Air Plan Approval; Minnesota; Revision to Taconite Federal Implementation Plan

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R05-OAR-2024-0216; FRL-12599-01-R5]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Minnesota; Revision to Taconite Federal Implementation Plan</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 modify nitrogen oxide (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) emission limits for the indurating furnace at United States Steel's (U.S. Steel's) Keetac taconite facility in Keewatin, Minnesota (Keetac), to satisfy the requirement for best available retrofit technology (BART) at taconite facilities. EPA is proposing this action pursuant to sections 110 and 169A of the Clean Air Act (CAA). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before June 10, 2025. <E T="03">Virtual Public Hearing.</E> EPA is offering the opportunity for a virtual public hearing to provide interested parties the opportunity to present data, views, or arguments concerning the proposal. If anyone contacts us requesting to present at a virtual public hearing on or before May 6, 2025, EPA will hold a virtual public hearing on May 12, 2025. See <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> for information on registering and requesting to present at a public hearing. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R05-OAR-2024-0216 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> or via email to <E T="03">Arra.Sarah@epa.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 the docket. EPA may publish any comment received to its public docket. Do not submit to EPA's docket at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> any information you consider to be Confidential Business Information (CBI), Proprietary Business Information (PBI), 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. 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, PBI, or multimedia submissions, and general guidance on making effective comments, please visit <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Gina Harrison, Environmental Scientist, Air and Radiation Division (AR18J), Environmental Protection Agency, Region 5, 77 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60604, (312) 353-6956, <E T="03">harrison.gina@epa.gov.</E> The EPA Region 5 office is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, excluding Federal holidays. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Participation in Virtual Public Hearing</HD> To request to present at a virtual public hearing, or to pre-register to attend the hearing, if one is held, please use the online registration form available at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/mn/revision-taconite-regional-haze-federal-implementation-plan-mi-and-mn</E> or contact Mayesha Choudhury at (312) 886-5909 or by email at <E T="03">choudhury.mayesha@epa.gov.</E> EPA is asking all hearing attendees to register, even those who do not intend to present. The last day to request to present at the hearing will be May 6, 2025. If no request to present at the virtual public hearing is received by 11:59 p.m. Central Daylight Time (CDT) May 6, 2025, EPA will not hold the hearing. If a virtual hearing is held, EPA will accept registration until the start of the hearing. EPA will announce the status of the hearing on May 7, 2025 on the public hearing website at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/mn/revision-taconite-regional-haze-federal-implementation-plan-mi-and-mn.</E> Alternatively, interested parties may contact Mayesha Choudhury at (312) 886-5909 to find out if the hearing is being held. If a request to present at the virtual public hearing is received by May 6, 2025, EPA will hold a virtual public hearing on May 12, 2025. EPA will post a general agenda for the hearing on May 8, 2025. The agenda will be available at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/mn/revision-taconite-regional-haze-federal-implementation-plan-mi-and-mn</E> and will list pre-registered presenters in approximate order. The hearing will convene at 9:00 a.m. CDT and will conclude at 1:00 p.m. CDT, or 15 minutes after the last pre-registered presenter in attendance has presented if there are no additional presenters. EPA will announce further details on the virtual public hearing website at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/mn/revision-taconite-regional-haze-federal-implementation-plan-mi-and-mn.</E> If a request to present at the virtual public hearing is timely received, EPA will make every effort to follow the schedule as closely as possible on the day of the hearing; however, please plan for the hearing to run either ahead of schedule or behind schedule. Each commenter will have 5 minutes to provide oral testimony. EPA encourages commenters to provide EPA with a written copy of their oral testimony electronically by including it in the registration form or emailing it to <E T="03">choudhury.mayesha@epa.gov.</E> EPA may ask clarifying questions during the oral presentations but will not respond to the presentations at that time. Written statements and supporting information submitted during the comment period will be considered with the same weight as oral comments and supporting information presented at the virtual public hearing. Please note that any updates made to any aspect of the hearing will be posted online at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/mn/revision-taconite-regional-haze-federal-implementation-plan-mi-and-mn.</E> Please monitor our website or contact Mayesha Choudhury at (312) 886-5909 or <E T="03">choudhury.mayesha@epa.gov</E> to determine if there are any updates. EPA does not intend to publish a document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> announcing updates concerning the virtual public hearing. If you require the services of a translator or a special accommodation such as audio description/closed captioning, please pre-register for the hearing with Mayesha Choudhury at (312) 886-5909 or <E T="03">choudhury.mayesha@epa.gov</E> and describe your needs by May 5, 2025. EPA may not be able to arrange accommodations without advance notice. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Requirements of the CAA and EPA's Regional Haze Rule</HD> In the CAA Amendments of 1977, Congress created a program for protecting visibility in the nation's national parks and wilderness areas. Section 169A of the CAA establishes as a national goal the “prevention of any future, and the remedying of any existing, impairment of visibility in mandatory Class I Federal areas  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> which impairment results from manmade air pollution.” Congress added section 169B to the CAA in 1990 to address regional haze issues. EPA promulgated a rule to address regional haze on July 1, 1999 (64 FR 35714), codified at 40 CFR part 51, subpart P—Protection of Visibility (herein after referred to as the “Regional Haze Rule”). The Regional Haze Rule codified and clarified the BART provisions in the CAA at 40 CFR 51.308(e) and revised the existing visibility regulations to add provisions addressing regional haze impairment and establishing a comprehensive visibility protection program for Class I areas. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Areas designated as mandatory Class I Federal areas consist of national parks exceeding 6,000 acres, wilderness areas and national memorial parks exceeding 5,000 acres, and all international parks that were in existence on August 7, 1977. 42 U.S.C. 7472(a). In accordance with section 169A of the CAA, EPA, in consultation with the Department of Interior, promulgated a list of 156 areas where visibility is identified as an important value. 44 FR 69122 (November 30, 1979). The extent of a mandatory Class I area includes subsequent changes in boundaries, such as park expansions. 42 U.S.C. 7472(a). Although states and Tribes may designate as Class I additional areas which they consider to have visibility as an important value, the requirements of the visibility program set forth in section 169A of the CAA apply only to “mandatory Class I Federal areas.” Each mandatory Class I Federal area is the responsibility of a “Federal Land Manager.” 42 U.S.C. 7602(i). When we use the term “Class I area” in this action, we mean a “mandatory Class I Federal area.” </FTNT> Section 169A of the CAA directs states, or EPA if developing a Federal Implementation Plan (FIP), to evaluate the use of retrofit controls at certain larger, often uncontrolled, older stationary sources to address visibility impacts from these sources. Specifically, section 169A(b)(2)(A) of the CAA requires that implementation plans contain such measures as may be necessary to make reasonable progress toward the natural visibility goal, including a requirement that certain categories of existing major stationary sources  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> built between 1962 and 1977 procure, install, and operate BART  <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> as determined by EPA. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  The set of “major stationary sources” potentially su ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 50k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━