Approval and Promulgation of State Implementation Plans; New York; Emission Statement Certification of the 2008 and 2015 Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R02-OAR-2025-0040; FRL-12733-01-R2]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Approval and Promulgation of State Implementation Plans; New York; Emission Statement Certification of the 2008 and 2015 Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards</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 portions of the comprehensive State Implementation Plan (SIP) revisions submitted by New York that certify that the State has satisfied the requirements for an emission statement program for both the Serious and Moderate classifications of the 2008 and 2015 ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), respectively. These actions are being taken in accordance with the requirements of the Clean Air Act (CAA or Act). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before June 9, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R02-OAR-2025-0040 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> 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> 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 CUI 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, the full EPA public comment policy, information about CUI 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> Fausto Taveras, Environmental Protection Agency, Air Programs Branch, Region 2, 290 Broadway, New York, New York 10007-1866, telephone number: (212) 637-3378, email address: <E T="03">taveras.fausto@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document, whenever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean EPA. <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. What did New York submit?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Ozone Designations and Relevant SIP Submissions</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Statutory and Regulatory Requirements for Emission Statements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Summary and Evaluation of New York's Emission Statement Certifications</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. The EPA's Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. What did New York submit?</HD> On January 29, 2021, New York submitted a SIP revision for purposes of addressing ozone elements for the 2008 and 2015 ozone 8-hour NAAQS for the New York portion of the New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island (NY-NJ-CT) nonattainment area (also referred to as the New York Metro Area or NYMA). Within this comprehensive SIP, the State included its certification that it has satisfied the requirements of an emission statement program for the 2015 ozone Moderate classification, pursuant to CAA section 182(a)(3)(B) and 182(b), for the NYMA nonattainment area. In addition, New York also submitted a comprehensive SIP revision on November 29, 2021. Within that submittal, New York included its certification that the State has satisfied the requirements of an emission statement program for the 2008 ozone Serious classification, pursuant to CAA section 182(a)(3)(B) and 182(c), for the NYMA nonattainment area. The EPA addressed the remaining ozone elements, outlined in New York's comprehensive January 29, 2021, and November 29, 2021, SIP revisions, in a separate rulemaking. 88 FR 77208 (November 9, 2023). Table 1 presents the Ozone SIP elements addressed in New York's comprehensive January 29, 2021, and November 29, 2021, SIP submissions along with the respective ozone NAAQS classification and nonattainment areas. <GPOTABLE COLS="4" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s50,r100,r100,r50"> <TTITLE>Table 1—SIP Elements Addressed in New York's Comprehensive SIP Revision Submitted on January 29, 2021, and November 29, 2021</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Ozone NAAQS and classification</CHED> <CHED H="1">SIP element</CHED> <CHED H="1">Nonattainment areas</CHED> <CHED H="1">SIP submission date</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">2008 Ozone NAAQS—Serious Classification</ENT> <ENT>Certification of the State's Emission Statement Program pursuant to CAA section 182(c)</ENT> <ENT>New York's portion of the New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island (NY-NJ-CT)</ENT> <ENT>November 29, 2021.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">2015 Ozone NAAQS—Moderate Classification</ENT> <ENT>Certification of the State's Emission Statement Program pursuant to CAA section 182(a)(3)(B) and 182(b)</ENT> <ENT>New York's portion of the New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island (NY-NJ-CT)</ENT> <ENT>January 29, 2021.</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Ozone Designations and Relevant SIP Submissions</HD> In 2008, the EPA revised the health-based NAAQS for ozone, setting it at 0.075 parts per million (ppm), or 75 parts per billion (ppb), averaged over an 8-hour time frame. 73 FR 16436 (March 27, 2008). The EPA determined that the revised 8-hour standard would be more protective of human health, especially for children and adults who are active outdoors and individuals with a pre-existing respiratory disease like asthma. <E T="03">Id.</E> On May 21, 2012, the EPA published its final attainment/nonattainment designations for areas across the country with respect to the 2008 8-hour ozone standard. 77 FR 30088. This action became effective on July 20, 2012. Within that action, the EPA designated two 8-hour ozone marginal nonattainment areas in New York State, which were the New York portion of the NYMA and the Jamestown nonattainment area. The remainder of New York State was designated as unclassifiable/attainment. The New York portion of the NYMA is composed of the five boroughs of New York City and the surrounding counties of Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, and the Shinnecock Indian Nation. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> 40 CFR 81.333. The Jamestown nonattainment area is composed of Chautauqua County. <E T="03">Id.</E> On May 4, 2016, the EPA determined that Jamestown attained the 2008 ozone NAAQS by the July 20, 2015, attainment date and that the NYMA nonattainment area did not, therefore reclassifying the New York portion of the NYMA from a Marginal to a Moderate nonattainment area. 81 FR 26697. Following the NYMA's reclassification, the nonattainment area had an applicable attainment date of July 20, 2018. <E T="03">Id.</E> Subsequently, the NYMA nonattainment area also failed to meet the Moderate July 20, 2018, attainment date. Therefore, on August 23, 2019, the EPA published a final rule that reclassified the New York portion of the NYMA, and other States' nonattainment areas, from Moderate to Serious for the 2008 ozone standard. 84 FR 44238. After the NYMA was reclassified to a Serious nonattainment area, on November 29, 2021, New York submitted a comprehensive SIP revision; this November 29, 2021 SIP revision included an attainment demonstration and emission statement certification and other required SIP elements relating to the 2008 8-hour ozone standard for the Serious classification. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> The EPA published a final rule that reclassified the New York portion of the NYMA, along with other States' nonattainment areas, from Serious to Severe because the NYMA nonattainment area also failed to meet the Serious area attainment date of July 20, 2021. 87 FR 60926 (October 7, 2022). This reclassification to Severe resulted in a revised attainment date for the New York portion of the NYMA of July 20, 2027. <E T="03">Id.</E> A SIP submittal to address the requirements associated with the Severe classification was due on May 7, 2024. <E T="03">Id.</E> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Information pertaining to areas of Indian country is intended for CAA planning purposes only and is not an EPA determination of Indian country status or any Indian country boundary. The EPA lacks the authority to establish Indian country land status and makes no determination of Indian country boundaries. 77 FR 30088 (May 21, 2012). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  On November 9, 2023, the EPA approved portions of a comprehensive SIP revision submitted by New York on November 29, 2021, which included: (1) The reasonable further progress plan and transportation conformity budgets for the 2008 8-hour ozone Serious classification of the NYMA; (2) an ozone nonattainment new source review (NNSR) program which applies state-wide for emissions of NO <E T="52">X</E> and VOC from stationary sources; (3) a nonattainment emission inventory; and (4) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 26k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━