Air Plan Approval; Texas; Reasonably Available Control Technology in the Dallas-Fort Worth Ozone Nonattainment Area

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R06-OAR-2020-0164; FRL-12951-01-R6]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Texas; Reasonably Available Control Technology in the Dallas-Fort Worth Ozone Nonattainment Area</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> Pursuant to the Federal Clean Air Act (CAA or the Act), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to approve the May 12, 2020, and May 13, 2020, revisions to the Texas State Implementation Plan (SIP) as satisfying the Serious classification Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) Reasonably Available Control Technology (RACT) requirement for the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) 2008 8-hour ozone National Air Quality Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) nonattainment area. The DFW area, designated as Serious for the 2008 8-hour ozone NAAQS, consists of Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, Johnson, Kaufman, Parker, Rockwall, Tarrant, and Wise Counties. Specifically, we are proposing to approve the revisions to 30 Texas Administrative Code (TAC) Chapter 115 to implement the major source Reasonably Available Control Technology (RACT) requirement for VOC as addressed in the VOC RACT analysis and negative declaration included with the Serious area Attainment Demonstration (AD) SIP revision. The Nitrogen Oxide (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) portion of the RACT analysis in the May 13, 2020, revisions will be addressed in a separate action. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before October 6, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket No. EPA-R06-OAR-2020-0164, at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or via email to <E T="03">shahin.emad@epa.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> . 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 Emad Shahin, (214) 665-6717, <E T="03">shahin.emad@epa.gov.</E> 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> <E T="03">Docket:</E> The index to the docket for this action is available electronically at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> While all documents in the docket are listed in the index, some information may not be publicly available due to docket file size restrictions or content ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> CBI). <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Emad Shahin, 214-665-6717, <E T="03">Emad Shahin@epa.gov.</E> We encourage the public to submit comments via <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> as there may be a delay in processing mail and courier or hand deliveries may not be accepted. Please call or email the contact listed above if you need alternative access to material indexed but not provided in the docket. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document wherever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> VOCs contribute to the production of ground-level ozone, or smog, which harms human health and the environment. Section 182(b)(2) of the CAA requires that SIPs for ozone nonattainment areas classified as Moderate or above include implementation of RACT for any source covered by a Control Techniques Guidelines (CTG) document and also for any major source of VOC not covered by a CTG. It is worth noting that for some CTG categories, RACT is applicable to minor or area sources. The EPA has defined RACT as the lowest emissions limitation that a particular source is capable of meeting by the application of control technology that is reasonably available, considering technological and economic feasibility. See 44 FR 53761 (September 17, 1979). A Moderate, Serious, or Severe area major stationary source is one that emits, or has the potential to emit, 100, 50, or 25 tons per year (tpy) or more of VOCs, respectively. CAA sections 182(b) through (d). The EPA provides states with guidance concerning what types of controls could constitute RACT for a given category of sources through the issuance of CTG and Alternative Control Techniques (ACT) documents. <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/ground-level-ozone-pollution/control-techniques-guidelines-and-alternative-control-techniques</E> for a listing of EPA-issued CTGs and ACTs. </FTNT> On March 27, 2008, the EPA revised the primary and secondary ozone NAAQS to a level of 0.075 parts per million (ppm) (75 ppb). <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> On October 26, 2015 (80 FR 65292), EPA promulgated another revised ozone NAAQS, but the 2008 NAAQS remains in effect. This notice concerns the VOC RACT requirements under the 2008 8-hour ozone NAAQS. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  Although the level of ozone NAAQS are specified in the units of ppm ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> 0.075 ppm), ozone concentrations are described using the units of parts per billion (ppb) in this action for consistency with the common convention for information discussions. In ppb, 0.075 ppm is equivalent to 75. </FTNT> Promulgation of a new or revised NAAQS triggers a requirement for the EPA to designate areas as nonattainment, attainment, or unclassifiable, and to classify the nonattainment areas at the time of designation. CAA section 181(a). Nonattainment areas are classified according to the severity of their ozone air quality problems as Marginal, Moderate, Serious, Severe, or Extreme determined by each area's design value. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  The air quality design value for the 8-hour ozone NAAQS is the three-year average of the annual fourth highest daily maximum 8-hour average ozone concentration. See 40 CFR part 50, appendix I. </FTNT> On May 21, 2012, the EPA published a rule establishing initial area designations and classifications for most areas of the country, including DFW, with respect to the 2008 primary and secondary 8-hour ozone NAAQS. 77 FR 30088. On the same day, EPA issued a separate rule that established air quality thresholds for each nonattainment classification for the 2008 NAAQS and set attainment deadlines for each classification. 77 FR 30160 (May 21, 2012). Originally the DFW area was classified as Moderate (77 FR 30088, May 21, 2012). Based on the Moderate classification of the DFW area for the 2008 ozone NAAQS, under section 182(b) of the CAA, a major stationary source in the area is one that emits, or has the potential to emit, 100 tpy or more of VOCs. However, on August 23, 2019 (84 FR 44238), EPA found the DFW area did not attain by the 2008 ozone Moderate area attainment date. The DFW area was reclassified to Serious nonattainment with an attainment date of July 20, 2021. Under the Serious classification, the major source threshold is 50 tpy or more of VOC. In the action reclassifying DFW to Serious, EPA set a deadline of August 3, 2021, for Texas to provide a demonstration that RACT was in place as necessary to meet the Serious area requirements. On May 12, 2020, Texas submitted to EPA a SIP revision to 30 TAC Chapter 115 to implement major source RACT requirements for VOC associated with the Serious classification for the 2008 ozone NAAQS for the DFW area. On May 13, 2020, Texas submitted a SIP revision that includes an analysis that Serious level RACT for sources of VOC emissions in the DFW area is met for the 2008 8-hr ozone NAAQS. In its RACT analysis, to identify major stationary sources of VOC, Texas reviewed the TCEQ 2017 point source emissions inventory, the TCEQ New Source Review, and CAA Title V databases to locate potential sources. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> All sources in the Title V database that were listed as a major source for VOC emissions and have the potential to emit 50 tons per year or more are included in the RACT analysis. TCEQ noted that they reviewed sources that reported actual emissions as low as 25 tpy of VOC to account for the difference between actual and potential emissions. TCEQ also noted that sites from the emissions inventory database with emissions equal to or greater than a threshold of 25 tpy or more of VOC that were not identified in the Title V database and could not be verified as minor sources by other means are also included in the RACT analysis. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  See Appendix F, <E T="03">Reasonably Available Control Technology Analysis,</E> of the state's SIP submittal, available at <E T="03">https://www.tceq.texas.gov/assets/public/implementation/air/sip/dfw/dfw_ad_sip_2019/DFWAD_19078SIP_Appendix_F_Final.pdf.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Evaluation</HD> States should refer to existing CTG and ACT documents, all relevant information received during the public comment period, and any other information that is current at the time of development of the SIP to determine if RACT is being applied. See 80 FR 12264, 12278 (March 6, 2015). States may conclude, in some cases, that sources already addressed by RACT determinations to meet the 1-hour and/or the 1997 8-hour ozone NAAQS do ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 20k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━