Air Plan Approval; Florida; Revisions to Stationary Sources-Removal of Clean Air Interstate Rule Provisions

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R04-OAR-2024-0049; FRL-12620-02-R4]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Florida; Revisions to Stationary Sources—Removal of Clean Air Interstate Rule Provisions</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is approving a State Implementation Plan (SIP) revision submitted by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) on August 15, 2023. The revision removes certain Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR)-related definitions, and CAIR-related portions of certain definitions, in the Stationary Sources—General Requirements chapter of the Florida SIP because they have become obsolete. EPA is approving these changes pursuant to the Clean Air Act (CAA or Act). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective August 6, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket Identification No. EPA-R04-OAR-2024-0049. All documents in the docket are listed on the <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> website. Although listed in the index, some information may not be publicly available, i.e., Confidential Business Information or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Certain other material, such as copyrighted material, is not placed on the internet and will be publicly available only in hard copy form. Publicly available docket materials are available either electronically through www.regulations.gov or in hard copy at the Air Regulatory Management Section, Air Planning and Implementation Branch, Air and Radiation Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 4, 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, Georgia 30303-8960. EPA requests that if at all possible, you contact the person listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section to schedule your inspection. The Regional Office's official hours of business are Monday through Friday 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., excluding Federal holidays. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Mr. Steven Scofield, Multi-Air Pollutant Coordination Section, Air Planning and Implementation Branch, Air and Radiation Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 4, 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, Georgia 30303-8960. The telephone number is (404) 562-9034. Mr. Scofield can also be reached via electronic mail at <E T="03">scofield.steve@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> EPA is approving a SIP revision submitted by FDEP on August 15, 2023, seeking to remove certain CAIR-related definitions, and CAIR-related portions of certain definitions, from Chapter 62-210, <E T="03">Stationary Sources—General Requirements,</E> of the Florida SIP. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Specifically, this final action addresses definitional changes adopted by the State, effective July 3, 2018, to SIP-approved Rule 62-210.200, <E T="03">Definitions.</E> These definitions are referenced throughout Chapter 62-210 and in other parts of the SIP. Approval of these changes improves consistency with Federal and State regulations. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  The August 15, 2023, submittal contains revisions to other Florida SIP-approved rules that are not addressed in this action. EPA will act on those rule changes in separate rulemakings. </FTNT> The following definitions are being removed from the SIP: 62-210.200(52) “CAIR”; 62-210.200(53) “CAIR NO <E T="52">X</E> Allowance”; 62-210.200(54) “CAIR NO <E T="52">X</E> Annual Trading Program”; 62-210.200(55) “CAIR NO <E T="52">X</E> Ozone Season Allowance”; 62-210.200(56) “CAIR NO <E T="52">X</E> Ozone Season Trading Program”; 62-210.200(57) “CAIR NO <E T="52">X</E> Ozone Season Unit”; 62-210.200(58) “CAIR NO <E T="52">X</E> Unit”; 62-210.200(59) “CAIR Part or CAIR Unit”; 62-210.200(60) “CAIR Program”; 62-210.200(61) “CAIR SO <E T="52">2</E> Allowance”; 62-210.200(62) “CAIR SO <E T="52">2</E> Trading Program”; 62-210.200(63) “CAIR SO <E T="52">2</E> Unit”; and 62-210.200(64) “CAIR Source”; 62-210.200(65). This action also removes the CAIR-related portions of 62-210.200(91) “Commence Operation” (removing paragraph (b)) and 62-210.200(115) “Designated Representative” (removing paragraph (b) and moving paragraph (c) to paragraph (b)). Through a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) published on March 28, 2025 (90 FR 14059), EPA proposed to approve these changes because CAIR is no longer operative; EPA previously removed Florida's CAIR rule from the SIP, <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> and the changes therefore would not interfere with any applicable requirement concerning attainment of the NAAQS or any other applicable requirement of the Act. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> The removal of other CAIR-related definitions was also requested as part of this August 15, 2023, SIP submission; however, EPA will address these changes in a separate rulemaking. EPA's rationale for approving the removal or modification of the above definitions is described in the March 28, 2025, NPRM and further discussed in Section II, below. Comments on the NPRM were due on or before April 28, 2025. EPA received four comments on the NPRM. All four comments are available in the docket for this action. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  A summary and timeline of the federal and State alterations to the CAIR regulations can be found in Appendix A of Florida's August 15, 2023, SIP submission, starting on page 1147. The submission can be found in the docket for this rulemaking, Docket ID No. EPA-R04-OAR-2024-0049 at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> . EPA removed Florida's former CAIR rule from the SIP on October 3, 2023 (88 FR 67963). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> CAA section 110(l) which prohibits EPA from approving a SIP revision that would interfere with any applicable requirement concerning attainment and reasonable further progress (as defined in CAA Section 171), or any other applicable requirement of the Act. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Response to Comments</HD> EPA has summarized and responded to the four comments below. <E T="03">Comment 1:</E> Two of the commenters recommend that EPA disapprove the proposed revisions to the Florida SIP. Among other things, the commenters mention land use development and its impacts. One commenter adds that strict air quality standards and penalties are needed, and one commenter adds that CAIR should be reinstated. <E T="03">Response 1:</E> EPA disagrees that the Agency should disapprove the SIP revision. EPA is acting on a SIP revision submitted pursuant to the CAA that merely removes unnecessary and obsolete CAIR-related definitions, and CAIR-related portions of certain definitions, from the SIP. The SIP revision is unrelated to land use development and has no impact on air quality. As discussed in the NPRM, in response to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit's remand of CAIR, EPA published the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) to address the good neighbor provision for the 1997 ozone NAAQS, the 1997 fine particulate matter (PM <E T="52">2.5</E> ) NAAQS, and the 2006 PM <E T="52">2.5</E> NAAQS. <E T="03">See</E> 76 FR 48208 (August 8, 2011). Through subsequent litigation over CSAPR, EPA continued to implement CAIR until December 31, 2014. CSAPR became effective on January 1, 2015. EPA determined that CSAPR does not apply to Florida after demonstrating that Florida does not contribute significantly to nonattainment in, or interfere with maintenance by, any other State with respect to the covered NAAQS. <E T="03">See</E> 81 FR 74504, 74506 (October 26, 2016). Because CSAPR replaced CAIR and EPA previously determined that CSAPR does not apply to Florida, neither of these rules have any applicability in Florida today, and CAIR cannot be reinstated in Florida. EPA removed Florida's former CAIR rule—Rule 62-296.470, <E T="03">Implementation of Federal Clean Air Interstate Rule</E> —from the SIP on October 3, 2023. <E T="03">See</E> 88 FR 67963. <E T="03">Comment 2:</E> The third commenter supports approval of Florida's SIP revision. The commenter suggests that EPA provide a “clear side-by-side list showing which terms are being removed and what's staying the same” and explain if these changes affect how Florida monitors or controls air pollution. <E T="03">Response 2:</E> Regarding the suggestion for a side-by-side list, it is unclear what the commenter would find helpful. The August 25, 2023, SIP submission identifies what is in the SIP for each rule selected for modification, what changes are requested, and what the SIP would look like if each change is adopted. The NPRM and this notice of final rulemaking also provide a list of each removed and revised definition along with the rule numbers. Except for these removed and revised definitions, the SIP will remain the same. Regarding an explanation about impacts on the monitoring and control of air pollution, there is no impact because no air quality standards, emission standards, or any other SIP requirements are being relaxed or removed in this action. As discussed above and in the NPRM, Florida's CAIR trading program, as well as the corresponding EPA program, have not been implemented since 2014, and the rules and regulations related to these programs have already been removed or replaced. Therefore, EPA is removing the CAIR-related definitions, and CAIR-related portions of certain definitions, because they are unnecessary and obsolete. <E T="03">Comment 3:</E> The fourth commenter suggests that EPA should require a supplemental environmental justice analysis; identify how its action complies ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 26k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━