Air Plan Approval; New Jersey; Memorandum of Agreement To Address NOX SIP Call Requirements

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R02-OAR-2025-0088; FRL-12760-02-R2]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT> Air Plan Approval; New Jersey; Memorandum of Agreement To Address NO <E T="0735">X</E> SIP Call Requirements </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 approving a revision in the New Jersey State Implementation Plan (SIP) that includes a signed Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) developed between the EPA and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP). The MOA demonstrates how the State will maintain compliance with its nitrogen oxides (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) emission control obligations for the types of large non-electricity generating units (non-EGUs) that were previously regulated under the New Jersey NO <E T="52">X</E> Budget Program. This action is being taken in accordance with the requirements of the Clean Air Act (CAA). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective on October 14, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID Number EPA-R02-OAR-2025-0088. 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> Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) (formerly referred to as 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 electronically through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Fausto Taveras, Environmental Protection Agency, Region 2, Air Programs Branch, 290 Broadway, New York, New York 10007-1866, telephone number: (212) 637-3378, email address: <E T="03">taveras.fausto@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document, whenever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean EPA. The <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section is arranged as follows: <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. What comments were received in response to the EPA's proposed action?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. What action is the EPA taking?</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> On March 7, 2024, New Jersey submitted a commitment letter to the EPA to develop an MOA between the EPA and NJDEP that outlines how NJDEP will comply with their outstanding obligations under the NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call, specifically for the types of non-EGUs that were previously regulated by the New Jersey NO <E T="52">X</E> Budget Program (N.J.A.C. 7:27-Subchapter 31) and were not included in the subsequent CAIR FIP trading program. Subsequently, on May 31, 2024, New Jersey submitted an updated commitment letter to revise and replace the previous March 7, 2024, letter. This revision occurred due to NJDEP conducting further analysis to determine which units would have been classified as non-EGU under the applicability criteria of the New Jersey NO <E T="52">X</E> Budget Program (N.J.A.C. 7:21-Subchapter 31), as in effect as of September 30, 2008. As a result of this analysis, the value of the non-EGU budget was adjusted. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The revised commitment letter adjusted the non-EGU budgets for the affected units' aggregated emissions during the ozone season and revised the date by which the State would submit the MOA to the EPA. In New Jersey's May 31, 2024, letter, the State committed to submitting the MOA to the EPA by no later than March 7, 2025. New Jersey provided a date certain for purposes of CAA 110(k)(4), which authorizes the EPA to conditionally approve a plan revision based on a commitment by the State to adopt specific enforceable measures by a date certain, but no later than one year after the date of the plan approval. On September 3, 2024, the EPA conditionally approved the removal of New Jersey's NO <E T="52">X</E> Budget Program (Subchapter 31) from the New Jersey SIP. <E T="03">See</E> 89 FR 71185. As indicated in New Jersey's May 31, 2024, commitment letter, the EPA would take action to incorporate by reference the finalized MOA as an enforceable SIP revision by no later than one year from the date the EPA conditionally approves the New Jersey SIP revision to removal the State's CAIR and NO <E T="52">X</E> Budget Programs from the SIP. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  NJDEP analysis determined that the natural gas turbine unit located at cogeneration facility, EF Kenilworth, was subject to the NO <E T="52">X</E> Budget Program as a small EGU ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> an EGU serving an electricity generator with nameplate capacity of at least 15 MW but not greater than 25 MW). </FTNT> On June 3, 2025, the EPA proposed to approve a revision in New Jersey's SIP submitted by NJDEP on February 13, 2025. <E T="03">See</E> 90 FR 23497. Within that proposal, the EPA proposed to determine that a fully executed and signed MOA submitted by New Jersey on February 13, 2025, effectively outlined the primary responsibilities between NJDEP and EPA to ensure the State's successful and effective compliance with the NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call under 40 CFR 51.121(r)(2). Under the MOA, NJDEP will have the primary responsibilities of ensuring that its non-EGU sources are in compliance with the State's SIP-approved NO <E T="52">X</E> emission limits, monitoring, reporting, and recordkeeping provisions under the NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call and as otherwise approved in New Jersey's SIP. Specifically, the MOA between NJDEP and EPA will ensure that new, modified, and existing non-EGUs in the State meeting the applicability criteria of the New Jersey NO <E T="52">X</E> Budget Program (N.J.A.C. 7:27-31) as in effect as of September 30, 2008, adhere to emission limits, monitoring, recordkeeping, and reporting requirements as outlined in the relevant provisions of New Jersey's SIP, including the State's federally-approved NO <E T="52">X</E> RACT provisions under N.J.A.C. 7:27-19, “Control and Prohibition of Air Pollution from Oxides of Nitrogen.”  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> Through the MOA, the EPA has determined that New Jersey would satisfy its monitoring requirements of the NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP call under 40 CFR 51.121(f)(1) and 40 CFR 51.121(i) by administering and overseeing the testing and monitoring requirements applicable the non-EGUs through the State's federally approved RACT regulation under N.J.A.C. 7:27-19. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  On October 9, 2018, the EPA approved New Jersey's revisions to N.J.A.C 7:27 Subchapter 16 and Subchapter 19 as satisfying RACT for the Moderate classification of the 2008 ozone NAAQS and associated RACT requirements for States located within the Ozone Transport Region. See 83 FR 50506. </FTNT> Under the MOA, NJDEP will also have the responsibility of ensuring affected non-EGUs will comply with the State's federally-approved Emission Statement Program under N.J.A.C. 7:27-21, “Emission Statements.”  <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> Through the MOA, NJDEP agrees to compare the actual emissions of NO <E T="52">X</E> during the ozone season obtained from the affected non-EGUs' emission statement reports with the NO <E T="52">X</E> ozone season budget applicable to the affected non-EGUs and set under New Jersey's NO <E T="52">X</E> Budget Program, <E T="03">i.e.,</E> 745 tons of NO <E T="52">X</E> per ozone season. As recognized in the MOA, the reporting and recordkeeping requirements applicable to non-EGUs through the State's RACT regulation under N.J.A.C. 7:27-19 and the State's Emission Statement Program under N.J.A.C. 7:27-21 satisfy the NO <E T="52">X</E> SIP Call's reporting and recordkeeping requirements of 40 CFR 51.121(i). <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  The EPA most recently approved New Jersey's Emission Statement Program, at N.J.A.C. 7:27-21, for satisfying the requirement of an emission statement program for the 2008 8-hour ozone NAAQS Serious classification on September 4, 2024. See 89 FR 71826. </FTNT> To facilitate New Jersey's compliance with the requirements of 40 CFR 51.122, the State will be required to submit to the EPA an annual report of NO <E T="52">X</E> emissions from the applicable non-EGUs. Specifically, the MOA directly specifies that New Jersey's non-EGU NO <E T="52">X</E> budget for compliance demonstrations purposes is 745 tons of NO <E T="52">X</E> per ozone season. These annual reports will be submitted after each ozone season and will be used to verify the non-EGU budget for that ozone season was not exceeded. In the event of an exceedance, New Jersey commits to submitting a revised SIP to the EPA, which will address any budget shortfall resulting from the exceedance and ensure that the State's 745 tons of NO <E T="52">X</E> per ozone season budget is complied with in future years. Under the MOA, the EPA will have the responsibility of reviewing the annual reports submitted by the State and informing NJDEP as soon as practicable about any discrepancies in demonstrations and supporting information. The specific details regarding New Jersey's SIP submittals, commitment letters, the contents of the MOA, and the EPA's rationale to incorporate by reference this signed and executed MOA into New Jersey's SIP are thoroughly explained in the EPA's p ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━