Air Plan Approval; District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia; Determination of Attainment by the Attainment Date and Clean Data Determination for the Washington, DC-MD-VA Nonattainment Area for the 2015 Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R03-OAR-2022-0987; FRL-10551-02-R3]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia; Determination of Attainment by the Attainment Date and Clean Data Determination for the Washington, DC-MD-VA Nonattainment Area for the 2015 Ozone National Ambient Air Quality 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 finalizing multiple actions related to the Washington, DC-MD-VA nonattainment area (the Washington Area or the Area) for the 2015 8-hour ozone national ambient air quality standards (2015 ozone NAAQS). First, the EPA is determining that the Washington Area attained the 2015 ozone NAAQS by the applicable attainment date of August 3, 2024. Second, the EPA is determining that the Washington Area has clean data under the EPA's Clean Data Policy. Lastly, the EPA is taking final action on an exceptional events request submitted by the District of Columbia (DC) on March 20, 2024, and concurred on by the EPA on July 17, 2024. This action addresses the EPA's obligation under Clean Air Act (CAA) sections 179(c) and 181(b)(2) to determine whether the Washington Area attained the 2015 ozone NAAQS by the August 3, 2024 attainment date and, as set forth in the EPA's Clean Data Policy, will suspend the obligation of DC, the State of Maryland (MD), and the Commonwealth of Virginia (VA) to submit certain attainment planning requirements for as long as the Washington Area continues to attain the 2015 ozone NAAQS. This action is being taken under 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-R03-OAR-2022-0987. All documents in the docket are listed on the <E T="03">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">www.regulations.gov, o</E> r please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section for additional availability information. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Ian Neiswinter, Planning & Implementation Branch (3AD30), Air & Radiation Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region III, 1600 John F Kennedy Boulevard, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103. The telephone number is (215) 814-2011. Mr. Neiswinter can also be reached via electronic mail at <E T="03">neiswinter.ian@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This attainment determination and clean data determination (CDD) are based upon quality-assured, quality-controlled, and certified ambient air monitoring data from 2021 to 2023 available in the EPA's Air Quality System (AQS) database. Neither this attainment determination nor CDD redesignates the Washington Area to attainment for the 2015 ozone NAAQS. The Washington Area remains designated nonattainment until such time as DC, MD, and VA submit a request for redesignation pursuant to section 107(d)(3) of the CAA and the EPA determines that the area meets the CAA requirements for redesignation to attainment and takes action to redesignate the Washington Area. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> On October 26, 2015 (80 FR 65292), the EPA promulgated a revised primary and secondary ozone NAAQS to provide requisite increased protection of public health and welfare, respectively. In that action, the EPA strengthened both standards from 0.075 parts per million (ppm) to 0.070 ppm and retained the indicator (ozone), averaging time (8-hour), and form (annual fourth-highest daily maximum, averaged over three years) of the existing standards. Effective August 3, 2018 (83 FR 25776, June 4, 2018), the EPA designated 52 areas throughout the country as nonattainment for the 2015 ozone NAAQS, including the Washington Area, <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> which was classified as a Marginal nonattainment area. This designation was based on quality-assured, quality-controlled, and certified ambient air monitoring data from calendar years 2014 to 2016. The EPA established the attainment date for Marginal 2015 ozone NAAQS nonattainment areas as 3 years from the effective date of the final designations, meaning the Washington Area had an attainment date of August 3, 2021. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  The Washington Area consists of the following counties/cities: Calvert County, Charles County, Frederick County, Montgomery County, and Prince George's County in Maryland; Alexandria city, Arlington County, Fairfax County, Fairfax city, Falls Church city, Loudoun County, Manassas Park city, Manassas city, Prince William County in Virginia; and all of the District of Columbia. <E T="03">See</E> 40 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 81.309, 81.321, and 81.347. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 83 FR 10376 (March 9, 2018) and 40 CFR 51.1303(a). </FTNT> Effective November 7, 2022 (87 FR 60897), the EPA determined that 22 Marginal areas or portions of areas failed to attain the standard by the applicable Marginal attainment date, including the Washington Area. In that action, the EPA reclassified the Washington Area as Moderate nonattainment for the 2015 ozone NAAQS because it failed to attain the standard by the attainment date of August 3, 2021. That designation was based on quality-assured, quality-controlled, and certified ambient air monitoring data from calendar years 2018 to 2020. In that same action, the EPA established the Moderate attainment date as August 3, 2024. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 87 FR 60897 (November 7, 2022). </FTNT> On February 1, 2023 (88 FR 6688), the EPA proposed a CDD for the Washington Area (2023 CDD Proposal) based on quality-assured, quality-controlled, and certified ambient air monitoring data from 2019 to 2021 showing the Area attained the 2015 ozone NAAQS. The EPA did not finalize that action due to a monitored violation of the 2015 ozone NAAQS prior to final approval. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> On March 20, 2024, the Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE), on behalf of DC, submitted an exceptional events demonstration to show that the ozone concentration recorded at the McMillan monitor (AQS Site ID #110010043) on June 29, 2023, which resulted in a violation preventing the EPA from finalizing the 2023 CDD proposal, was influenced by wildfires. The EPA concurred on this request on July 17, 2024. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  The EPA initially noted this violation based on preliminary data, which was later certified. </FTNT> On November 15, 2024 (89 FR 90249), the EPA published a notice of proposed rulemaking (2024 NPRM), which proposed to determine that the Washington Area attained the 2015 ozone NAAQS by its August 3, 2024 attainment date. The EPA explained that, if finalized, this action would fulfill the EPA's statutory obligation under CAA sections 179(c) and 181(b)(2) to determine whether the Washington Area attained the 2015 ozone NAAQS by the attainment date. As provided under the EPA's Clean Data Policy and 40 CFR 51.1318, the EPA also re-proposed a CDD in the 2024 NPRM. The EPA noted that, if this CDD is finalized, the requirements for the Washington Area to submit an attainment demonstration, associated reasonably available control measures (RACM), reasonable further progress (RFP) plan, contingency measures, and any other state implementation plan (SIP) revisions related to the attainment of the 2015 ozone NAAQS, would be suspended for so long as the Washington Area continues to meet the 2015 ozone NAAQS. The EPA also explained that neither the attainment determination nor CDD constitutes a redesignation to attainment, and that the Washington Area will remain designated nonattainment for the 2015 ozone NAAQS until such time as DC, MD, and VA submit a request for redesignation pursuant to section 107(d)(3) of the CAA and the EPA determines that the Washington Area meets the CAA requirements for redesignation to attainment and takes action to redesignate the Area. Lastly, the EPA proposed to take final action on the exceptional events request submitted by DC on March 20, 2024, and concurred on by the EPA on July 17, 2024. The attainment determination and CDD are based upon the EPA's concurrence on the exceptional events demonstration, which removed from the design value (DV) calculation those event-influenced data recorded at the McMillan monitor (AQS Site ID #110010043) on June 29, 2023. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. The EPA's Evaluation</HD> The EPA has reviewed the complete, quality-assured, quality-controlled, and certified air quality monitoring data for the monitoring period 2021 to 2023 for the Washington Area. The DVs for each monitor within the Washington Area are less than or equal to 0.070 ppm, which is the 2015 ozone NAAQS level. All monitors, with the exception of one circumstance described in the 2024 NPRM, <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> meet the data completeness requirements ( <E T="03">see</E> Tables 1 through 3 in this preamble). <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> Based on this 2021 to 2023 data from the EPA's AQS database and consistent with the requirements contained in 40 CFR part 50, the EPA has concluded that the Washington Area attained the 2015 ozone NAAQS by the August 3, 2024 attainment da ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 45k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━