Air Plan Approval; California; Revised Format for Materials Incorporated by Reference

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R09-OAR-2024-0527; FRL-12812-01-R9]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; California; Revised Format for Materials Incorporated by Reference</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule; administrative change. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is revising the format for materials submitted by the State of California that are incorporated by reference into the California State Implementation Plan (SIP). The regulations and other materials affected by this format change have all been previously submitted by the State of California and approved by the EPA. This format revision will primarily affect the “Identification of plan—in part” sections, as well as the format of the SIP materials that will be available for public inspection at the EPA Regional Office and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). This action, which only relates to source-specific requirements and certain local and regional California air district rules, is the fourth of a series of actions intended to change the format for the entire California SIP. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective on August 21, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-R09-OAR-2024-0527. SIP materials which are incorporated by reference into 40 CFR part 52 are available for inspection by appointment at Environmental Protection Agency, Region IX, 75 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, CA 94105-3901. For information on the availability of this material at the EPA Regional Office, please contact the person in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Doris Lo, EPA Region IX, 75 Hawthorne St., San Francisco, CA; telephone: (415) 972-3959; email address: <E T="03">lo.doris@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document, the terms “we”, “us,” and “our” refer to the EPA. This supplementary information section is organized as follows: <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Description of a SIP</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. How the EPA Enforces SIPs</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. How the State and the EPA Update the SIP</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. How the EPA Compiles the SIPs</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. How the EPA Organizes the SIP Compilation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. Where You Can Find a Copy of the SIP Compilation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">G. The Format of the California Identification of Plan Sections</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">H. When a SIP Revision Becomes Federally Enforceable</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">I. The Historical Record of SIP Revision Approvals</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. What the EPA Is Doing in This Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Description of a SIP</HD> Each State has a SIP containing, among other things, the control measures and strategies used to attain and maintain the national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS). The SIP is extensive, containing such elements as air pollution control regulations, emission inventories, monitoring networks, attainment demonstrations, and enforcement mechanisms. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. How the EPA Enforces SIPs</HD> Each State must formally adopt the control measures and strategies to attain and maintain the NAAQS after the public has had an opportunity to comment on them. They are then submitted to the EPA as requested SIP revisions upon which the EPA must formally act. Once these control measures and strategies are approved by the EPA, after notice and comment rulemaking, they are incorporated into the federally approved SIP and are identified in part 52 (Approval and Promulgation of Implementation Plans), title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations (40 CFR part 52). The EPA uses the process of incorporation by reference (IBR) to incorporate material into the CFR by referencing the original document(s) without publishing the full text of the material. The actual State regulations approved by the EPA are not reproduced in their entirety in 40 CFR part 52 but are “incorporated by reference,” which means that the EPA has approved a given State regulation with a specific effective date. This format allows both the EPA and the public to know which measures are contained in a given SIP and to help determine whether the State is enforcing the regulations. This format also assists the EPA and the public in taking enforcement action, should a State not enforce its SIP-approved regulations. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. How the State and the EPA Update the SIP</HD> The SIP is a dynamic document, which the State can revise as necessary to address the unique air pollution problems in the State. Therefore, the EPA must periodically take action on State SIP revisions containing new and/or revised regulations and other materials in order to make them part of the federally-approved SIP. The EPA establishes a docket for its actions using a unique Docket Identification Number, which is listed in each action. These dockets and the complete submissions are available for viewing on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> On May 22, 1997 (62 FR 27968), the EPA revised the formatting procedures for incorporating by reference federally-approved SIP revisions, as a result of consultations between the EPA and the Office of the Federal Register. These procedures include: (1) a revised SIP document for each State that would use the IBR process under the provisions of title 1 CFR part 51; (2) a revised mechanism for announcing the EPA's approval of revisions to an applicable SIP and updating both the document that has gone through the IBR process and the CFR; and (3) a revised format of the “Identification of Plan” sections for each applicable subpart in 40 CFR part 52 to reflect these revised IBR procedures. The description of the revised SIP document, IBR procedures, and “Identification of plan” format are discussed in further detail in the May 22, 1997 <E T="04">Federal Register</E> document. We have taken action to revise the format for many State SIPs, <E T="03">see, e.g.,</E> 40 CFR 52.1470 and 52.1490 (“Identification of plan” and “Original identification of plan” sections for the State of Nevada SIP), and take a fourth step today toward revising the format of the California SIP. <HD SOURCE="HD2">D. How the EPA Compiles the SIPs</HD> Under the revised SIP format, the federally-approved regulations, source-specific requirements, and nonregulatory provisions (entirely or portions of) submitted by each State agency have been compiled by the EPA into a “SIP compilation.” The SIP compilation contains the regulations, source-specific requirements, and nonregulatory and quasi-regulatory provisions approved by the EPA through previous rulemaking actions published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . <HD SOURCE="HD2">E. How the EPA Organizes the SIP Compilation</HD> Each compilation contains three parts. Part one contains the regulations, part two contains the source-specific requirements, and part three contains the nonregulatory and quasi-regulatory provisions that have been approved by EPA as part of the SIP. Each part consists of a table or tables of identifying information for each SIP-approved regulation, each SIP-approved source-specific requirement, and each nonregulatory or quasi-regulatory SIP provision. The EPA Regional Offices have the primary responsibility for updating the compilations and ensuring their accuracy. <HD SOURCE="HD2">F. Where You Can Find a Copy of the SIP Compilation</HD> EPA Region IX has developed and will maintain the SIP compilation for California. A copy of the full text of California's regulatory and source-specific SIP compilation will also be maintained at NARA. <HD SOURCE="HD2">G. The Format of the California Identification of Plan Sections</HD> Given the size of the California SIP, the EPA is revising the format of the California SIP in a phased manner. On May 26, 2016 (81 FR 33397), the EPA took the first action to revise the format of the “Identification of plan” section in subpart F in accordance with the revised format described in Section I.C. of this document. Through the first action, we revised the heading of § 52.220 to read “Identification of plan—in part” and added an introductory paragraph to convey our division of the California “Identification of plan” section into two sections: • Amended § 52.220 (renamed “Identification of plan—in part”), which would continue for the time being to function as it has in the past to list past and newly-approved air district rules, local ordinances, source-specific requirements, and nonregulatory and quasi-regulatory provisions and which lists State statutes and State regulations approved on or prior to April 1, 2016; and • New § 52.220a (“Identification of plan—in part”), which lists the State statutes and State regulations approved as part of the California SIP as of April 1, 2016, using the new table format. This meant that subsequent EPA approvals of air district rules, local ordinances, source-specific requirements, and nonregulatory and quasi-regulatory provisions would continue to be promulgated in 40 CFR 52.220 using the paragraph format whereas subsequent EPA approvals of State statutes and State regulations would be promulgated in 40 CFR 52.220a using the table format. In preparation for future actions to revise the format of the remaining po ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 426k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━