Air Plan Approval; Ohio; Nitrogen Oxide Budget Program

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R05-OAR-2024-0528; FRL-12551-02-R5]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Ohio; Nitrogen Oxide Budget Program</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Direct final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is approving revisions to the Ohio State Implementation Plan (SIP) submitted by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (Ohio EPA) on November 4, 2024. The SIP revisions consist of revised Ohio Administrative Code (OAC) rules implementing the Nitrogen Oxide (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) Budget Program. The revised rules include non-substantive updates to rule language and updates to referenced material. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This direct final rule will be effective July 7, 2025, unless EPA receives adverse comments by June 9, 2025. If adverse comments are received, EPA will publish a timely withdrawal of the direct final rule in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> informing the public that the rule will not take effect. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R05-OAR-2024-0528 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or via <E T="03">email to langman.michael@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 electronically 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> Neena Nallaballi, Air and Radiation Division (AR-18J), Environmental Protection Agency, Region 5, 77 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60604, (312) 353-1770, <E T="03">nallaballi.neena@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> Throughout this document whenever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. What is the background for these actions?</HD> Ohio EPA is subject to requirements in Ohio Revised Code 106.03 and 106.031 to review each of its regulations every five years to assess whether any updates to the regulations are warranted and for other purposes. Accordingly, Ohio EPA reviewed its regulations in OAC Chapter 3745-14, entitled “Nitrogen Oxides—Reasonably Available Control Technology”. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> OAC Chapter 3745-14 establishes the NO <E T="52">X</E> Budget Program in response to EPA's 1998 NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call to reduce the regional transport of NO <E T="52">X</E> emissions from large sources that contribute to ozone nonattainment. These rules created an ozone season NO <E T="52">X</E> allowance and trading program for electric generating units (EGUs) and large non-EGUs. In 2018 and 2019, Ohio EPA revised these rules such that non-EGUs would continue required monitoring and reporting even though EPA discontinued compliance trading options for non-EGUs. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  While this chapter is titled NO <E T="52">X</E> RACT, Ohio NO <E T="52">X</E> RACT is included in 3745-110. </FTNT> As a result of its review, Ohio EPA concluded that rule revisions were needed to modify the wording of selected text to correct typos and reflect new formatting guidelines, and to update publication and referenced material titles, effective dates, addresses, and websites. Ohio EPA adopted these various minor revisions and updated their rules on August 15, 2024, and then requested that EPA approve these revisions into the Ohio SIP in a submittal dated November 4, 2024. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. What is EPA's analysis of Ohio's SIP revision?</HD> Ohio EPA has requested that EPA approve revisions to portions of Chapter 3745-14 of the OAC. These rules include 3745-14-01 (Definitions and General Provisions) and 3745-14-08 (Monitoring and Reporting). The revisions are described in detail below. EPA has determined that these revisions are approvable since they are primarily administrative in nature and do not relax SIP requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. 3745-14-01 Definitions and General Provisions</HD> This rule contains the applicable definitions and establishes the provisions and requirements to implement a NO <E T="52">X</E> budget, Portland cement kilns, and a stationary (large) internal combustion engines program in the state of Ohio as a means of control and reduction of NO <E T="52">X</E> emissions. The rule was revised to update the publication dates and website URLs of referenced material and to adopt minor changes in rule language to correct typos and meet updated style and formatting guidelines. No terms or definitions were added or removed from this section. Since the revised definitions and general provisions do not make this rule less stringent, EPA finds that 3745-14-01 is approvable. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. 3745-14-08 Monitoring and Reporting</HD> This rule contains compliance monitoring and reporting requirements for the NO <E T="52">X</E> Budget Program. The rule was revised to adopt minor language adjustments, including removal of the word “shall” and rearrangement of sentences. Since the revisions to the rule language are minor in nature and do not affect the scope or intent of the rules, EPA finds that 3745-14-08 is approvable. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. What action is EPA taking?</HD> EPA is approving the November 4, 2024, submission by Ohio EPA as a revision to the Ohio SIP. Specifically, EPA is approving updates to OAC Chapter 3745-14. We are publishing this action without prior proposal because we view this as a noncontroversial amendment and anticipate no adverse comments. However, in the proposed rules section of this <E T="04">Federal Register</E> publication, we are publishing a separate document that will serve as the proposal to approve the State plan if relevant adverse written comments are filed. This rule will be effective July 7, 2025 without further notice unless we receive relevant adverse written comments by June 9, 2025. If we receive such comments, we will withdraw this action before the effective date by publishing a subsequent document that will withdraw the final action. All public comments received will then be addressed in a subsequent final rule based on the proposed action. EPA will not institute a second comment period. Any parties interested in commenting on this action should do so at this time. Please note that if EPA receives adverse comment on an amendment, paragraph, or section of this rule and if that provision may be severed from the remainder of the rule, EPA may adopt as final those provisions of the rule that are not the subject of an adverse comment. If we do not receive any comments, this action will be effective July 7, 2025. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Incorporation by Reference</HD> In this rule, EPA is finalizing regulatory text that includes incorporation by reference. In accordance with requirements of 1 CFR 51.5, EPA is finalizing the incorporation by reference of the Ohio Regulations described in section II of this preamble and set forth in the amendments to 40 CFR part 52 below. EPA has made, and will continue to make, these documents generally available through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> and at the EPA Region 5 Office (please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section of this preamble for more information). Therefore, these materials have been approved by EPA for inclusion in the SIP, have been incorporated by reference by EPA into that plan, are fully federally enforceable under sections 110 and 113 of the Clean Air Act as of the effective date of the final rulemaking of EPA's approval, and will be incorporated by reference in the next update to the SIP compilation. <HD SOURCE="HD1">V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</HD> Under the Clean Air Act, the Administrator is required to approve a SIP submission that complies with the provisions of the Clean Air Act and applicable Federal regulations. 42 U.S.C. 7410(k); 40 CFR 52.02(a). Thus, in reviewing SIP submissions, EPA's role is to approve state choices, provided that they meet the criteria of the Clean Air Act. Accordingly, this action merely approves State law as meeting Federal requirements and does not impose additional requirements beyond those imposed by State law. For that reason, this action: • Is not a significant regulatory action subject to review by the Office of Management and Budget under Executive Order 12866 (58 FR 51735, October 4, 1993); • Does not impose an information collection burden under the provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act (44 U.S.C. 3501 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ); • Is certified as not having a signifi ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 15k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━