Air Plan Approval; OR; Lane County Permitting Rule Revisions

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R10-OAR-2024-0572, FRL-12455-01-R10]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; OR; Lane County Permitting Rule Revisions</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) proposes to approve the June 26, 2024, submitted revisions to the Oregon State Implementation Plan (SIP) applicable in Lane County, Oregon. The changes update the local stationary source permitting regulations to align with existing State regulations. The revisions eliminate generic plant site emission limits in favor of source-specific and source-category specific limits, update construction notification requirements, clarify the use of modeling and monitoring for compliance assurance, and streamline the permit application process. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before October 6, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R10-OAR-2024-0572, at <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 electronically submit any information you consider to be Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other information the disclosure of which 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://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Kristin Hall, EPA Region 10, 1200 Sixth Avenue, Suite 155, Seattle, WA 98101, at (206) 553-6357 or <E T="03">hall.kristin@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document, wherever “we” or “our” is used, it means “the EPA.” <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. State Implementation Plan</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. State Submission</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Evaluation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Title 12 General Provisions and Definitions</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Title 13 General Duties and Powers of Board and Director</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Title 29 Designation of Air Quality Areas</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Title 31 Public Participation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Title 32 Emission Standards</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. Title 33 Prohibited Practices and Control of Special Classes of Industry</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">G. Title 34 Stationary Source Notification Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">H. Title 37 Air Contaminant Discharge Permits</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">I. Title 38 New Source Review</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">J. Title 40 Air Quality Analysis Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">K. Title 41 Emission Reduction Credits</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">L. Title 42 Stationary Source Plant Site Emission Limits</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">M. Title 48 Rules for Fugitive Emissions</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">N. Title 50 Ambient Air Standards and PSD Increments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">O. Title 51 Air Pollution Emergencies</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Rule Sections Approved and Incorporated by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Rule Sections Approved but Not Incorporated by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Rule Sections Removed From Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. State Implementation Plan</HD> The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to establish national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, particulate matter, and sulfur dioxide. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Each State has a State Implementation Plan (SIP) designed to meet the NAAQS through various air pollution regulations, control measures and strategies. A SIP contains elements such as emission limits, pollution control technology requirements, permitting programs, and enforcement mechanisms, among other elements. Each State revises its SIP over time to respond to new Federal requirements and to address changing air quality conditions. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  See Clean Air Act section 109. </FTNT> States submit each SIP revision to the EPA for review and approval. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> The EPA takes action through notice and comment rulemaking to approve and incorporate the submitted State air quality regulations by reference into the SIP, codified in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). As part of the SIP, State regulations are enforceable by the EPA and by citizens in Federal district court. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  See Clean Air Act section 110. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  See Clean Air Act section 304. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. State Submission</HD> On June 26, 2024, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and the Lane Regional Air Protection Agency (LRAPA) submitted a SIP revision to the EPA for approval into the Oregon SIP, codified at 40 CFR part 52, subpart MM. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (Oregon DEQ) is the permitting authority throughout the State, except where LRAPA has been authorized to permit sources located in Lane County, Oregon. The submitted changes, State effective May 25, 2024, update the stationary source permitting programs in LRAPA regulations to align with changes to State rules (89 FR 59611, July 23, 2024). <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Evaluation</HD> The following sections of this preamble describe the submitted changes to air permitting regulations applicable in Lane County and evaluate the changes with respect to Clean Air Act requirements. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> We have focused on the substantive rule revisions. We have not described all submitted typographical corrections, numbering updates, and minor wording changes that do not alter the meaning of the rules. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  We intend to address the submitted changes to title 36 of the LRAPA regulations, related to excess emissions requirements, in a separate, future action. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Title 12 General Provisions and Definitions</HD> Title 12 of the LRAPA regulations contains generally applicable provisions and definitions used throughout the air quality rules applicable in Lane County. LRAPA updated title 12 of the local air regulations to align with corresponding State requirements in OAR chapter 340, division 200. In section 12-001, LRAPA added language outlining the authority of the local air agency to implement the State air quality rules in Lane County and implement any local rule in lieu of a State rule provided: (1) the local rule is at least as stringent as the State rule; (2) the rule is submitted to the EQC for approval; and (3) the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission (EQC) has not disapproved the rule. We propose to approve this clarification. In section 12-005, LRAPA combined the definition of “air pollution control device” with “control device” to be consistent with the definition in Oregon's rules, approved by the EPA in a prior action on July 23, 2024 (89 FR 59611). Also, consistent with changes the Oregon DEQ recently made, LRAPA made clear that the definition of “construction” includes the replacement of a source and that the definition of “emission limit” includes a permit condition or order. These changes are appropriate because they strengthen and clarify the SIP. LRAPA also made updates to certain terms in section 12-005. LRAPA clarified that all fluorinated greenhouse gases, as defined in 40 CFR part 98, are included in the LRAPA definition of “greenhouse gas,” consistent with the same definition in State rules. LRAPA also clarified the definition of “major source” to ensure that all uses of the term throughout the air quality rules point to the corresponding definition based on the applicable permitting program. This update is consistent with State rule changes approved by the EPA on July 23, 2024 (89 FR 59611). Also in section 12-005, LRAPA updated the centralized definition of “opacity” to change the test method from EPA Method 203B to EPA Method 9. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> This change was designed to align with the change LRAPA made to update the form of its general visible emission standards from an aggregate exception of three minutes in a 60-minute period to a 6-minute block average. For more details, please see our discussion in section II.D. of this preamble. <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  Method 203B—40 CFR part 50, appendix M; Method 9—Visual Determination of the Opacity of Emissions from Stationary Sources described in 40 CFR part 60, appendix A-4. </FTNT> LRAPA also clarified the correct definition of “particulate matter” to be used in regulating visible emissions, consistent with prior changes made to State rules. LRAPA revised the definition of “regulated air pollutant” to make clear that hazardous air pollutants regulated under Clean Air Act section 112 and toxic air contaminants regulated under Cleaner ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 80k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━