Air Plan Approval; California; Revised Format for Nonregulatory Provisions

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R09-OAR-2024-0527; FRL-12792-01-R9]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; California; Revised Format for Nonregulatory Provisions</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule; administrative change. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> Under the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking another action in a series of actions to revise the format of the former “Identification of plan” section for the California State Implementation Plan (SIP). Specifically, the EPA is adding the nonregulatory provisions and quasi-regulatory measures to the “Identification of plan—in part” section that the EPA established to provide for the phased transition of the California SIP to the revised format. The nonregulatory provisions and quasi-regulatory measures affected by this format revision have been previously submitted by the State of California and approved by the EPA. This action is the third in a series of actions intended to change the format for the entire California SIP. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective on July 7, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-R09-OAR-2024-0527. Nonregulatory and quasi-regulatory SIP materials are available for inspection by appointment at Environmental Protection Agency, Region IX, 75 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, CA 94105-3901. For information on the availability of this material at the EPA Regional Office, please contact the person in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Kira Wiesinger, EPA Region IX, 75 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, CA 94105; telephone number: (415) 972-3827; email address: <E T="03">wiesinger.kira@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document, the terms “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to the EPA. This supplementary information section is organized as follows: <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Public Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> Under the Clean Air Act (CAA or “Act”), each State is required to have a State implementation plan (SIP) that contains, among other things, the control measures and strategies which will be used to attain and maintain the national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS). The SIP is extensive, containing such elements as emission inventories, monitoring networks, attainment demonstrations, and enforcement mechanisms. The control measures and strategies must be formally adopted by each State after the public has had an opportunity to comment on them. They are then submitted to the EPA as requested SIP revisions on which EPA must formally act. The SIP is a dynamic document that can be revised by the State as necessary to address the unique air pollution problems in the State. Therefore, EPA must periodically take action on State SIP submissions containing new and/or revised regulations or other materials in order to make them part of the federally-approved SIP. In May 1972, the EPA approved, with certain exceptions, the initial SIPs for 50 States, four territories and the District of Columbia. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Since 1972, each State and territory has submitted numerous SIP revisions, either on their own initiative or because they were required to as a result of various amendments to the CAA or EPA regulations. The EPA codifies its approvals and disapprovals of SIPs and SIP revisions in 40 CFR part 52 (“Approval and promulgation of implementation plans”). <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  37 FR 10842 (May 31, 1972). The EPA approved an additional SIP—for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands—on November 10, 1986 (51 FR 40799). </FTNT> Within 40 CFR part 52, there are 58 subparts (subparts A through FFF). Subpart A contains general requirements applicable to all States and territories, while subparts B through DDD and subpart FFF contain requirements that are specific to a given State or territory. Subpart EEE contains historical information pertaining to EPA action on SIP material originally submitted by States to the National Air Pollution Control Administration (Department of Health, Education, and Welfare) in 1970. Until 1997, the first or second section of each subpart within 40 CFR part 52 (other than subparts A and EEE) was called “Identification of plan.” This section summarized State-developed requirements which the EPA has approved as part of a given SIP since May 31, 1972, and was amended by adding new paragraphs for each new approval of a State SIP revision submission. On May 22, 1997 (62 FR 27968), the EPA established a new format for the “Identification of plan” sections assigned to each subpart in 40 CFR part 52 (except A and EEE). With the new format, revised “Identification of plan” sections contain five paragraphs: (a) Purpose and scope, (b) Incorporation by reference, (c) EPA-approved regulations, (d) EPA-approved source-specific requirements, and (e) EPA-approved nonregulatory provisions and quasi-regulatory measures. “Nonregulatory provisions and quasi-regulatory measures” refers to such items as transportation control measures, certain statutory provisions, control strategies, and monitoring networks. In our May 1997 rule, we indicated that the EPA would begin to phase in the new format on a State-by-State basis. Please see our May 1997 rule for more information concerning the revised format for SIPs. The California SIP is identified in subpart F (“California”) of part 52, and the “Identification of plan” section was designated as 40 CFR 52.220. Given the size of the California SIP, the EPA is revising the format of the California SIP in a phased manner. On May 26, 2016 (81 FR 33397), we took the first action to revise the format of the “Identification of plan” section in subpart F in accordance with the revised format described above. Through that first action, we revised the heading of § 52.220 to read, “Identification of plan—in part,” and added an introductory paragraph to convey our division of the California “Identification of plan” section into two sections: • Amended 40 CFR 52.220, which would continue for the time being to function as it has in the past to list past and newly-approved air district rules, local ordinances, source-specific requirements, and nonregulatory and quasi-regulatory provisions and which lists State statutes and State regulations approved on or prior to April 1, 2016; and • New 40 CFR 52.220a (“Identification of plan—in part”), which lists the State statutes and State regulations approved as part of the California SIP as of April 1, 2016, using the new table format. This meant that subsequent EPA approvals of air district rules, local ordinances, source-specific requirements, and nonregulatory and quasi-regulatory provisions would continue to be promulgated in 40 CFR 52.220 using the paragraph format whereas subsequent EPA approvals of State statutes and State regulations would be promulgated in 40 CFR 52.220a using the table format. Our phased approach to converting the format of the California SIP anticipated that, over time, as the EPA completes further rulemaking actions to convert the format of the California SIP, 40 CFR 52.220a will include a growing number of air district rules, local ordinances, source-specific requirements, and nonregulatory and quasi-regulatory provisions. Once the conversion process is completed, the EPA will redesignate 40 CFR 52.220a as 40 CFR 52.220 and rename it simply “Identification of plan.” At that point, all subsequent actions by the EPA to approve California SIP revisions will be promulgated using the new table format. On June 4, 2025 (90 FR 23618), the EPA took a second action to revise the format of the California SIP by converting the format for local ordinances and air district rules approved on or prior to April 17, 2025, for the following air districts: Amador Air District, Antelope Valley Air Quality Management District (AQMD), Bay Area AQMD, Butte County AQMD, Calaveras County Air Pollution Control District (APCD), Colusa County APCD, Eastern Kern APCD, and El Dorado County AQMD. In this third action to convert the format of the California SIP, we are revising the format of the California SIP by converting the nonregulatory provisions and quasi-regulatory measures portion of the California SIP. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Public Comments</HD> The EPA has determined that this rule falls under the “good cause” exemption in section 553(b)(B) of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) that, upon finding “good cause,” authorizes agencies to dispense with public participation and section 553(d)(3), which allows an agency to make a rule effective immediately (thereby avoiding the 30-day delayed effective date otherwise provided for in the APA). This action simply reformats and recodifies provisions that are already in effect as a matter of law in Federal and approved State programs. Under section 553 of the APA, an agency may find good cause where notice and public procedure are “impractical, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest.” Public comment is “unnecessary” and “contrary to the public interest” for this action because the EPA is merely reformatting and recodifying existing law. Immediate notice in the CFR benefits the public by clearly identifying the current nonregulatory provisions and quasi-regulatory measures of the California SIP. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</HD> This action merely ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 289k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━