Air Plan Approval; Ohio; Second Maintenance Plan for the Ohio Portion of the Campbell-Clermont, KY-OH SO2 Maintenance Area

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R05-OAR-2024-0542; FRL-12793-03-R5]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT> Air Plan Approval; Ohio; Second Maintenance Plan for the Ohio Portion of the Campbell-Clermont, KY-OH SO <E T="0735">2</E> Maintenance Area </SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Direct final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is approving, under the Clean Air Act (CAA), the second 10-year maintenance plan submitted to EPA on November 7, 2024, by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (Ohio EPA) for the Ohio portion of the Campbell-Clermont Counties, Kentucky-Ohio maintenance area. The Ohio portion of this area consists of Pierce Township in Clermont County, Ohio. The plan addresses the second 10-year maintenance period for the 2010 sulfur dioxide (SO <E T="52">2</E> ) National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). EPA is approving Ohio EPA's submittal for the area because it provides for the continued maintenance of the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS through the end of the second 10-year portion of the maintenance period. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This direct final rule will be effective September 15, 2025, unless EPA receives adverse comments by August 15, 2025. If adverse comments are received, EPA will publish a timely withdrawal of the direct final rule in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> informing the public that the rule will not take effect. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R05-OAR-2024-0542 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> or via email to <E T="03">arra.sarah@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> Cecilia Magos, Air and Radiation Division (AR18J), Environmental Protection Agency, Region 5, 77 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60604, (312) 886-7336, <E T="03">magos.cecilia@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. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> On June 22, 2010 (75 FR 35520), EPA promulgated a new 1-hour primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS of 75 parts per billion (ppb). EPA promulgated designations for this standard in four rounds. On August 5, 2013 (78 FR 47191), EPA designated the Campbell-Clermont Counties, KY-OH area as nonattainment due to the measured violations of the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS. The Ohio portion of the nonattainment area consists of Pierce Township in Clermont County, Ohio. EPA conducted designations for the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS based on monitoring data from the years 2009 to 2011 from the nearby SO <E T="52">2</E> monitor in Highland Heights, Campbell County, Kentucky (AQS Site ID: 21-037-3002, coordinates 39.021881, −84.474450). By April 5, 2015, Ohio and Kentucky were both required to submit a nonattainment State Implementation Plan (SIP) that met the requirements of CAA sections 172(c) and 191-192, and provided for attainment of the 2010 primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS as expeditiously as practicable, but no later than October 4, 2018. Air analysis conducted by Ohio EPA in Clermont County, Ohio found one source, the Walter C. Beckjord plant (Beckjord plant), to be the main contributor of SO <E T="52">2</E> monitored violations in the nonattainment area. The 2014 shutdown and later demolition of the Beckjord plant resulted in a significant, permanent, and enforceable reduction in SO <E T="52">2</E> emissions affecting the nonattainment area. The monitored SO <E T="52">2</E> design value at the nearby Highland Heights monitor for 2012 to 2014 was 72 parts per billion (ppb), below the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS. As a result, Ohio EPA chose to submit a redesignation and maintenance plan request for the Pierce Township, Ohio portion of the Campbell-Clermont, KY-OH nonattainment area to EPA on August 11, 2015. The submission included a plan to provide for maintenance of the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS in the area for the first 10-year period. On November 21, 2016 (81 FR 83158), EPA redesignated the Ohio portion of the Campbell-Clermont, KY-OH 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> nonattainment area to attainment and approved the associated maintenance plan into the Ohio SIP. The purpose of Ohio EPA's November 7, 2024, submittal is to fulfill the second 10-year planning requirement of CAA section 175A(b) to ensure compliance with the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS through 2036. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. EPA's Evaluation of the Second Maintenance Plan</HD> Section 175A of the CAA sets forth the elements of a maintenance plan for areas seeking redesignation from nonattainment to attainment. Under section 175A, a State must submit a revision to the SIP that demonstrates the applicable NAAQS will continue to attain for at least 10 years after an area is redesignated to attainment. Section 175A also requires that eight years after the redesignation, the State must submit a revised maintenance plan demonstrating that attainment will continue to be maintained for the 10 years following the initial 10-year period. To address the possibility of future NAAQS violations, the maintenance plan must contain contingency measures deemed necessary to ensure prompt corrections of any future NAAQS violations. EPA's 1992 Calcagni Memo provides further guidance on the content and requirements of an approvable maintenance plan. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Specifically, the maintenance plan should address five requirements: (1) an attainment emissions inventory, (2) a maintenance demonstration, (3) continued air quality monitoring, (4) verification of continued attainment, and (5) contingency measures. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Calcagni, John, Director, Air Quality Management Division, EPA Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, “Procedures for Processing Requests to Redesignate Areas to Attainment,” September 4, 1992. (Calcagni Memo) </FTNT> Ohio EPA's November 7, 2024, second 10-year maintenance plan request outlines a plan for continued maintenance of the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS for the Pierce Township, Ohio portion of the Campbell-Clermont, KY-OH maintenance area through 2036. EPA is approving Ohio EPA's November 7, 2024, submittal, which contains Ohio EPA's maintenance plan and all the necessary components, as a revision to the Ohio SIP. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Attainment Emissions Inventory</HD> For maintenance plans, a State should develop a comprehensive and accurate inventory of actual emissions for an attainment year that identifies the level of emissions in an area sufficient to maintain the NAAQS. Ohio EPA submitted an attainment emission inventory which addresses the Campbell-Clermont, KY-OH maintenance area's base year emissions and projections of future emissions for point, mobile sources, and other area sources. Ohio EPA is designating 2016 as its base year inventory for the second 10-year maintenance period. The base year inventory of 2016 represents a comprehensive, accurate, and current inventory of actual emissions that satisfies section 172(c)(3), due to the permanent shutdown of the Beckjord plant in 2014, which led to significant, permanent and enforceable SO <E T="52">2</E> emissions reductions in the area. EPA also approved Ohio EPA's redesignation and first maintenance plan in 2016 (81 FR 83158, November 21, 2016). EPA finds using 2016 as the base year to be appropriate for the second 10-year period of the second maintenance plan submittal. The total SO <E T="52">2</E> emissions for the Ohio portion of the Campbell-Clermont, KY-OH maintenance area for the 2014 attainment year were 32,610.56 tons per year (tpy). The total SO <E T="52">2</E> emissions in the Campbell-Clermont, KY-OH maintenance area for the 2016 base year were 33.08 tpy, with 10.18 tpy from Ohio sources as shown in Table 1 below. <GPOTABLE COLS="7" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s50,12,12,12,12,12,12"> <TTITLE> Table 1—2016 Base Year SO <E T="0732">2</E> Emissions From the Campbell-Clermont, KY-OH Area </TTITLE> [tpy] <CHED H="1"> </CHED> <CHED H="1">EGU point</CHED> <CHED H="1">Non-EGU</CHED> <CHED H="1">Non-road</CHED> <CHED H="1">Other</CHED> <CHED H="1">On-road</CHED> <CHED H="1">Total</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Ohio</ENT> <ENT>0.00</ENT> <ENT>0.10</ENT> <ENT>2.83</ENT> <ENT>6.31</ENT> <ENT>0.94</ENT ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 30k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━