Air Plan Approval; IA; Alter Metal Recycling Permit Modification

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R07-OAR-2025-0200; FRL-12750-01-R7]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; IA; Alter Metal Recycling Permit Modification</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 approval of revisions to the Iowa State Implementation Plan (SIP) to include a permit modification for Alter Metal Recycling. The SIP revision addresses modifications to the air construction permit for Alter Metal Recycling included in the State's 2008 Lead (Pb) National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) attainment plan for portions of Council Bluffs, Pottawattamie County, IA. These revisions do not impact the stringency of the SIP or have an adverse effect on air quality. The EPA's proposed approval of this rule revision is being done in accordance with the requirements of the Clean Air Act (CAA). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before July 3, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R07-OAR-2025-0200 to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions received must include the Docket ID No. for this rulemaking. Comments received will be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. For detailed instructions on sending comments and additional information on the rulemaking process, see the “Written Comments” heading of the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Bethany Olson, Environmental Protection Agency, Region 7 Office, Air Quality Planning Branch, 11201 Renner Boulevard, Lenexa, Kansas 66219; telephone number: (913) 551-7905; email address: <E T="03">olson.bethany@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Written Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. What is being addressed in this document?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Have the requirements for approval of a SIP revision been met?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. What action is the EPA taking?</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. Written Comments</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R07-OAR-2025-0200, at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> 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> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. What is being addressed in this document?</HD> The EPA is proposing to approve revisions to the Iowa SIP received on October 23, 2017. Iowa Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) requested to replace a SIP-approved air construction permit with a modified permit at Alter Metal Recycling in Council Bluffs, Pottawattamie County, IA. The state's SIP submission requested that the EPA not act on Condition 11 of the permit, and accordingly that condition is not included in this action. Condition 11 references 567 Iowa Administrative Code (IAC) Chapter 24.1(1) pertaining to excess emissions during periods of startup, shutdown, or cleaning of control equipment. On October 15, 2008, EPA promulgated a revision to the Pb NAAQS, lowering the standard from 1.5 micrograms per cubic meter (µg/m <SU>3</SU> ) to 0.15 µg/m <SU>3</SU> (73 FR 66963). EPA designated a portion of Pottawattamie County, Council Bluffs, Iowa, as nonattainment for the 2008 Pb NAAQS (76 FR 72097) effective December 31, 2011. The air construction permit for Alter Metal Recycling was included in the 2008 Lead NAAQS attainment plan, which was approved by EPA on February 26, 2016 (81 FR 9770). The Alter Metal Recycling permit controls fugitive dust emissions through a Reasonably Available Control Technology (RACT) limit, work practice standards, limits truck traffic and total material shipped, and requires silt load sampling. The permit also contains contingency measures if there is a monitored exceedance of the Pb NAAQS. The area attained the 2008 Pb NAAQS by the statutory deadline of December 31, 2016, and the EPA approved Iowa's redesignation and maintenance plan on October 4, 2018 (83 FR 50024). IDNR continues to conduct ambient air monitoring for Pb in the Council Bluffs area near Pb emitting facilities. According to 40 CFR part 50, appendix R, the 2008 Pb NAAQS is met at a monitoring site when the identified design value is valid and is less than or equal to 0.15 µg/m <SU>3</SU> . The form of the standard is based on the maximum three-month rolling average over a three-year period (thirty-six rolling calendar quarters, or thirty-eight total months). The design value is the highest Pb concentration recorded for a rolling three-month calendar quarter over a three-year period. The area has not recorded a violation of the NAAQS since it was redesignated. The most recent valid design value for the area is 0.08 µg/m <SU>3</SU> for the 2018-2020 period. A Pb design value that meets the NAAQS is considered valid if it encompasses 36 consecutive valid 3-month site means. Data loss associated with a new sampling instrument in December 2021 prevented the calculation of valid 3-month site means for December 2021 through February 2022, causing the area to have invalid design values for each three-year period since the 2018-2020 period. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The most recent, though incomplete, data indicates a maximum three-month rolling average of 0.12 µg/m <SU>3</SU> for the 2021-2023 period. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  See section “Lead Monitoring Network Analysis” of the Iowa Ambient Air Monitoring 2024 Network Plan, included in the docket for this action. </FTNT> The SIP-approved construction permit #A-14-521 required Alter Metal Recycling to conduct surface silt load sampling on haul routes internal to the facility boundaries at three locations to demonstrate that the total silt load content on roadways is less than 2.70 g/m <SU>2</SU> . Section 14 of the SIP-approved permit provided that Alter Metal Recycling could request a reduced sampling frequency if it met this silt load limit for 12 consecutive months. As detailed in Iowa's October 23, 2017, letter requesting approval of #A-14-521-S1 into the SIP, data submitted by Alter Metal Recycling demonstrated compliance between October 2014 and November 2016. Accordingly, the permit modification reduces the frequency of required silt load sampling from monthly to quarterly. The permit modification also adds additional contingency measures if monitored exceedance of the lead NAAQS occurs during months in which inclement weather provisions applied. The SIP-approved permit does not require the facility to sweep if there has been 0.2 inches of rain within a twenty-four-hour period, the haul routes have not been used that day, the ambient air temperature is less than thirty-five degrees Fahrenheit, or the conditions due to weather could create hazardous driving conditions. In the modified permit, if the facility receives notification from IDNR that a monitored exceedance of the NAAQS occurs during months in which the inclement weather provision applied, the facility is required to implement good housekeeping practices, including but not limited to, daily removal of material piles that have accumulated on haul road surfaces and decreasing vehicle speeds on paved road surfaces from 20 mph to 5 mph. The modified permit further requires the owner or operator to continue good housekeeping practices on paved road surfaces until sweeping resumes. Finally, this action will also make administrative updates to the permit number and removes compliance dates that have already passed. The permitted emission limits, work practice standards, control measures, and reporting and recordkeeping requirements remain unchanged. As discussed above, in accordance with SIP-approved permit #14-A-521, Alter Metal Recycling requested a reduced silt load sampling frequency from monthly to quarterly. IDNR granted Alter Metal's request and issued permit modification #14-A-521-S1, which also includes modifications to the contingency measures that are more protective of air quality during inclement weather. In addition, the permit modification does not increase potential lead emissions and retains all measures necessary to attain and maintain the 2008 lead NAAQS. For these reasons, the EPA proposes to find that this SIP revision will not interfere with any applicable requirement concerning attainment and reasonable further progress (as defined in section 171 of the CAA), or any other applicable requirement of ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 16k characters. 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