Air Plan Approval; State of Kansas; Attainment Redesignation for the 2008 Lead NAAQS and Associated Maintenance Plan

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Parts 52 and 81</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R07-OAR-2025-0693; FRL-12887-01-R7]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; State of Kansas; Attainment Redesignation for the 2008 Lead NAAQS and Associated Maintenance Plan</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 the request to redesignate portions of Saline County, Salina, Kansas to attainment for the 2008 lead National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). The EPA's proposed approval of the redesignation request is based on the determination that the Salina area has met the criteria for redesignation to attainment set forth in the Clean Air Act (CAA), including the determination that the area has attained the standard. Additionally, the EPA is proposing to approve the State's plan for maintaining the 2008 lead NAAQS in the Salina area for ten years beyond redesignation. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before September 8, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R07-OAR-2025-0693 to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. All submissions received must include the Docket ID No. for this rulemaking. Comments received will be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. For detailed instructions on sending comments and additional information on the rulemaking process, see the “Written Comments” heading of the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Jennifer Kissel, Environmental Protection Agency, Region 7 Office, Air and Radiation Division, 11201 Renner Boulevard, Lenexa, Kansas 66219; telephone number: (913) 551-7982; email address: <E T="03">kissel.jenny@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to the EPA. This section provides additional information by addressing the following: <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Written Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. What action is the EPA proposing to take?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Background for the EPA's Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Have the requirements for approval of a SIP revision been met?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. The EPA's Analysis of the State's Request</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">a. Criteria (1)—The Area Has Attained the 2008 Lead NAAQS</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">b. Criteria (2)—The Area Has a Fully Approved SIP Under Section 110(k)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">c. Criteria (3)—The Air Quality Improvement Is Due to Permanent and Enforceable Reductions in Emissions Resulting From Implementation of the Applicable SIP and Applicable Federal Air Pollutant Control Regulations and Other Permanent Enforceable Reductions</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">d. Criteria (4)—The Administrator Has Fully Approved a Maintenance Plan for the Area as Meeting the Requirements of Section 175A</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">1. Attainment Emissions Inventory</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">2. Maintenance Demonstration</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">3. Monitoring Network</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">4. Verification of Continued Attainment</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">5. Contingency Plan</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">e. Criteria (5)—The Area Has Met All Applicable Requirements Under Section 110 and Part D</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Summary of Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VII. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VIII. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Written Comments</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R07-OAR-2025-0693, at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> 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, the full the 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> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. What action is the EPA proposing to take?</HD> The EPA is proposing to approve the request submitted by the State of Kansas (hereinafter referred to as the State) to redesignate the Saline County, Salina, Kansas nonattainment area (hereinafter referred to as Salina nonattainment area) to attainment for the 2008 lead NAAQS. On March 20, 2025, the State submitted a redesignation request and plan that demonstrates attainment of the 2008 lead NAAQS. Also included in the submittal is an associated maintenance plan to ensure that the area continues to attain the standard ten years beyond redesignation. Based on our review of the State's plan, which is described in detail in the following sections and in the EPA's technical support document (TSD), the EPA proposes to approve the redesignation request for the Salina nonattainment area and associated maintenance plan. The redesignation request, maintenance plan, and the EPA TSD are included in the docket for this action. As part of this proposed action, the EPA also proposes to approve a revision to the Kansas SIP to incorporate a construction permit modification, which was issued on December 27, 2018 (hereinafter referred to as the December 2018 permit) for the Stryten Salina, LLC facility (formerly known as Exide Technologies, hereinafter referred to as Stryten) which contains an updated control strategy to control lead emissions. The December 2018 permit incorporates three permit modifications to the facility's construction permit that was originally issued August 18, 2014 (hereinafter referred to as the August 2014 permit.) <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Background for the EPA's Proposed Action</HD> On November 12, 2008, the EPA published a revision to the lead NAAQS, lowering the standard from 1.5 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m <SU>3</SU> ) to 0.15 μg/m <SU>3</SU> (73 FR 66964). Effective November 22, 2011, the EPA designated the Salina area as nonattainment for the 2008 lead NAAQS based on air quality monitoring data from 2008 through 2010 (76 FR 72097). The Stryten lead acid battery manufacturing plant located in Salina, KS was the main source of lead emissions impacting the violating monitor. On February 25, 2015, the State submitted a plan to bring the area into attainment of the standard, which was approved by the EPA on July 20, 2016 (81 FR 47034). The Salina lead attainment plan included a control strategy consisting of process and control device/equipment modifications with corresponding emission limitations, building enclosure projects, negative pressure and particulate capture ventilation systems, and paving projects at the Stryten facility. The mechanism to enforce the control strategy is the August 2014 construction permit issued to Stryten. With air quality monitoring data registering violations of the 2008 lead NAAQS from July 2016 through October 2016, the area did not attain by the statutory deadline of December 31, 2016. For this reason, Stryten implemented contingency measures and additional control strategies made enforceable through modifications to the August 2014 permit, the most recent of which is the December 2018 permit. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The additional emission reduction measures included better control device filtration efficiency and monitoring, expansion of negative pressure ventilation of all lead-emitting process areas, additional paving of plant property, and dust suppression on plant grounds and roadways using a water truck and vacuum street sweeper. See the State's maintenance plan and the December 2018 permit for more information on the updated control strategy. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Modifications to Stryten's August 2014 construction permit were also issued on January 11, 2017 and June 23, 2017. The December 2018 permit modification incorporates and maintains requirements from the previous construction permits. The December 2018 permit modification is included in appendix A of the State's maintenance plan. </FTNT> Following implementation of the additional emission reduction measures starting in 2017, ambient lead concentrations decreased in the area. Air quality monitoring data from 2017-2019, 2018-2020, and 2019-2021 show attainment of the 2008 lead NAAQS. The State received a Change of Ownership/Operator Notification in 2020 notifying the State that Stryten is the owner of all permits related to the lead acid battery manufacturing facility related to Source Identification No. 1690035. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Have the requirements for approval of a SIP revision been met?</HD> The State's redesignation submission meets the public notice requirements for SIP submissions in accordance with 40 CFR 51.102. The submission also satisfies the completeness criteria of 40 CFR part 51, appendix V. The State provided public notice on this SIP revision from January 23, 2025, to February 24, 2025, and received ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 45k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━