Air Plan Approval; WA; Update to Materials Incorporated by Reference

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R10-OAR-2025-0320; FRL-12328-01-R10]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; WA; Update to 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 updating the materials that are incorporated by reference (IBR) into the Washington State Implementation Plan (SIP). The regulations affected by this update have been previously submitted by Washington and approved by the EPA. This update affects the materials that are available for public inspection at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the EPA Regional Office. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This action is effective August 21, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The SIP materials for which incorporation by reference into 40 CFR part 52 is finalized through this action are available for inspection at the following locations: Environmental Protection Agency, Region 10, 1200 Sixth Avenue, Suite 155, Seattle, WA 98101; and <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> To view the materials at the Region 10 Office, the EPA requests that you email the contact listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section to schedule your inspection. The Regional Office's official hours of business are Monday through Friday 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., excluding Federal holidays. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Jeff Hunt, EPA Region 10, 1200 Sixth Avenue, Suite 155, Seattle, WA 98101, at (206) 553-0256, or <E T="03">hunt.jeff@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> Each State has a SIP containing 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. Each State must formally adopt the control measures and strategies in the SIP after the public has had an opportunity to comment on them and then submit the proposed SIP revisions to the EPA. Once these control measures and strategies are approved by EPA, and after notice and comment, they are incorporated into the federally approved SIP and are identified in part 52, “Approval and Promulgation of Implementation Plans,” of Title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations (40 CFR part 52). The full text of the State regulation approved by the EPA is not reproduced in its entirety in 40 CFR part 52 but is “incorporated by reference.” This means that the EPA has approved a given State regulation or specified changes to the given regulation with a specific effective date. The public is referred to the location of the full text version should they want to know which measures are contained in a given SIP. The information provided allows the EPA and the public to monitor the extent to which a State implements a SIP to attain and maintain the NAAQS and to take enforcement action for violations of the SIP. The SIP is a living document which the State can revise as necessary to address the unique air pollution problems in the State. Therefore, the EPA from time to time must take action on proposed revisions containing new or revised State regulations. A submission from a State can revise one or more rules in their entirety, or portions of rules. The State indicates the changes in the submission (such as by using redline/strikethrough text) and the EPA then takes action on the requested changes. 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 submission are available for viewing on <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> On May 22, 1997 (62 FR 27968), the EPA revised the procedures for incorporating by reference, into the Code of Federal Regulations, materials approved by the EPA into each SIP. These changes revised the format for the identification of the SIP in 40 CFR part 52, streamlined the mechanisms for announcing the EPA approval of revisions to a SIP, and streamlined the mechanisms for the EPA's updating of the IBR information contained for each SIP in 40 CFR part 52. The revised procedures also called for the EPA to maintain “SIP Compilations” that contain the federally approved regulations and source-specific permits submitted by each State agency. The EPA generally updates these SIP Compilations every few years. Under the revised procedures, the EPA must periodically publish an informational document in the rules section of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notifying the public that updates have been made to a SIP Compilation for a particular state. The EPA began applying the 1997 revised procedures to the Washington SIP on March 20, 2013 ((78 FR 17108). The EPA subsequently published updates to the IBR materials for Washington on December 8, 2014 (79 FR 72548), April 12, 2016 (70 FR 21470), February 8, 2019 (84 FR 2738), August 3, 2021 (86 FR 41716), and August 19, 2024 (89 FR 67158). <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Approved and Incorporated by Reference Regulatory Materials</HD> Since the last IBR update, the EPA approved and incorporated by reference the following regulatory materials into the Washington SIP: <FP>Table 3—Additional Regulations Approved for the Energy Facilities Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC) Jurisdiction</FP> • Washington Administrative Code, Chapter 463-78, General and Operating Permit Regulations for Air Pollution Sources, section 78-005 (Adoption by Reference). For more information, see 89 FR 105456 (December 27, 2024). • Washington Administrative Code, Chapter 173-400, General Regulations for Air Pollution Sources, sections 173-400-030 (Definitions), 173-400-081 (Startup and Shutdown), 173-400-082 (Alternative Emissions Limit That Exceeds an Emission Standard in the SIP), 173-400-136 (Use of Emission Reduction Credits (ERC)), and 173-400-171 (Public Notice and Opportunity for Public Comment). For more information, see 89 FR 105456 (December 27, 2024). <FP>Table 6—Additional Regulations Approved for the Olympic Region Clean Air Agency (ORCAA) Jurisdiction</FP> • Olympic Region Clean Air Agency Regulations, Rule 6.2 Outdoor Burning, section 6.2.7 (Recreational Burning). For more information, see 90 FR 5693 (January 17, 2025). <FP>Table 8—Additional Regulations Approved for the Southwest Clean Air Agency (SRCAA) Jurisdiction</FP> • Southwest Clean Air Agency Regulations, General Regulations for Air Pollution Sources, sections 400-040 (General Standards for Maximum Emissions), 400-070 (General Requirements for Certain Source Categories), 400-081 (Startup and Shutdown), and 400-107 (Excess Emissions). For more information, see 90 FR 19650 (May 9, 2025). <FP>Table 9—Additional Regulations Approved for the Spokane Regional Clean Air Agency (SRCAA) Jurisdiction</FP> • Spokane Regional Clean Air Agency Regulation I, sections 1.01 (Policy), 1.04 (General Definitions), 2.08 (Falsification of Statements or Documents, and Treatment of Documents), 2.13 (Federal and State Regulation Reference Date), 4.04 (Stationary Sources and Source Categories Subject to Registration), 5.02 (New Source Review—Applicability and when Required), 5.04 (Information Required), 5.05 (Public Involvement), 5.07 (Processing NOC Applications for Stationary Sources), 5.08 (Portable Sources), 5.10 (Changes to an Order of Approval or Permission to Operate), 5.13 (Order of Approval Construction Time Limits), 6.04 (Emission of Air Contaminant: Detriment to Person or Property), 8.01 (Purpose), 8.02 (Applicability), 8.03 (Definitions), 8.04 (Emission Performance Standards), 8.05 (Opacity Standards), 8.06 (Prohibited Fuel Types), 8.07 (Curtailment), 8.08 (Exemptions), 8.09 (Procedure to Geographically Limit Solid Fuel Burning Devices), and 8.10 (Restrictions on Installation of Solid Fuel Burning Devices). For more information, see 90 FR 15930 (April 16, 2025). <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Regulatory Materials Removed From Incorporation by Reference in the SIP</HD> <FP>Table 3—Additional Regulations Approved for the Energy Facilities Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC) Jurisdiction</FP> • Washington Administrative Code, Chapter 173-400, General Regulations for Air Pollution Sources, sections 173-400-070 (Emission Standards for Certain Source Categories) and 173-400-107 (Excess Emissions). For more information, see 89 FR 105456 (December 27, 2024). <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. EPA Action</HD> In this action, the EPA is providing notification of an update to the materials incorporated by reference into the Washington SIP as of June 1, 2025, and identified in 40 CFR 52.2470(c) and (d). This update includes SIP materials submitted by Washington and approved by the EPA since the last IBR update. <E T="03">See</E> 89 FR 67158 (August 19, 2024). <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Good Cause Exemption</HD> The EPA has determined that this action falls under the “good cause” exemption in section 553(b)(3)(B) of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) which, upon finding “good cause,” authorizes agencies to dispense with public participation and section 553(d)(3) which allows an agency to make an action effective immediately (thereby avoiding the 30-day delayed effective date otherwise provided for in the APA). This administrative action simply codifies provisions which are already in effect as a matter of law in Federal and approved state programs, makes corrections and clarifying changes to the tables in the CFR, and makes ministerial changes to the prefatory heading to the tables in the CFR. Under section 553 of the A ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━