Air Plan Approval; Pennsylvania; Redesignation of the Beaver County Nonattainment Area to Attainment and Approval of the Area's Maintenance Plan for the 2010 1-Hour Primary Sulfur Dioxide National Ambient Air Quality Standard

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Parts 52 and 81</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R03-OAR-2024-0624; FRL-12500-01-R3]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Pennsylvania; Redesignation of the Beaver County Nonattainment Area to Attainment and Approval of the Area's Maintenance Plan for the 2010 1-Hour Primary Sulfur Dioxide National Ambient Air Quality Standard</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 state implementation plan (SIP) revision and redesignation request submitted on August 12, 2024 by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP). The SIP revision asks the EPA to redesignate the Beaver County, Pennsylvania area from nonattainment to attainment for the 2010 1-hour primary sulfur dioxide (SO <E T="52">2</E> ) national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS). The revision also asks the EPA to approve into the SIP the Commonwealth's maintenance plan for the 2010 1-hour primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS for the Beaver County area. This action is being taken under the Clean Air Act (CAA). </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before August 25, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R03-OAR-2024-0624 at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> or via email to <E T="03">gordon.mike@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 <E T="03">Regulations.gov.</E> For either manner of submission, 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 the person identified in the <E T="02">For Further Information Contact</E> section. 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">www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Philip McGuire, Planning & Implementation Branch (3AD30), Air & Radiation Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region III, 1600 John F. Kennedy Boulevard, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103. The telephone number is (215) 814-2251. Mr. McGuire can also be reached via electronic mail at <E T="03">mcguire.philip@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Nonattainment Designation</HD> On June 22, 2010, the EPA revised the primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS, establishing a new 1-hour primary standard of 75 parts per billion (ppb). <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Under the EPA's regulations at title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) part 50, the 2010 1-hour SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS is met at a monitoring site when the design value  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> is less than or equal to 75 ppb (based on the rounding convention in 40 CFR part 50, appendix T). <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> Ambient air quality monitoring data for the 3-year period must meet a data completeness requirement. A year meets data completeness requirements when all four quarters are complete, and a quarter is complete when at least 75 percent of the sampling days in the quarter have complete data. A sampling day has complete data if 75 percent of the hourly concentration values, including State-flagged data affected by exceptional events which have been approved for exclusion by the Administrator, are reported. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  75 FR 35520, June 22, 2010. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  For the 2010 1-hour SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS, the design value is calculated as the 3-year average of the annual 99th percentile of daily maximum 1-hour average concentrations of SO <E T="52">2</E> . </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  40 CFR 50.17. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  40 CFR part 50, appendix T, section 3.1(b). </FTNT> Upon promulgation of a new or revised NAAQS, the CAA requires the EPA to designate as nonattainment any area that does not meet (or that contributes to ambient air quality in a nearby area that does not meet) the NAAQS. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> On August 5, 2013, the EPA designated a portion of Beaver County, Pennsylvania (hereafter the “Beaver County NAA”), as nonattainment for the 2010 1-hour primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS, effective October 4, 2013. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> The designation was based on violating air quality monitoring data for calendar years 2009-2011. The Beaver County NAA consists of 6 municipalities including: Industry Borough, Shippingport Borough, Midland Borough, Brighton Township, Potter Township, and Vanport Township. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> This action established an attainment date five years after the effective date for the areas designated as nonattainment for the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> by October 4, 2018). The Commonwealth was also required to submit an attainment plan SIP revision for the Beaver County NAA to the EPA that met the requirements of CAA sections 110, 172(c) and 191-192 within 18 months of the October 4, 2013, effective date of designation ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> by April 4, 2015). <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  CAA section 107(d)(1)(A)(i). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  78 FR 47191, August 5, 2013. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  A list of Pennsylvania's attainment status designations is available at 40 CFR 81.339. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Relevant Historical SIP Actions</HD> The EPA did not receive an attainment plan SIP revision for the Beaver County NAA by the April 4, 2015 deadline and subsequently on March 18, 2016, the EPA published a finding of failure to submit indicating that Pennsylvania did not submit the required SO <E T="52">2</E> attainment plan. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> This finding initiated a clock under CAA section 179(a) for the potential imposition of new source review sanctions 18 months after the effective date of the finding and the potential imposition of highway funding sanctions 6 months following that, in accordance with CAA section 179(b) and 40 CFR 52.31. Additionally, under CAA section 110(c), the finding triggered a requirement for the EPA to promulgate a Federal implementation plan (FIP) within two years of the effective date of the finding unless, by that time, Pennsylvania made the necessary complete submittal, and the EPA approved the submittal. <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>  81 FR 14736, March 18, 2016. </FTNT> Ultimately, Pennsylvania did submit an attainment plan SIP revision on September 29, 2017. The EPA issued an October 5, 2017 letter to Pennsylvania finding the attainment plan submittal complete and noting the stopping of the sanctions' deadline. As a result, these CAA section 179(b) sanctions were not imposed. <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> The EPA proposed approving the attainment plan SIP revision submittal on October 5, 2018, <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> and issued a final approval on October 1, 2019. <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> This approval ended the requirement for the EPA to promulgate a FIP under CAA section 110(c). <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>  Both the 2017 attainment plan submittal and EPA completeness letter are available in the docket for this action and are titled <E T="03">Beaver County September 2017 Attainment Plan</E> and <E T="03">EPA Letter of Completeness dated October 5, 2017,</E> respectively. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>  83 FR 50314, October 5, 2018. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>11</SU>  84 FR 51988, October 1, 2019. </FTNT> Relevant to this action, on August 12, 2024, PADEP submitted a revision to its SIP for the inclusion of a maintenance plan for the 2010 1-hour primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS and requested a concurrent redesignation of the Beaver County NAA to attainment for the 2010 1-hour primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS. <SU>12</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>12</SU>  Available in the docket for this action as <E T="03">Beaver_SO2_RR_and_MP.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Redesignation to Attainment Criteria</HD> After a State has submitted a redesignation request for a nonattainment area, the EPA must assess if the statutory criteria identified in CAA section 107(d)(3)(E) have been met to redesignate the area to attainment. These conditions include: (1) the EPA has determined that the applicable NAAQS has been attained; (2) the applicable SIP has been fully approved by the EPA under CAA section 110(k); (3) the EPA has determined that the improvement in the area's air quality is due to permanent and enforceable reductions in emissions; (4) the area has a fully approved maintenance plan, including a contingency plan, under CAA section 175A; and (5) the State has met all applicable requirements for the area under CAA section 110 and part D. The EPA has provided direction for how it would consider if these conditions have been met in the April 23, 2014 memorandum “Guidance for 1-Hour SO <E T="52">2</E> Nonattainment Area SIP Submissions” (2014 SO <E T="52">2</E> Guidance). <SU>13</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> < ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 58k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━