New Source Performance Standards and National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants; Delegation of Authority to Louisiana

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Parts 60, 61 and 63</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R06-OAR-2010-1054; FRL-12688-01-R6]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>New Source Performance Standards and National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants; Delegation of Authority to Louisiana</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) has submitted updated regulations for receiving delegation and approval of its program for the implementation and enforcement of certain New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) and National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) for all sources, as provided for under previously approved delegation mechanisms. The updated State regulations incorporate by reference certain NSPS and NESHAP promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as they existed through July 1, 2021. EPA is providing notice that it is updating the delegation of certain NSPS to LDEQ and proposing to approve the delegation of certain NESHAP to LDEQ. The proposed delegation of authority under this action does not apply to sources located in Indian country. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments on this proposed rule must be received on or before <E T="03">July 23, 2025.</E> </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R06-OAR-2010-1054, at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or via email to <E T="03">barrett.richard@epa.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 Rick Barrett, 214-665-7227, <E T="03">barrett.richard@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> Rick Barrett, EPA Region 6 Office, ARPE, (214) 665-7227, <E T="03">barrett.richard@epa.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 wherever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. What does this action do?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. What is the authority for delegation?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. What criteria must Louisiana's programs meet to be approved?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. How did LDEQ meet the NSPS and NESHAP program approval criteria?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. What is being delegated?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. What is not being delegated?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VII. How will statutory and regulatory interpretations be made?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VIII. What authority does the EPA have?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IX. What information must LDEQ provide to the EPA?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">X. What is the EPA's oversight role?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">XI. Should sources submit notices to the EPA or LDEQ?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">XII. How will unchanged authorities be delegated to LDEQ in the future?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">XIII. Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">XIV. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. What does this action do?</HD> The EPA is updating the delegation of the implementation and enforcement of certain NSPS to LDEQ. EPA is also proposing to approve the delegation of the implementation and enforcement of certain NESHAP to LDEQ. If finalized, the delegation will provide LDEQ with the primary responsibility to implement and enforce the delegated standards. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. What is the authority for delegation?</HD> Section 111(c)(1) of the Clean Air Act (CAA) authorizes EPA to delegate authority to any State agency which submits adequate regulatory procedures for implementation and enforcement of the NSPS program. The NSPS standards are codified at 40 CFR part 60. Section 112(l) of the Clean Air Act (CAA), and 40 CFR part 63, subpart E, authorize the EPA to delegate authority to any State or local agency which submits adequate regulatory procedures for implementation and enforcement of emission standards for hazardous air pollutants. The hazardous air pollutant standards are codified at 40 CFR parts 61 and 63. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. What criteria must Louisiana's programs meet to be approved?</HD> In order to receive delegation of NSPS, a State must develop and submit to the EPA a procedure for implementing and enforcing the NSPS in the State, and their regulations and resources must be adequate for the implementation and enforcement of the NSPS. EPA initially approved Louisiana's program for the delegation of NSPS on February 22, 1982 (47 FR 7665). EPA reviewed the laws of the State and the rules and regulations of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources (now the LDEQ) and determined the State's procedures, regulations and resources adequate for the implementation and enforcement of the NSPS program. This action notifies the public that EPA is updating LDEQ's delegation to implement and enforce certain additional NSPS. As to the NESHAP standards in 40 CFR parts 61 and 63, Section 112(l)(5) of the CAA requires the EPA to disapprove any program submitted by a State for the delegation of NESHAP standards if the EPA determines that: (A) the authorities contained in the program are not adequate to assure compliance by the sources within the State with respect to each applicable standard, regulation, or requirement established under section 112; (B) adequate authority does not exist, or adequate resources are not available, to implement the program; (C) the schedule for implementing the program and assuring compliance by affected sources is not sufficiently expeditious; or (D) the program is otherwise not in compliance with the guidance issued by the EPA under section 112(l)(2) or is not likely to satisfy, in whole or in part, the objectives of the CAA. In carrying out its responsibilities under section 112(l), the EPA promulgated regulations at 40 CFR part 63, subpart E, setting forth criteria for the approval of submitted programs. For example, in order to obtain approval of a program to implement and enforce Federal section 112 rules as promulgated without changes (straight delegation) for part 70 sources, a State must demonstrate that it meets the criteria of 40 CFR 63.91(d). 40 CFR 63.91(d)(3) provides that interim or final Title V program approval will satisfy the criteria of 40 CFR 63.91(d). <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The NESHAP delegation for Louisiana, as it applies to both part 70 and non-part 70 sources, was most recently approved on February 24, 2015 (80 FR 9613). <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Some NESHAP standards do not require a source to obtain a Title V permit ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> certain area sources that are exempt from the requirement to obtain a Title V permit). For these non-Title V sources, the EPA believes that the State must assure the EPA that it can implement and enforce the NESHAP for such sources. <E T="03">See</E> 65 FR 55810, 55813 (September 14, 2000). The EPA previously approved Louisiana's program to implement and enforce the NESHAP as they apply to non-part 70 sources. <E T="03">See</E> 69 FR 15687 (March 26, 2004). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. How did LDEQ meet the NSPS and NESHAP program approval criteria?</HD> As to the NSPS standards in 40 CFR part 60, LDEQ adopted the Federal standards via incorporation by reference. The LDEQ regulations are, therefore, at least as stringent as EPA's rules. <E T="03">See</E> 40 CFR 60.10(a). Also, in the EPA initial approval of NSPS delegation, we determined that the State developed procedures for implementing and enforcing the NSPS in the State, and that the State's regulations and resources are adequate for the implementation and enforcement of the NSPS program. <E T="03">See</E> 47 FR 7665 (February 22, 1982). As to the NESHAP standards in 40 CFR parts 61 and 63, as part of its Title V submission LDEQ stated that it intended to use the mechanism of incorporation by reference to adopt unchanged Federal section 112 standards into its regulations. This commitment applied to both existing and future standards as they applied to part 70 sources. The EPA's final interim approval of Louisiana's Title V operating permits program delegated the authority to implement certain NESHAP to the State. <E T="03">See</E> 60 FR 17750 (April 7, 1995). EPA promulgated final full approval of the State's operating permits program, on September 12, 1995. <E T="03"> ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 28k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━