 220-1.7(d) requires owners or operators of a Portland cement kiln to install and operate a continuous emissions monitoring system (CEMS) to monitor NO <E T="52">X</E> emissions from the cement kiln in accordance with the provisions of 40 CFR part 75, and to demonstrate compliance with the NO <E T="52">X</E> RACT emission limit on a 30-day rolling average basis. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  On September 9, 2010, the EPA published the New Source Performance Standards for Portland Cement Plants (NSPS Subpart F). In that proposal, the EPA determined that SNCR was deemed to be the Best Demonstrated Technology (BDT) for NO <E T="52">X</E> in cement plants,” . . . <E T="03">we [the EPA] determined SNCR to be BDT and applied a control efficiency for the SNCR to the baseline uncontrolled level to determine the appropriate NO</E> <E T="54">X</E> <E T="03"> level consistent with application of BDT . . . SNCR performance has been shown to range from 20 to 80 percent NO</E> <E T="54">X</E> <E T="03"> removal.”</E> See 75 FR 54970. </FTNT> A nationwide Federal consent decree, Civil Action # 5:19-cv-05688, was executed on November 18, 2020, due to violations that occurred, in pertinent part, at one or more of Lehigh Cement Company LLC's (Lehigh) Portland cement plants (the CD). The obligations of the CD were negotiated between Lehigh and the U.S. Department of Justice (on behalf of EPA and non-Federal jurisdictions, including the State of New York), and are binding. The terms of the CD imposed a lower emission limit (2.5 lbs NO <E T="52">X</E> /ton clinker (30-day rolling average)) upon the Kiln that meets Best Available Control Technology (BACT), which is based on the maximum degree of control that can be achieved. The NO <E T="52">X</E> emission controls and associated cost analysis from the November 2010 RACT analysis for the Kiln were determined to be acceptable as RACT by the NYSDEC. EPA is concluding that an August 27, 2021 NO <E T="52">X</E> RACT evaluation to support Lehigh's Title V permit renewal application has successfully demonstrated that the emissions limit continues to be acceptable as RACT, with the RACT emission limit for the Kiln calculated as 2.9 lbs NO <E T="52">X</E> /ton clinker (30-day rolling average). Since BACT is the maximum degree of control that can be achieved, BACT generally imposes more stringent requirements than RACT. Given that the BACT emission limit imposed by the CD is lower than the previously calculated RACT limit, the EPA is approving that the BACT limit now represents RACT for this source. Here, the CD requires the Facility, beginning on or before May 18, 2021, to: (1) limit NO <E T="52">X</E> emissions from the Kiln to 2.5 lbs per ton of clinker produced with a 30-day rolling average; (2) install and commence continuous operation of a Selective Non-Catalytic Reduction (SNCR) NO <E T="52">X</E> control technology; and (3) install and operate NO <E T="52">X</E> CEMS at each stack, which collects emissions from the applicable kiln in accordance with the requirements of 40 CFR part 60. To comply with the requirements outlined in the CD, Lehigh revised its Air Title V Facility Permit to contain two permit conditions (permit conditions 85 and 86) that include the NO <E T="52">X</E> monitoring requirements and emission limitations as non-expiring obligations. A copy of the CD is located in the docket of this rule, Docket Number EPA-R02-OAR-2023-0242, at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> The intended effect of this source-specific SIP revision is to: establish the source-specific emission limit by incorporating the NO <E T="52">X</E> emission limit imposed by the CD and associated monitoring requirements into the Facility's source-specific SIP. The EPA is approving through this SSSIP action that the NO <E T="52">X</E> emission limit submitted by the State in this SSSIP for the Kiln is the lowest emission limit with the application of control technology that is reasonably available given technological and economic feasibility considerations. The respective NO <E T="52">X</E> RACT emission limit is contained ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 19k characters. 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