Air Plan Approval; Minnesota; Exempt Source SIP Revision

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R05-OAR-2021-0684; FRL-12805-01-R5]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Minnesota; Exempt Source SIP Revision</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 a revision to the Minnesota State Implementation Plan (SIP) which updates Minnesota's air program rules. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) submitted the request to EPA on October 1, 2021. The revision to Minnesota's air quality rules will reflect changes that have occurred to the State air quality rules since July 2020. EPA is proposing to approve MPCA's submittal, which will result in consistent requirements of rules at both the State and Federal level. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before August 15, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R05-OAR-2021-0684 at <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov,</E> or via email to <E T="03">damico.genevieve@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> Jennifer Darrow, Air and Radiation Division (AR-18J), Environmental Protection Agency, Region 5, 77 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60604, (312) 886-6315, <E T="03">darrow.jennifer@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. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Review of State Submittal</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. What action is EPA taking?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Overview of Revisions Made by Minnesota</HD> On October 1, 2021, MPCA submitted a request for a revision of Minnesota's SIP. The submittal includes amendments to permit rules, clarifications of permit requirements for small sources of air emissions, updates to rules governing small air pollution sources and the addition of four categories of conditionally exempt sources. Minnesota completed a State rulemaking to clarify exempt source and insignificant activities rules in 2019. This proposed SIP revision is intended to codify those amendments to State law in the Minnesota SIP. MPCA previously submitted a similar SIP revision in 2018, and EPA approved the revision on July 27, 2020 (85 FR 45094). The following chapters of Minnesota's air program rules have undergone revisions: Minnesota Rules Chapter 7005 Definitions and Abbreviations; Chapter 7007 Permits and Offsets; Chapter 7008 Conditionally Exempt Stationary Sources and Conditionally Insignificant Activities; Chapter 7011 Standards for Stationary Sources; and Chapter 7019 Emissions Inventory Requirements. All rule changes were made under the MPCA's rulemaking authority and underwent appropriate public participation procedures as required by State law. EPA proposes to approve the revisions to the Minnesota SIP. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Summary of Relevant Statutes</HD> Section 110 of the Clean Air Act (CAA), 42 U.S.C 7410, as amended, requires State and local air pollution control agencies to develop and submit for EPA approval, SIPs that provide for the attainment, maintenance, and enforcement of the NAAQS in each air quality control region (or portion thereof) within each State. Section 110(a) requires an assurance that states' air quality management programs contain the structural components in place to meet the state's responsibilities under the CAA. It also requires that the program attain and maintain the NAAQS. Section 110(a)(2)(C) of the CAA requires that each SIP include a program to provide for the regulation of construction and modification of stationary sources as necessary to ensure that the NAAQS are achieved. Specific elements for an approvable construction permitting plan are found in the implementing regulations at 40 CFR 51 subpart I—Review of New Sources and Modifications. Requirements relevant to minor construction programs are 40 CFR 51.160-51.163. EPA regulations have several specific criteria for State minor new source review (NSR) programs. Generally, State programs must set forth legally enforceable procedures that allow the State to determine if a planned construction activity would result in a violation of the State's SIP or a national standard and prevent any activity that would. In accordance with 40 CFR 51.162, the State plan must identify the responsible agency for making permitting decisions. 40 CFR 51.160 requires the plan to identify the types and sizes of facilities and installations that are subject to review under the plan, provide that sources undertaking an activity submit adequate information regarding the nature and amounts of emissions to be emitted, as well as information on the location, design construction, and operation of facilities to enable the State to make a determination of whether the planned construction would result in a violation of the SIP or a national standard. 40 CFR 51.161 provides specific criteria for public availability of information and opportunity for public comment. Finally, 40 CFR 51.164 requires the plan to identify the administrative procedures that will be followed in making permitting decisions. Section 110(l) of the CAA states that a SIP revision cannot be approved if the revision would interfere with any applicable requirements concerning attainment and reasonable further progress toward attainment of a NAAQS or any other applicable requirement of the CAA. The revisions to the Minnesota SIP are intended to recodify, refine and update Minnesota's air quality rules in the Minnesota SIP, at 40 CFR 52.1220. This SIP revision addresses the requirements of section 110 of the CAA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Review of State Submittal</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Chapter 7005: Definitions and Abbreviations</HD> Chapter 7005 contains numerous definitions and abbreviations relevant to rules throughout the Minnesota SIP. In Chapter 7005, MPCA amended and added definitions in Minn. R. 7005.0100, to define new terms, clarify definitions, and re-number definitions. EPA finds these revisions approvable because they provide clarity to terms used in various rules throughout the SIP and do not change the requirements of the rules themselves. EPA proposes to approve the revisions to Minn. R. 7005.0100 into the Minnesota SIP. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Chapter 7007: Permits and Offsets</HD> Chapter 7007 contains rules concerning permits and offsets and has undergone various changes. Because Chapter 7007 combines the State's preconstruction and operating permit programs into a single permitting program, MPCA uses the broad term “Part 70 permit” to reference several types of permits, including some permits that authorize construction. As used in this action, “Part 70” denotes preconstruction permits, unless otherwise specified as “federal part 70.” This rulemaking is limited solely to approval of revisions to the state's preconstruction permitting program and federally enforceable State operating permit program. This is not a rulemaking under the Federal rules at 40 CFR part 70. Minn. R. 7007.0300 relates to sources that are not required to obtain a permit under parts 7007.0100 to 7007.1850. Minn. R. 7007.0300 subpart 1, has been revised to remove item D, which provided that stationary sources listed as insignificant activities, sources that are conditionally insignificant activities, or sources that qualify as both insignificant activities and conditionally insignificant activities, are not required to obtain a permit, subject to certain conditions and recordkeeping requirements. The substantive provisions of item D are now a category of conditionally exempt stationary sources found in Minn. R. 7008.2600, “Insignificant Facility; Technical Standards,” which is discussed further below. Therefore, these revisions simply reorganize the provisions and do not change the substance of the rules. EPA proposes to approve the revisions to Minn. R. 7007.0300 into the Minnesota SIP. Minn. R. 7007.0400 subpart 2 has been revised to change the timeframe for the owner or operator to submit an application for renewal of a Federal part 70 permit. The revision clarifies that a permit will not require ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 37k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━