Air Plan Approval; Michigan; Second Period Regional Haze Plan

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R05-OAR-2021-0577; FRL-12588-01-R5]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Michigan; Second Period Regional Haze Plan</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 the Regional Haze State Implementation Plan (SIP) revision submitted by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) on August 23, 2021, and supplemented on April 3, 2025, as satisfying applicable requirements under the Clean Air Act (CAA) and EPA's Regional Haze Rule (RHR) for the program's second implementation period. EGLE's SIP submission addresses the requirement that States must periodically revise their long-term strategies for making reasonable progress towards the national goal of preventing any future, and remedying any existing, anthropogenic impairment of visibility, including regional haze, in mandatory Class I Federal areas. The SIP submission also addresses other applicable requirements for the second implementation period of the regional haze program. EPA is taking this action pursuant to sections 110 and 169A of the CAA. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before July 18, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R05-OAR-2021-0577 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> or via email to <E T="03">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 to EPA's docket at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> 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> Matt Rau, Air and Radiation Division (AR-18J), Environmental Protection Agency, Region 5, 77 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60604, (312) 886-6524, <E T="03">rau.matthew@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. <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. What action is EPA proposing?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. What is parallel processing?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Background and Requirements for Regional Haze Plans</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Regional Haze Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Roles of Agencies in Addressing Regional Haze</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Requirements for Regional Haze Plans for the Second Implementation Period</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Long-Term Strategy for Regional Haze</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Reasonable Progress Goals (RPGs)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Monitoring Strategy and Other SIP Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Requirements for Periodic Reports Describing Progress Towards the RPGs</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Requirements for State and Federal Land Manager Coordination</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. EPA's Evaluation of EGLE's Regional Haze Submission for the Second Implementation Period</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Background on EGLE's First Implementation Period SIP Submission</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. EGLE's Second Implementation Period SIP Submission and EPA's Evaluation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Identification of Class I Areas</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Calculations of Baseline, Current, and Natural Visibility Conditions; Progress to Date; and the Uniform Rate of Progress</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Long-Term Strategy for Regional Haze</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">1. Emission Measures Necessary To Make Reasonable Progress</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">2. EPA's Evaluation of EGLE's Compliance With 40 CFR 51.308(f)(2)(i)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. RPGs</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">G. Monitoring Strategy and Other Implementation Plan Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">H. Requirements for Periodic Reports Describing Progress Towards the RPGs</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">I. Requirements for State and Federal Land Manager Coordination</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. What action is EPA proposing?</HD> On August 23, 2021, EGLE submitted a revision to its SIP to address regional haze requirements for the second implementation period. On April 3, 2025, EGLE submitted a supplement in draft for parallel processing. EGLE made this SIP submission to satisfy the requirements of the CAA's regional haze program pursuant to CAA sections 169A and 169B and 40 CFR 51.308. EPA proposes to find that the Michigan Regional Haze SIP submission for the second implementation period meets the applicable statutory and regulatory requirements. Thus, EPA proposes to approve EGLE's submission into its SIP. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. What is parallel processing?</HD> Consistent with EPA regulations found at 40 CFR part 51, appendix V, section 2.3.1, for purposes of expediting review of a SIP submission, parallel processing allows a State to submit a plan to EPA prior to final adoption by the State. Generally, the State submits a copy of the proposed regulation or other revisions to EPA before conducting its public hearing. EPA reviews this proposed State action and prepares a notice of proposed rulemaking. EPA's notice of proposed rulemaking is published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> during the same time frame that the State is holding its public process. The State and EPA then provide for concurrent public comment periods on both the State action and Federal action. If the revision that is finally adopted and submitted by EGLE is changed in aspects other than those identified in the proposed rulemaking on the parallel process submission, EPA will evaluate those changes and if necessary and appropriate, issue another notice of proposed rulemaking. The final rulemaking action by EPA will occur only after the SIP revision has been adopted by the State and submitted formally to EPA for incorporation into the SIP. On April 3, 2025, EGLE submitted a request for parallel processing of a draft SIP supplement that it has taken to public comment on March 10, 2025. EGLE requested parallel processing so that EPA can act on its Regional Haze SIP revision in advance of EGLE's submission of a SIP supplement. As stated previously, the final rulemaking action by EPA will occur only after the SIP supplement has been: (1) submitted formally to EPA for incorporation into the SIP and (2) evaluated by EPA, including any changes made by EGLE after the April 3, 2025, draft SIP supplement was submitted to EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background and Requirements for Regional Haze Plans</HD> A detailed history and background of the regional haze program is provided in prior EPA proposal action. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> For additional background on the 2017 RHR revisions, please refer to Section III. Overview of Visibility Protection Statutory Authority, Regulation, and Implementation of “Protection of Visibility: Amendments to Requirements for State Plans” of the 2017 RHR. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> The following is an abbreviated history and background of the regional haze program and 2017 Regional Haze Rule as it applies to the current action. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 90 FR 13516 (March 24, 2025). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 82 FR 3078 (January 10, 2017). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Regional Haze Background</HD> In the 1977 CAA Amendments, Congress created a program for protecting visibility in the nation's mandatory Class I Federal areas, which include certain national parks and wilderness areas. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> CAA 169A. The CAA establishes as a national goal the “prevention of any future, and the remedying of any existing, impairment of visibility in mandatory class I Federal areas which impairment results from manmade air pollution.” CAA 169A(a)(1). <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  Areas statutorily designated as mandatory Class I Federal areas consist of national parks exceeding 6,000 acres, wilderness areas and national memorial parks exceeding 5,000 acres, and all international parks that were in existence on August 7, 1977. CAA 162(a). There are 156 mandatory Class I areas. The list of areas to which the requirements of the visibility protection program apply is in 40 CFR part 81, subpart D. </FTNT> Regional haze is visibility impairment that is produced by a multitude of anthropogenic sources and activities which are located across a broad geographic area and that emit pollutants that impair visibility. Visibility impairing pollutants include fine and coarse particulate m ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 69k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━