Air Plan Approval; Rhode Island; Decommissioning of Stage II Vapor Recovery Systems

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R01-OAR-2024-0188; FRL-12928-01-R1]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Rhode Island; Decommissioning of Stage II Vapor Recovery Systems</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 Rhode Island. This revision removes requirements for Stage II vapor recovery equipment at gasoline dispensing facilities (GDFs). This revision also includes minor updates to Stage I vapor recovery regulatory amendments. The intended effect of this action is to propose approval of Rhode Island's revised vapor recovery regulations. This action is being taken under the Clean Air Act. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before September 15, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R01-OAR-2024-0188 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> or via email to <E T="03">martinelli.ayla@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">https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> Publicly available docket materials are available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Region 1 Regional Office, Air and Radiation Division, 5 Post Office Square—Suite 100, Boston, MA. EPA requests that, if at all possible, you contact the contact listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section to schedule your inspection. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Ayla Martinelli, Air Quality Branch, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Region 1, 5 Post Office Square—Suite 100, (Mail code 5-MI), Boston, MA 02109-3912, tel. (617) 918-1057, email: <E T="03">martinelli.ayla@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document whenever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background and Purpose</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Stage II Vapor Recovery</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Stage I Vapor Recovery</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Summary of Rhode Island's SIP Revision</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. EPA'S Evaluation of Rhode Island's SIP Revision</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background and Purpose</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Stage II Vapor Recovery</HD> Rhode Island adopted its Stage II Vapor Recovery Program in 1992 in order to satisfy the requirements of sections 182(b)(3) and 184(b)(2) of the CAA. The Rhode Island Stage II vapor recovery program requirements were codified in Rhode Island Air Pollution Control Regulation No. 11, <E T="03">Petroleum Liquids Marketing and Storage,</E> and EPA approved the program into the Rhode Island SIP on December 17, 1993 (58 FR 65930). Rhode Island's rule required gasoline dispensing facilities (GDFs) throughout the state to install Stage II vapor recovery systems. Stage II vapor recovery and onboard refueling vapor recovery (ORVR) systems are two types of emission control systems that capture fuel vapors from vehicle gas tanks during refueling. Stage II vapor recovery systems are installed at GDFs and capture the refueling fuel vapors at the gasoline pump. The system carries the vapors back to the underground storage tank at the GDF to prevent the vapors from escaping to the atmosphere. ORVR systems are carbon canisters installed directly on automobiles to capture the fuel vapors evacuated from the gasoline tank before they reach the nozzle. The fuel vapors captured in the carbon canisters are then combusted in the engine when the automobile is in operation. Stage II vapor recovery systems and vehicle ORVR systems were initially both required by the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act (CAA). Section 182(b)(3) of the CAA requires Moderate and above ozone nonattainment areas to implement Stage II vapor recovery programs. Also, under CAA section 184(b)(2), states located in the Ozone Transport Region (OTR) are required to implement Stage II or comparable measures. CAA section 202(a)(6) required EPA to promulgate regulations for ORVR for light-duty vehicles (passenger cars). EPA adopted these requirements in 1994, at which point Moderate ozone nonattainment areas were no longer subject to the CAA section 182(b)(3) Stage II vapor recovery requirements; however, areas classified as Serious nonattainment and above for ozone, continued to be subject to the CAA section 182(b)(3) Stage II vapor recover requirements. ORVR equipment has been phased in for new passenger vehicles beginning with model year 1998 and starting with model year 2001 for light-duty trucks and most heavy-duty gasoline powered vehicles. ORVR equipment has been installed on nearly all new gasoline powered light-duty vehicles, light-duty trucks, and heavy-duty vehicles since 2006. During the phase-in of ORVR controls, Stage II provided volatile organic compound (VOC) reductions in ozone nonattainment areas and in the OTR. Congress recognized that ORVR systems would eventually make Stage II vapor recovery systems largely redundant technologies, and provided authority to EPA to allow states to remove Stage II vapor recovery programs from their SIPs after EPA finds that ORVR is in “widespread use.” In a final rule, published by EPA May 16, 2012 (77 FR 28772), EPA determined that ORVR systems are in widespread use nationwide for control of gasoline emissions during refueling of vehicles at GDFs. In this rulemaking, EPA indicated that more than 75 percent of gasoline refueling nationwide occurs with ORVR-equipped vehicles. Thus, Stage II vapor recovery programs have become redundant control systems and achieve an ever-declining emissions benefit as more ORVR-equipped vehicles continue to enter the on-road motor vehicle fleet. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> In that rulemaking, EPA also exercised its authority under CAA section 202(a)(6) to waive certain federal statutory requirements for Stage II vapor recovery systems at GDFs. EPA's May 16, 2012, rulemaking waived the requirements for states to implement Stage II vapor recovery programs in ozone nonattainment areas classified as Serious or above. Finally, EPA's May 16, 2012, rulemaking also noted that any state currently implementing Stage II vapor recovery programs may submit SIP revisions that would allow for the phase-out of Stage II vapor recovery systems. On August 7, 2012, EPA also issued guidance to states on the process for phasing out Stage II vapor recovery systems, titled “Guidance on Removing Stage II Gasoline Vapor Control Programs from State Implementation Plans and Assessing Comparable Measures,”  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> hereafter referred to as EPA's 2012 Guidance Document. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  In areas where certain types of vacuum-assist Stage II vapor recovery systems are used, the differences in operational design characteristics between ORVR and some configurations of these Stage II vapor recovery systems result in the reduction of overall control system efficiency compared to what could have been achieved relative to the individual control efficiencies of either ORVR or stage II emissions from the vehicle fuel tank. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  A copy of this guidance can be found in the docket of this proposed rulemaking. </FTNT> On June 9, 2015 (80 FR 32469) EPA approved a State Implementation Plan (SIP) submitted by the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, which allowed GDFs to decommission their Stage II vapor recovery systems starting on December 25, 2013, and required Stage II vapor recovery systems to be fully decommissioned by December 22, 2017. Most recently, non-substantive changes were made in 2020 to Rhode Island's Air Pollution Control Regulation No. 11, <E T="03">Petroleum Liquids Marketing and Storage,</E> to address Rhode Island's RACT requirements, which EPA approved into the Rhode Island SIP on September 3, 2020 (85 FR 54924). On February 24, 2025, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management submitted a revision to its SIP. The SIP revision updates Rhode Island's Air Pollution Control Regulation No. 11 to completely remove reference to Stage II vapor recovery systems at GDFs and to strengthen Stage I vapor recovery requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Stage I Vapor Recovery</HD> Stage I vapor recovery employs systems that capt ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━