Air Plan Revision; California; Placer County Air Pollution Control District; New Source Review

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R09-OAR-2024-0620; FRL-12530-01-R9]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Revision; California; Placer County Air Pollution Control District; New Source Review</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 approve a revision to the Placer County Air Pollution Control District (PCAPCD or “District”) portion of the California State Implementation Plan (SIP). This revision concerns the District's Clean Air Act (CAA or “Act”) nonattainment new source review permitting program that regulates construction and modifications of major stationary sources of air pollution in nonattainment areas. We are proposing to approve a local rule that has been revised to address deficiencies previously identified by the EPA in a prior action that included a limited approval/limited disapproval of a prior version of the rule. We are taking comments on this proposal and plan to follow with a final action. Elsewhere in this <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , we are making an interim final determination that will defer the imposition of CAA sanctions associated with our previous limited disapproval. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before May 2, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R09-OAR-2024-0620 at <E T="03">https://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> 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">https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> 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> Kira Wiesinger, EPA Region IX, 75 Hawthorne St., San Francisco, CA 94105; phone: (415) 972-3827; email: <E T="03">wiesinger.kira@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. The State's Submittal</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. What rule did the State submit?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Are there other versions of this rule?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. What is the purpose of the submitted rule revision?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. The EPA's Evaluation and Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. How is the EPA evaluating the rule?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Does the rule meet the evaluation criteria?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Proposed Action and Public Comment</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. The State's Submittal</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. What rule did the State submit?</HD> On November 15, 2025, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) submitted District Rule 502 to the EPA for approval as a revision to the California SIP. <SU>1</SU> Table 1 lists the rule addressed by this proposal, including the date on which it was adopted by the District and the date on which it was submitted to the EPA by CARB, which is the governor's designee for California SIP submittals. <GPOTABLE COLS="4" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="xs60,r50,15,15"> <TTITLE>Table 1—Submitted Rule</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Rule #</CHED> <CHED H="1">Rule title</CHED> <CHED H="1">Amended</CHED> <CHED H="1">Submitted</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">502</ENT> <ENT>New Source Review</ENT> <ENT>6/13/24</ENT> <ENT>11/15/24</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> The EPA has reviewed submitted Rule 502 and finds that it fulfills the completeness criteria of appendix V. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Letter dated November 13, 2024, from Steven S. Cliff, Executive Officer, CARB, to Martha Guzman, Regional Administrator, U.S. EPA Region 9 (submitted electronically November 15, 2024). <SU>2</SU>  See EPA Region 9 Completeness Checklist dated December 13, 2024, included in the docket for this proposed rulemaking. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Are there other versions of this rule?</HD> The SIP-approved version of Rule 502 is identified in table 2. <GPOTABLE COLS="4" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="xs60,r50,12,15"> <TTITLE>Table 2—SIP-Approved Rule</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Rule #</CHED> <CHED H="1">Rule title</CHED> <CHED H="1">SIP approval date</CHED> <CHED H="1"> <E T="02">Federal Register</E> citation </CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">502</ENT> <ENT>New Source Review</ENT> <ENT>9/26/23</ENT> <ENT>88 FR 65816</ENT> If the EPA finalizes the action proposed herein, the rule listed in table 2 will be replaced in the SIP by the submitted rule listed in table 1. Additionally, as described below, the EPA's final approval of Rule 502 will resolve our September 26, 2023 limited disapproval of Rule 502 (“2023 NSR Action”)  <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> as adopted locally on August 12, 2021. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  88 FR 65816 (September 26, 2023). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. What is the purpose of the submitted rule revision?</HD> The submitted rule constitutes part of the District's program for preconstruction review and permitting of new or modified stationary sources under its jurisdiction. It addresses elements of the new source review (NSR) preconstruction review program requirements applicable to nonattainment areas under part D of title I of the Act (“nonattainment NSR” or “NNSR”), the general requirements under section 110(a)(2)(C) of the Act (“minor NSR”), and related EPA regulations. The submitted revisions are intended to resolve deficiencies identified in the 2023 NSR Action. For more information on the purpose and content of Rule 502, as well as the NNSR and minor NSR requirements applicable to the area, see the 2023 NSR Action and accompanying proposal and technical support document (TSD). <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  88 FR 65816 (September 26, 2023); 88 FR 47409 (July 24, 2023); The TSD can be found in the docket for the 2023 NSR Action at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/docket/EPA-R09-OAR-2021-0933/document.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. The EPA's Evaluation and Proposed Action</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. How is the EPA evaluating the rule?</HD> The EPA has evaluated Rule 502 to determine whether it addresses the deficiencies identified in our 2023 NSR Action. We have also reviewed the submitted revisions for compliance with CAA sections 172(c)(5), 173, 182, and 189, which establish the requirements for stationary source preconstruction permitting programs, including those specifically applicable based on the area's ozone and PM <E T="52">2.5</E> nonattainment classifications, as well as the Federal regulations applicable to stationary source permitting at 40 CFR 51.160 through 51.165. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> Additionally, the EPA reviewed the rule for consistency with other general CAA requirements for SIP submittals, including requirements at CAA section 110(a)(2)(A) regarding rule enforceability and requirements at CAA sections 110(l) and 193 for SIP revisions. We have also considered whether the rule meets the Federal visibility requirements related to State NNSR programs as described in 40 CFR 51.307. <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  See the 2023 NSR Action and accompanying TSD for additional analysis of how District Rules 501 and 502 satisfy applicable NSR requirements, including the minor NSR requirements. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Does the rule meet the evaluation criteria?</HD> The submitted rule complies with the substantive and procedural requirements of CAA section 110(l). With respect to the procedural requirements, based on our review of the public process documentation included with the submitted rule, we find that the District has provided sufficient evidence of public notice and opportunity for comment and public hearings prior to submittal of this SIP revision. With respect to the substantive requirements of CAA section 110(l), we have determined that our approval of the submitted rule would not interfere with the area's ability to attain or maintain the NAAQS or with any other applicable requirements of the CAA. Similarly, we find that the submitted rule is approvable under section 193 of the Act because it does not modify any control requirement in effect before November 15, 1990, without ensuring equivalent or greater emission reductions. The submitted rule is otherwise consistent with criteria for the EPA's approval of regulations submitted for inclusion in the SIP, including the requirem ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 22k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━