Air Plan Approval; California; San Joaquin Valley 1-Hour Ozone Area; Maintenance Plan and Redesignation Request

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Parts 52 and 81</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R09-OAR-2024-0611; FRL-12521-01-R9]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; California; San Joaquin Valley 1-Hour Ozone Area; Maintenance Plan and Redesignation Request</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 “2023 Maintenance Plan and Redesignation Request for the Revoked 1-Hour Ozone Standard” (“San Joaquin Valley Maintenance Plan” or “Plan”) as a revision to the state implementation plan (SIP) for the State of California. The San Joaquin Valley Maintenance Plan includes, among other elements, an emissions inventory consistent with attainment and contingency provisions. The EPA is also proposing to find that the State of California's request to redesignate the San Joaquin Valley area from nonattainment to attainment for the revoked 1979 1-hour national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS or “standard”) for ozone (“1979 ozone NAAQS,” “1-hour ozone NAAQS,” or “1-hour ozone standard”) meets all the Clean Air Act (CAA or “the Act”) criteria for redesignation. Therefore, the EPA is proposing to terminate all anti-backsliding obligations for the San Joaquin Valley area for the revoked 1-hour ozone NAAQS. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must arrive on or before July 23, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R09-OAR-2024-0611at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.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 <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 the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. 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> If you need assistance in a language other than English or if you are a person with a disability who needs a reasonable accommodation at no cost to you, please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Andrew Ledezma, Air Planning Section (AIR 2-1), EPA Region IX, 75 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, CA 94105, (415) 972-3985, or by email at <E T="03">Ledezma.Andrew@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. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. The 1979 Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. The San Joaquin Valley Area and Regulatory Actions</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. CAA and Regulatory Requirements for Redesignations and Maintenance Plans</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Submissions from the State of California to Redesignate the San Joaquin Valley Area to Attainment of the 1979 Ozone NAAQS</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Summary of State Submissions</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. CAA Procedural Requirements for Adoption and Submission of SIP Revisions</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Evaluation of the Redesignation Criteria for the San Joaquin Valley Area</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Evaluation of Whether the San Joaquin Valley Area Has Attained the 1979 1-Hour Ozone NAAQS</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. The Area Must Have a Fully Approved SIP Meeting the Requirements Applicable for the Purposes of Redesignation Under Section 110 and Part D of the CAA</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. The Area Must Show that the Improvement in Air Quality is Due to Permanent and Enforceable Emissions Reductions</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. The Area Must Have a Fully Approved Maintenance Plan Under CAA Section 175A</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Proposed Action and Request for Public Comment</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Statutory and Executive Order Review</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. The 1979 Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards</HD> The EPA sets the NAAQS for certain ambient air pollutants at levels required to protect human health and the environment. Ground-level ozone pollution is formed from the reaction of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and oxides of nitrogen (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) in the presence of sunlight. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> These two pollutants, referred to as ozone precursors, are emitted by many types of sources, including on- and off-road motor vehicles and engines, power plants and industrial facilities, and smaller area sources such as lawn and garden equipment and paints. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  The State of California refers to reactive organic gases (ROG) in some of its ozone-related SIP submissions. As a practical matter, ROG and VOC refer to the same set of chemical constituents, and for the sake of simplicity, we refer to this set of gases as VOC in this proposed rule. </FTNT> Scientific evidence indicates that adverse public health effects occur following exposure to ozone, particularly in children and adults with lung disease. Breathing air containing ozone can reduce lung function and inflame airways, which can increase respiratory symptoms and aggravate asthma or other lung diseases. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  “Fact Sheet—Final Revisions to the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Ozone,” dated March 2008. </FTNT> Under section 109 of the CAA, the EPA promulgates NAAQS for pervasive air pollutants, such as ozone. Following promulgation of a new or revised NAAQS, the CAA requires the EPA to designate areas throughout the nation as either attaining or not attaining the standards. On February 8, 1979, the EPA established primary and secondary NAAQS for ozone at 0.12 parts per million (ppm) averaged over a 1-hour period. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> On July 18, 1997, the EPA revised the primary and secondary standards for ozone to 0.08 ppm averaged over an 8-hour period (“1997 ozone NAAQS”). <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> In 2004, the EPA published the 1997 ozone NAAQS designations and classifications  <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> and a rule governing certain facets of implementation of the 1997 ozone NAAQS (“Phase 1 Rule”). <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> The Phase 1 Rule established the revocation of the 1979 ozone NAAQS one year following the effective date of the designations for the 1997 ozone NAAQS and set anti-backsliding provisions for the transition from the 1-hour to the 1997 8-hour standard. Anti- backsliding provisions provide for controls that are not less stringent than the controls applicable to areas that were listed as nonattainment for the revoked ozone standards when the standards and designations were revoked. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  See 44 FR 8202 (February 8, 1979). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  See 62 FR 38856 (July 18, 1997). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  69 FR 23858 (April 30, 2004). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  69 FR 23951 (April 30, 2004). </FTNT> The Phase 1 Rule and its subsequent revision did not include contingency measures, new source review (NSR) requirements, conformity determinations, or the section 185 fee program among the measures retained as 1-hour ozone standard anti-backsliding requirements. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> However, on December 23, 2006, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit determined that the EPA should not have excluded these requirements from its anti-backsliding requirements. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  See id. and 70 FR 30592, 30599 (May 26, 2005). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">South Coast Air Quality Management District</E> v. <E T="03">EPA,</E> 472 F.3d 882 (D.C. Cir. 2006) reh'g denied 489 F.3d 1245 (D.C. Cir. 2007) (clarifying that the vacatur was limited to the issues on which the court granted the petitions for review) <E T="03">(“South Coast I”).</E> </FTNT> In 2015, the EPA revoked the 1997 ozone NAAQS, established anti-backsliding requirements for the revoked 1997 ozone NAAQS, and revised the anti-backsliding requirements for the revoked 1-hour ozone standard as a part of the final rule for implementing the 2008 ozone 8-hour NAAQS (“2008 NAAQS SIP Requirements Rule”). <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> The EPA considered the <E T="03">South Coast I</E> decision on the Phase 1 Rule in developing the 2008 NAAQS SIP Requirements Rule for the 2008 8-hour ozone standard (“2008 ozone NAAQS”). <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>  40 CFR 51.1100-51.1119 and 80 FR 12264 (March 6, 2015). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>  The anti-backsliding requirements for the revoked 1979 and 1997 ozone NAAQS are listed in 40 CFR 51.1100(o). See 40 CFR 50.1105(a). </FTNT> The 2008 NAAQS SIP Requirements Rule provided that an area will be subject to the anti-backsliding obligations for a revoked NAAQS until the EPA approves either (1) a redesig ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 104k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━