Air Plan Approval; Oregon; Lane Regional Air Protection Agency, Outdoor Burning

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R10-OAR-2024-0569: FRL-12446-01-R10]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Oregon; Lane Regional Air Protection Agency, Outdoor Burning</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) proposes to approve into the Oregon State Implementation Plan (SIP) the Lane Regional Air Protection Agency (LRAPA) revised outdoor burning rule revisions submitted by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (ODEQ) on July 1, 2024, in coordination with LRAPA. The revised rule, applicable in Lane County, Oregon, clarifies terminology, revises formatting, and expands the residential outdoor burning season to allow burning of woody yard trimmings on approved burn days within Lowell city limits from October 1 through June 15. ODEQ included in the submittal a technical demonstration that the requested expansion of the residential outdoor burning season will not interfere with attainment and maintenance of the NAAQS and other applicable Clean Air Act (CAA) requirements. The EPA is proposing to approve this rule because it meets the applicable requirements of the Clean Air Act. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before June 23, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R10-OAR-2024-0569 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, 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> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Tess Bloom, EPA Region 10, 1200 6th Ave., Seattle, WA 98101, at (206) 553-6362, or <E T="03">bloom.tess@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document, wherever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, it is intended to refer to the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Evaluation of Revisions</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> Each State has a Clean Air Act (CAA) State Implementation Plan (SIP), containing control measures and strategies used to attain and maintain the national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) established for the criteria pollutants (carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, particulate matter, sulfur dioxide). The SIP contains such elements as air pollution control regulations, emission inventories, attainment demonstrations, and enforcement mechanisms. The SIP is a compilation of these elements and is revised and updated by a State over time to keep address updates to Federal requirements and changing air quality issues or regulations in that State. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (ODEQ) implements and enforces the Oregon SIP through rules set out in Chapter 340 of the Oregon Administrative Rules (OAR), Divisions 200 to 268. These rules apply in all areas of the State, except where the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission (EQC) has designated Lane Regional Air Protection Agency (LRAPA) to administer rules within its area of jurisdiction. LRAPA has been designated by the EQC to implement and enforce State rules in Lane County, and to adopt local rules that apply within Lane County. LRAPA may promulgate a local rule in lieu of a State rule provided: (1) it is as strict as the corresponding State rule; and (2) it has been submitted to and approved by the EQC. This delegation of authority to LRAPA in the Oregon SIP is consistent with CAA section 110(a)(2)(E) requirements for State and local air agencies. On July 1, 2024, the ODEQ and LRAPA submitted revisions to the Oregon SIP as it applies in Lane County. These changes include updates to the LRAPA section 47-015(2) outdoor burning rule to expand the outdoor burning season in the city of Lowell (which is located in the Eugene-Springfield metropolitan statistical area), updates and revisions to definitions in section 47-010, and revisions to formatting throughout section 47-001, section 47-005, section 47-010, section 47-015, and section 47-020. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Evaluation of Revisions</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Minor Administrative Revisions</HD> LRAPA revised sections 47-001 “General Policy”, 47-005 “Exemptions from LRAPA Title 47”, 47-010 “Definitions”, and 47-020 “Letter Permits” with non-substantive formatting changes, such as correcting capitalization and using abbreviations. LRAPA also added five terms to 47-010 “Definitions” and revised one term. Finally, LRAPA updated section 47-015 “Residential Outdoor Burning Requirements” to expand the outdoor burning season within the city limits of Lowell. These substantive changes are described further in the following paragraphs of this preamble. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Definitions</HD> LRAPA revised section 47-010 “Definitions” to include terms used within LRAPA's existing title 47 that were not previously defined or to add non-substantive formatting changes to current definitions. Added definitions include section 47-010(1) “Agricultural burning for disease or pest control”, section 47-010(5) “Animal disease emergency”, section 47-010(7) “Burn barrel”, section 47-010(12) “Fire hazard”, and section 47-010(15) “Hazard to public safety”. Section 47-010(17) includes revisions to clarify what material generated by land clearing is considered demolition waste. Section 47-010(20) clarifies language on incinerators that do not have emission limitations specified in title 30 by removing an unnecessary reference to another regulation that has its own applicability outside of title 47 to limit any potential confusion. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Residential Outdoor Burning Requirements</HD> Revisions to section 47-015 include non-substantive formatting revisions. The substantive revisions to section 47-015(2) include the addition of the City of Lowell to the list of cities in section 47-015(2)(g) that may conduct certain outdoor burning during specified seasons. The current-approved SIP only permits outdoor burning of woody yard trimmings in the City of Lowell for approximately four months out of the year—from March 1 through May 31 and from October 1 through October 31. Under the revised section 47-015, outdoor burning of woody yard trimmings is allowed on approved burn days from October 1 through June 15. The net effect of this change is to allow this type of burning in Lowell on approved burn days that occur between November 1 to February 28 and June 1 to June 15. LRAPA provided an analysis of particulate matter monitoring data to show that the revision to title 47 allowing burning in November, December, January, and February and extending the burn season from May 31 to June 15 will result in negligible increases in particulate matter and is highly unlikely to affect compliance with the PM <E T="52">10</E> or PM <E T="52">2.5</E> NAAQS. LRAPA provided this analysis to demonstrate that the increase in outdoor burning does not interfere with the 24-hour and annual PM <E T="52">2.5</E> standards and the 24-hour PM <E T="52">10</E> standard, the types of emissions predominately found in outdoor burning of woody yard trimmings. First, LRAPA estimated impacts from the change to overall emissions within the area. For this analysis, LRAPA used 2020 as an emissions inventory base year, during which PM <E T="52">2.5</E> emissions totaled 129,197.64 tons if wildfire impacts are included, or 13,012.90 tons if emission from wildfire smoke are excluded. Emissions from all residential outdoor burning in Lane County totaled 90.06 tons of PM <E T="52">2.5</E> in 2020, accounting for 0.07% of total PM <E T="52">2.5</E> emissions, or 0.69% of non-wildfire emissions. Given that these emissions comprise a very small fraction of total emissions in 2020, if emissions from residential outdoor burning were to double as a result of the proposed SIP revision—an assumption we view as conservative—these emissions would still comprise a small fraction of overall emissions in the area. LRAPA also noted in its analysis that the proposed revision only applies to the City of Lowell, which has a population that comprises 0.91% of the total for Lane County. Because the revision would only actually increase the number of available burn days for a small subset of Lane County's population, we believe the actual impacts to overall PM <E T="52">2.5</E> emissions would likely be significantly smaller than the quantities estimated in the preceding paragraphs. With respect to PM <E T="52">10</E> , LRAPA provided an analysis of potential impacts to the NAAQS design value between October and March (when burning would coi ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 20k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━