Air Plan Approval; Louisiana; Nonattainment Plan for the Evangeline Parish 2010 Sulfur Dioxide Primary National Ambient Air Quality Standard Nonattainment Area

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R06-OAR-2025-0173; FRL-12753-01-R6]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Louisiana; Nonattainment Plan for the Evangeline Parish 2010 Sulfur Dioxide Primary National Ambient Air Quality Standard Nonattainment Area</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 Louisiana's State Implementation Plan (SIP) revision submitted to EPA on April 2, 2025, for the Evangeline Parish 2010 1-hour sulfur dioxide (SO <E T="52">2</E> ) primary national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) nonattainment area. EPA is proposing approval of the following Clean Air Act (CAA) SIP elements: The attainment demonstration for the SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS, which includes an Agreed Order on Consent (AOC) for the Cabot Corporation's Ville Platte Plant (Cabot) facility; the reasonable further progress (RFP) plan; the reasonably available control measures (RACM) and reasonably available control technology (RACT) demonstration; the emission inventories; and the contingency measures. The State has demonstrated that its current Nonattainment New Source Review (NNSR) program covers this NAAQS; therefore, no revision to the SIP is required for the NNSR element. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before June 9, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket No. EPA-R06-OAR-2025-0173, at <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 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 Andrew Lee, 214-665-6750, <E T="03">lee.andrew.c@epa.gov.</E> 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> <E T="03">Docket:</E> The index to the docket for this action is available electronically at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> While all documents in the docket are listed in the index, some information may not be publicly available due to docket file size restrictions or content ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> CBI). <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Andrew Lee, EPA Region 6 Office, Ozone and Infrastructure Section, 214-665-6750, <E T="03">lee.andrew.c@epa.gov.</E> We encourage the public to submit comments via <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Please call or email the contact listed above if you need alternative access to material indexed but not provided in the docket. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document whenever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2"> A. Evangeline Parish SO <E T="52">2</E> Nonattainment Area </FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2"> B. Requirements for SO <E T="52">2</E> Nonattainment Area Plans </FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2"> C. Attainment Demonstration Requirements for SO <E T="52">2</E> Nonattainment Area Plans </FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Review of Modeled Attainment Plan</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Model Selection and General Model Inputs</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Meteorological Data</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Emissions Data</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Receptor Grid</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Emission Limits</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. Background Concentrations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">G. Summary of Results</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Review of Other Plan Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Emissions Inventory</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. RACM/RACT</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2"> C. New Source Review (NSR) </FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Reasonable Further Progress (RFP)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Contingency Measures</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. Conformity</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2"> A. Evangeline Parish SO <E T="54">2</E> Nonattainment Area </HD> On June 22, 2010, the EPA published a new 1-hour primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS of 75 parts per billion (ppb), which is met at an ambient air quality monitoring site (or in the case of dispersion modeling, at an ambient air quality receptor location) when the 3-year average of the annual 99th percentile of 1-hour daily maximum concentrations does not exceed 75 ppb, as determined in accordance with appendix T of 40 CFR part 50. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> On December 21, 2017, the EPA designated a portion of Evangeline Parish, Louisiana as nonattainment for the SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS, effective April 9, 2018. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> The EPA based the nonattainment designation on modeling for the 2013-2015 period submitted by the State, which demonstrated that the area violated the NAAQS with a modeled design value of 106 ppb. The primary source of SO <E T="52">2</E> emissions in the area is the Cabot facility which manufactures various grades of carbon black for use in various industrial applications such as the production of rubber products. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 75 <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (FR) 35520. <E T="03">See also</E> 40 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 50.17(a) and (b). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 83 FR 1098. </FTNT> Section 191 of the CAA directs Louisiana to submit a SIP for the Evangeline Parish area within 18 months of the effective date of the designation, <E T="03">i.e.,</E> by no later than October 9, 2019. Under CAA section 192, Louisiana's SIP must demonstrate that Evangeline Parish will attain the NAAQS as expeditiously as practicable, but no later than 5 years from the effective date of designation, <E T="03">i.e.,</E> April 9, 2023. On November 3, 2020, the EPA issued a final action of Finding of Failure to Submit a SIP Required for Attainment of the 2010 1-Hour Primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS for Evangeline Parish. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> This finding triggers certain CAA deadlines for the EPA to impose mandatory emission offsets and highway funding sanctions, unless and until the State submits a SIP revision satisfying the CAA's completeness criteria. Additionally, this finding triggered the CAA section 110(c) requirement for EPA to promulgate a Federal implementation plan (FIP) within two years of the finding unless the State submits and obtains EPA approval of a SIP revision which corrects the deficiency before EPA promulgates a FIP. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 85 FR 69504, November 3, 2020. </FTNT> On December 16, 2024, the EPA published the finding that the Evangeline Parish area failed to attain the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS by the April 9, 2023, CAA attainment date. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> The determination was based upon evaluation of SO <E T="52">2</E> emissions data and prior modeling for the area. EPA found that emissions increased when comparing the 2020-2022 period to the prior modeled emissions (2013-2015) underlying the EPA's nonattainment designation. Under section 179(d) of the CAA, following the finding of failure to attain by the attainment date, Louisiana shall submit a SIP revision by December 16, 2025, that provides for attainment of the NAAQS as expeditiously as practicable, but no later than December 16, 2029. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 89 FR 101475, April 9, 2023. </FTNT> On April 2, 2025, Louisiana submitted the Evangeline Parish nonattainment SIP revision to the EPA. The SIP revision includes a newly established Administrative Order on Consent (AOC) containing the enforceable control strategy which is incorporated into the attainment demonstration (AD) for Evangeline Parish. This SIP revision contemplated in this proposed approval fulfills the SIP submittal requirement imposed by both CAA sections 191(a) and 179(d). <HD SOURCE="HD2"> B. Requirements for SO <E T="54">2</E> Nonattainment Area Plans </HD> SO <E T="52">2</E> Nonattainment area SIPs must meet the applicable requirements of CAA sections 110, 172, 191, and 192. The EPA's regulations governing nonattainment area SIPs are set forth at 40 CFR part 51, with specific procedural requirements and control strategy requirements found at subparts F and G, respectively. Soon after Congress enacted the 1990 Amendments to the CAA, the EPA issued comprehensive guidance on SIPs, in a document entitled the “General Preamble for the Implementation of Title I of the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990,” published at 57 FR 13498 (April 16, 1992) (General Preamble). Among other things, the General Preamble addressed SO <E T="52">2</E> SIPs and fundamental principles for SIP control strategies. <E T="03">Id.,</E> at 13545-49, 13567-68. On April 23, 2014, the EPA issued additional guidance for meeting the statutory requir ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 75k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━