Extension of the Attainment Date of the Coachella Valley Extreme Nonattainment Area Under the 1997 Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 81</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R09-OAR-2024-0570; FRL-12518-02-R9]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Extension of the Attainment Date of the Coachella Valley Extreme Nonattainment Area Under the 1997 Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is finalizing a one-year extension of the “Extreme” attainment date from June 15, 2024 to June 15, 2025, for the 1997 ozone national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) to the Riverside County (Coachella Valley), California ozone nonattainment area (“Coachella Valley”). The EPA is also taking final action on the exceptional event request submitted by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) on October 11, 2024. This action is based on the EPA's concurrence on the exceptional events demonstration, which removed from the design value (DV) calculation the wildfire-influenced data recorded at the Palm Springs—Fire Station monitor (AQS Site ID #060655001) on July 14-15, 2023, and the extension request submitted by the State of California. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective October 6, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-R09-OAR-2024-0570. All documents in the docket are listed on the <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> website. Although listed in the index, some information is not publicly available, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Certain other material, such as copyrighted material, is not placed on the internet and will be publicly available only in hard copy form. Publicly available docket materials are available through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> or please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> Tom Kelly, Geographic Strategies and Modeling Section (AIR-2-2), EPA Region IX, 75 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, CA 94105; phone: (415) 972-3856; or email: <E T="03">kelly.thomasp@epa.gov.</E> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document, “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Public Comments and the EPA's Responses</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. The EPA's Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Proposed Action</HD> On March 17, 2025, <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> the EPA proposed to grant California's request for a one-year extension of the Extreme attainment date for the 1997 ozone NAAQS, from June 15, 2024, to June 15, 2025, for the Coachella Valley. The proposed action was based on the EPA's evaluation of air quality monitoring data, and our determination that the State has satisfied the two statutory criteria for a one-year extension under CAA section 181(a)(5) and 40 CFR 51.907. For details regarding the EPA's reasons for proposing to grant the one-year extension, please see the March 17, 2025, proposal. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  90 FR 12239, March 17, 2025. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Public Comments and the EPA's Responses</HD> The EPA's proposed action provided a 30-day public comment period. During this period, we received comments from Amber R, Air Law for All (ALFA), and Colin Williams. All the comments, which were received on April 16, 2025, are summarized and addressed below. The comments from Amber R and Colin Williams have been combined. <E T="03">Comment 1:</E> One commenter acknowledged the potential for wildfires to affect ozone levels but questioned their use to justify another extension. The commenter emphasized the need for bold action by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) and CARB to “accelerate efforts to reduce ozone forming emissions.” Another commenter was concerned that the EPA was prolonging exposure to respiratory illnesses, such as emphysema and bronchitis. The commenter recommended immediate aggressive response to reduce emissions, improve air quality, more stringently enforce existing regulations, develop a more robust system to monitor air quality, and adopt cleaner technologies. <E T="03">Response 1:</E> As discussed in the proposal to grant the one-year extension of the attainment date, the EPA reviewed 2023 annual mean concentrations at each of the regulatory monitoring sites in the Coachella Valley. We determined that such data indicate that ozone concentrations were at or below 0.084 parts per million (ppm), <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> which is one of two minimum criteria necessary to grant an extension. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  The 1997 ozone standard was set at a level of 0.08 ppm, which is equivalent to 0.084 ppm using standard rounding conventions. For more information, see 73 FR 16436 (March 27, 2008). </FTNT> Our determination relied on the exclusion of certain air quality monitoring data based on our December 10, 2024, concurrence on the State's exceptional events demonstration. As described in our proposal, Congress provided the statutory authority for the exclusion of data influenced by “exceptional events” meeting specific criteria by adding section 319(b) to the CAA and granted the EPA with the authority to propose regulations to review and manage air quality monitoring data influenced by exceptional events. As stated in CAA section 319(b), an exceptional event is an event that “(1) affects air quality, (2) is not reasonably controllable or preventable, (3) is caused by human activity that is unlikely to recur at a particular location or was a natural event, and (4) is determined by the Administrator through a process established in regulations to be an exceptional event.” For EPA to concur on an exceptional event demonstration, the exclusion of data showing an exceedance or violation of the NAAQS must have regulatory significance. Here, the Highland, Rabbit, and Reche wildfires had regulatory significance to qualify the area for an attainment date extension, pursuant to 40 CFR 50.14(1)(i)(D). Furthermore, under the EPA's regulations implementing CAA section 319(b) for wildfires, the EPA is required to exclude exceptional events from wildfires “where a State demonstrates to the Administrator's satisfaction that emissions from wildfires caused a specific air pollution concentration in excess of one or more national ambient air quality standard at a particular air quality monitoring location.”  <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> Because we found that the State's demonstration satisfied the regulatory requirements and concurred on the demonstration, the excluded days were not considered in our evaluation of the air quality criteria for a one-year extension, as required by our regulations. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  40 CFR 50.14(b)(4). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  The State's exceptional event demonstration is included in the docket for this action. </FTNT> Despite the extension, the area will remain subject to Extreme classification requirements for the 1997 ozone NAAQS. The area is not relieved of any planning obligations under the CAA as a result of the extension. Within six months of the June 15, 2025 attainment date, the CAA and EPA's implementing regulations obligate the EPA to publish, in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , a determination of whether the area has attained the 1997 ozone NAAQS. If the area has met the NAAQS, the EPA will publish a determination that the area attained by its attainment date. If the State does not demonstrate attainment with the 1997 ozone NAAQS based on the 2024 design value and is not eligible for a second one-year extension, the EPA will issue a finding of failure to attain and the State will become subject to additional CAA requirements to achieve attainment of the 1997 annual ozone NAAQS in the Coachella Valley. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> Furthermore, the nonattainment area remains subject to more stringent air quality standards under the 2008 and 2015 ozone NAAQS. <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  The EPA notes that the certified data in a design value report for the Palm Springs monitor, the only monitor in the Coachella Valley that did not attain the 1997 ozone NAAQS, indicates the monitor has attained the NAAQS based on the 2024 design value. Air Quality Systems, 2024 Design Value Report, U.S. EPA, dated May 7, 2025, has been added to the docket for the rulemaking. </FTNT> Regarding air quality monitoring, the SCAQMD has established a monitoring network consistent with the EPA's requirements at 40 CFR part 58, which is documented in our review of the District's annual monitoring network plans and technical systems audits. The docket for the rulemaking contains the District's annual monitoring plans for 2023 and 2024, the EPA's approval letters, and the findings from the EPA's technical systems audit. More information on the nonattainment area's monitoring network can be found in section II.B.2 of the proposed rule (90 FR 12239, March 17, 2025). <E T="03">Comment 2.A:</E> Commenters assert that the EPA's proposal did not explain whether the EPA has previously granted any one-year extensions for the Coachella Valley nonattainment area pursuant to CAA section 181(a)(5). In a footnote, commenters argue that a plain language reading of CAA section 181(a)(5) indicates that the statutory limitation of two one-year extensions applies to any extension for any ozone standard for a nonattainment area. They claim that omitting additional information regarding other one-year extensions from the proposal constitutes inadequate notice. Moreover, comme ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 40k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━