Air Plan Approval; Colorado; Inspection and Maintenance Program Revision

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R08-OAR-2024-0468; FRL-12884-01-R8]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Colorado; Inspection and Maintenance Program 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 State Implementation Plan (SIP) revision submitted by the State of Colorado through the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) on May 16, 2022. The revision includes changes to the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission's Regulation Number 11, “Motor Vehicle Emissions Inspection Program.” The submitted changes constitute a revision to Colorado's vehicle inspection and maintenance (I/M) SIP. Colorado's I/M SIP revision includes several minor clerical and typographical revisions. The I/M SIP revision also streamlines the visual inspection procedures used on subject vehicles in obtaining I/M program emissions certification compliance and vehicle registration renewal. CDPHE also submitted revisions to its I/M program regulations which were marked as “state only” revisions and not meant for EPA consideration. The EPA is not acting upon these state-only changes in this action. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before September 8, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R08-OAR-2024-0468, to the Federal Rulemaking Portal: <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from <E T="03">https://www.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 EPA public comment policy, information about CBI or multimedia submissions, and general guidance on making effective comments, please visit <E T="03">https://www2.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> <E T="03">Docket:</E> All documents in the docket are listed in the <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> index. Although listed in the index, some information is not publicly available, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> CBI or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Certain other material, such as copyrighted material, will be publicly available only in hard copy. Publicly available docket materials are available electronically in <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Please email or call the person listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section if you need to make alternative arrangements for access to the docket. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Gregory Lohrke, Air and Radiation Division, EPA, Region 8, Mailcode 8ARD-IO, 1595 Wynkoop Street, Denver, Colorado 80202-1129, telephone number: (303) 312-6396, email address: <E T="03">lohrke.gregory@epa.gov.</E> </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> The Clean Air Act (CAA) requires states with areas designated as Moderate, Serious, Severe, or Extreme nonattainment areas for the ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) to establish SIP provisions necessary to provide for a vehicle inspection and maintenance (I/M) program that will identify and repair high-emitting vehicles operating in the nonattainment area. <E T="03">See</E> CAA sections 182(b)(4), (c)(3), (d) and (e). The requirements for CAA-mandated I/M programs are codified in the federal I/M Rule at 40 CFR part 51, subpart S. Within the I/M Rule, 40 CFR 51.350 details the applicability for nonattainment areas to establish I/M programs. Certain urbanized Moderate ozone nonattainment areas are required to establish a “Basic” I/M program. Certain urbanized Serious, Severe, and Extreme ozone nonattainment areas are required to implement an “Enhanced” I/M program. The performance standards  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> for Basic and Enhanced I/M programs are outlined in 40 CFR 51.352 and 51.351 respectively. Enhanced I/M programs have additional requirements and require program elements intended to strengthen ozone precursor reductions over the Basic program. Additional I/M program features in Enhanced program areas include on-road testing requirements and more rigorous program evaluation and reporting requirements. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  An I/M performance standard is a collection of program design elements which defines a benchmark program to which a state's proposed I/M program is compared in terms of its potential to reduce emissions of the ozone precursors, VOC, and NO <E T="52">X</E> . </FTNT> The Denver-Boulder-Greeley-Ft. Collins-Loveland, Colorado nonattainment area (Denver or the “DMNFR area”) failed to attain the 2008 ozone NAAQS by the applicable attainment date for Moderate nonattainment areas and was reclassified as a Serious nonattainment area, effective January 27, 2020. <E T="51">2 3</E> <FTREF/> Since the Denver nonattainment area was reclassified as a Serious nonattainment area for the 2008 ozone NAAQS, the State of Colorado was required to establish an Enhanced I/M program equivalent to, or more stringent than, the relevant program performance standard under 40 CFR 51.351. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  84 FR 70897 (Dec. 26, 2019). <SU>3</SU>  The Denver area has since been reclassified as Severe for the 2008 ozone NAAQS. See 87 FR 60926 (Oct. 7, 2022). </FTNT> Colorado has maintained an Enhanced I/M program for the DMNFR area since January 1, 1995. Colorado's Enhanced program was originally required under CAA section 187(a)(6) due to the Denver area's nonattainment designation and classification as Serious nonattainment for the carbon monoxide NAAQS. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> The State maintained the Enhanced I/M program between 1995 and the DMNFR area's reclassification as a Serious ozone nonattainment area in 2020. Since Colorado had been operating an I/M program meeting the Enhanced performance standard before reclassification as a Serious ozone nonattainment area, no additional program design elements were required by operation of the DMNFR area's reclassification to Serious for the 2008 8-hr ozone NAAQS. Colorado last demonstrated state program equivalency to the Enhanced program performance standard in its Serious ozone SIP revisions. The EPA's approval of this most recent demonstration of performance standard equivalency became effective on June 8, 2023. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  59 FR 35875 (July 14, 1994). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  88 FR 29827 (May 9, 2023). </FTNT> Colorado Air Quality Control Commission's Regulation Number 11 (Regulation No. 11) includes all provisions for the implementation of the State's Enhanced I/M program. Vehicles of the seven most recent model years are exempt from the Colorado I/M program. Discussion of program requirements in this and subsequent sections of this document apply only to non-exempt vehicles. Colorado's Enhanced I/M program utilizes on-board diagnostic (OBD) testing of vehicles that are eleven years old and newer, the dynamometer-based IM240 test for gasoline-powered light-duty vehicles (LDV) between model year 1982 and twelve years old and a two-speed idle (TSI) test for all model year 1981 and older gasoline LDV. Colorado also operates a remote sensing program to fulfill the on-road testing requirement for Enhanced I/M programs under 40 CFR 51.351. All non-diesel fueled light-duty motor vehicles registered in the DMNFR I/M program area are subject to these inspections as a prerequisite to initial or renewed registration of the vehicle with the State. Regulation No. 11, Part A, section I. Under State law, 42-4-3-10, C.R.S., a vehicle owner must provide a certification of emissions compliance or an emissions waiver when applying to renew or initially register their subject vehicle. On August 19, 2021, the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission adopted changes to Regulation No. 11. The State of Colorado submitted these changes to EPA as an I/M SIP revision with a cover letter dated May 16, 2022. The May 16, 2022, Colorado submittal is available in the docket for today's proposed action. Collectively, the submitted revisions to Regulation No. 11 revise punctuation and style, provide uniformity of regulatory language and internal organization of Regulation No. 11, and make changes to requirements for visual inspection of emission control equipment. The submitted revisions also include state-only updates to emission limits with respect to the IM240 test to increase stringency of emission requirements for vehicles tested under that inspection procedure. The state-only revisions were excluded from the State's request to amend the federally enforceable SIP provisions. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. The EPA's Evaluation</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Regulation No. 11—Part A</HD> Colorado's I/M SIP revisions to Regulation No. 11, Part A make several minor clerical and administrative changes to subsections A.II.— <E T="03">Definitions,</E> A.IV.— <E T="03">Clean Screen/Remote Emissions ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 34k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━