Air Plan Approval; Texas; Reasonably Available Control Technology in the Dallas-Fort Worth Ozone Nonattainment Area

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R06-OAR-2020-0164; FRL-12896-01-R6]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Texas; Reasonably Available Control Technology in the Dallas-Fort Worth Ozone Nonattainment Area</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> Pursuant to the Federal Clean Air Act (CAA or the Act), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to approve revisions to the Texas State Implementation Plan (SIP). The revisions were submitted by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) on May 12, 2020, and May 13, 2020, and address certain CAA requirements for the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) Serious Nonattainment Area (NAA) for the 2008 ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS). Specifically, EPA is proposing to approve the revisions to 30 Texas Administrative Code (TAC) Chapter 117 to implement the major source Reasonably Available Control Technology (RACT) requirement for Nitrogen Oxides (NO <E T="52">X</E> ), as addressed in the NO <E T="52">X</E> RACT analysis and negative declaration included with the Serious area Attainment Demonstration (AD) SIP revision. The volatile organic compounds (VOC) portion of the RACT analysis in the Serious area AD submittal is addressed in a separate action. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before August 25, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket No. EPA-R06-OAR-2020-0164 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or via email to <E T="03">ahuja.anupa@epa.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 Anupa Ahuja, (214) 665-2701, <E T="03">ahuja.anupa@epa.gov.</E> 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> <E T="03">Docket:</E> The index to the docket for this action is available electronically at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> While all documents in the docket are listed in the index, some information may not be publicly available due to docket file size restrictions or content ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> CBI). <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Anupa Ahuja, EPA Region 6 Office, Infrastructure and Ozone Section, 214-665-2701, <E T="03">ahuja.anupa@epa.gov.</E> We encourage the public to submit comments via <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Please call or email the contact listed above if you need alternative access to material indexed but not provided in the docket. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document wherever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> Under the CAA, EPA promulgated an 8-hour ozone standard of 0.075 parts per million (ppm) in 2008, which is more protective than the previous 1997 8-hour ozone standard (73 FR 16436, March 27, 2008). <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> On May 21, 2012, EPA published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> the initial designations and classifications for the 2008 8-hour ozone standard (77 FR 30088). The DFW 10-county area (Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, Johnson, Kaufman, Parker, Rockwall, Tarrant, and Wise counties)  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> was initially classified as Moderate nonattainment for the 2008 ozone NAAQS. <E T="03">Id.</E> at 30147. On August 23, 2019, the EPA reclassified the DFW NAA from Moderate to Serious for the 2008 8-hour ozone NAAQS (84 FR 44238, August 23, 2019). <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> Under its Serious classification, pursuant to CAA sections 182(c) and 182(f), Texas must ensure NO <E T="52">X</E> RACT is in place for all major sources (50 tpy or greater) of NO <E T="52">X</E> in the DFW NAA. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  On October 26, 2015, (80 FR 65292) EPA adopted another revision to the Ozone standard (2015 8-hour ozone standard), but the 2008 standard remains in place. This notice concerns the Serious area RACT requirements under the 2008 standard. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  For the previous 8-hour ozone standard (the 1997 8-hour ozone standard, 0.080 ppm), the DFW ozone NAA included the same counties, aside from Wise County. Effective January 19, 2011, EPA published a final determination of failure to attain and reclassification of the DFW 9-county area from a moderate to a serious nonattainment area for the 1997 eight-hour ozone standard (75 FR 79302, December 20, 2010). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  The DFW NAA missed the Serious area attainment date and thus was reclassified to Severe (87 FR 60926, October 7, 2022). This action does not address the DFW Severe NAA RACT requirements or the DFW NAA for the 2015 ozone NAAQS. </FTNT> Section 172(c)(1) of the CAA requires that SIPs for nonattainment areas “provide for the implementation of all reasonably available control measures as expeditiously as practicable (including such reductions in emissions from existing sources in the area as may be obtained through the adoption, at a minimum, of reasonably available control technology) and shall provide for attainment of the primary National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS).” The EPA has interpreted this to mean that RACT is the lowest emissions limitation that a particular source is capable of meeting by the application of control technology that is reasonably available, considering technological and economic feasibility. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> Section 182 of the CAA requires that states must ensure RACT is in place for each source category for which EPA has issued a control techniques guidelines (CTG), and for any major source not covered by a CTG. CAA section 182(c) defines “major stationary source” as one that emits or has the potential to emit 50 tons per year (tpy) or more of NO <E T="52">X</E> . EPA issues CTGs and each CTG describes techniques available for reducing emissions of VOC from a category of sources, and states recommended levels of control. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> EPA also issues Alternative Control Techniques (ACTs) for NO <E T="52">X</E> . ACTs provide information on available control technologies and their respective cost effectiveness at the time the ACT was issued. ACTs provide information related to control of both major and minor sources, but states are only required to provide for RACT at major sources of NO <E T="52">X</E> . <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  44 FR 53762, September 17, 1979. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> In 2015, EPA published the final SIP Requirements Rule (SRR) for implementing the 2008 8-hour ozone NAAQS (80 FR 12279, March 6, 2015). EPA described in the SRR an approach “. . . allowing in some cases for states to conclude that sources already addressed by RACT determinations for the 1-hour and/or the 1997 ozone NAAQS do not need to implement additional controls to meet the 2008 ozone NAAQS RACT requirement” and noted that “in some cases, a new RACT determination would result in the same or similar control technology under the 1-hour or 1997 standard because fundamental control techniques, as described in the CTGs and ACTs, are still applicable.” Importantly, EPA stated that while states should refer to the existing CTGs and ACTs for purposes of informing their RACT requirements, in doing an updated assessment of RACT for the nonattainment the state should also refer to “. . . all relevant information (including recent technical information and information received during the public comment period) that is available at the time that they are developing their RACT SIPs for the 2008 ozone NAAQS.” <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. TCEQ SIP Submissions</HD> On May 12, 2020, TCEQ submitted to EPA a SIP revision to 30 TAC Chapter 117 to implement the major source RACT requirements for NO <E T="52">X</E> associated with its Serious classification for the 2008 ozone NAAQS. TCEQ also submitted to EPA on May 13, 2020, the DFW Serious area AD SIP revision that included a RACT demonstration and analysis for NO <E T="52">X</E> , a negative declaration for the nitric or adipic acid manufacturing category of emission sources, and a discussion of cement kilns operating in the nonattainment area. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. TCEQ SIP Revision for Control of Air Pollution From Nitrogen Oxides, 30 TAC Chapter 117</HD> On May 12, 2020, the EPA received the TCEQ's submitted rule revisions to 30 TAC Chapter 117 “Control of Air Pollution from Nitrogen Oxides”. The proposed revisions revise 30 TAC Chapter 117 to amend the definition of the DFW NAA to include Wise County and extend the implementation of Serious area RACT to new major sources of NO <E T="52">X</E> in the DFW NAA, including Wise County. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> In EPA's action reclassifying the DFW NAA as Serious for the 2008 8-hour ozone NAAQS, Wise County was reclassified from Moderate to Serious nonattainment. 80 FR 44238 (August 23, ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 17k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━