Air Plan Revisions; Arizona; Maricopa County Air Quality Department; Particulate Matter; Incinerators, Burn-Off Ovens, and Crematories

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R09-OAR-2025-0458; FRL-12915-01-R9]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Revisions; Arizona; Maricopa County Air Quality Department; Particulate Matter; Incinerators, Burn-Off Ovens, and Crematories</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) is proposing an approval of revisions to the Maricopa County Air Quality Department (MCAQD) portion of the Arizona State Implementation Plan (SIP). These revisions concern emissions of particulate matter from incinerators, burn-off ovens, and crematories. We are proposing to approve revisions to a local rule that regulates these emissions sources under the Clean Air Act (CAA or “Act”). We are taking comments on this proposal and plan to follow with a final action. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before October 14, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R09-OAR-2025-0458 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> For comments submitted at <E T="03">Regulations.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 the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. 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> If you need assistance in a language other than English or if you are a person with a disability who needs a reasonable accommodation at no cost to you, please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Eugene Chen, EPA Region IX, 75 Hawthorne St., San Francisco, CA 94105; telephone number: (415) 947-4304; email address: <E T="03">chen.eugene@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <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. The State's Submittal</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. What did the State submit?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Are there other related submittals?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. What is the purpose of the submittal?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. The EPA's Evaluation and Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. How is the EPA evaluating the rule and the request for rescission and replacement?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Does the rule revision, and rule rescissions, meet the evaluation criteria?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Proposed Action and Public Comment</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. The State's Submittal</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. What did the State submit?</HD> On December 23, 2024, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) submitted a SIP revision for the MCAQD portion of the Arizona SIP (“2024 SIP submittal”). The 2024 SIP submittal requests that the EPA approve MCAQD Rule 313—Incinerators, Burn-Off Ovens, and Crematories, revised December 11, 2024 (“Rule 313”). Additionally, the 2024 SIP submittal requests that the requirements in Rule 313 be used to replace two sets of requirements from the SIP: the version of Rule 313 currently in the SIP and MCAQD Rule 35—Incinerators, revised August 12, 1971 (“Rule 35”). Table 1 lists the rule we are proposing for approval with the dates that it was adopted by the local air agency and submitted to the EPA by the ADEQ. Table 2 lists the rules proposed to be rescinded from the SIP with the dates that they were adopted by the local air agency and approved into the SIP. <GPOTABLE COLS="5" OPTS="L2,nj,i1" CDEF="xs60,10,r75,r50,xs76"> <TTITLE>Table 1—Submitted Rule for Approval</TTITLE> <CHED H="1"> Local agency </CHED> <CHED H="1">Rule No.</CHED> <CHED H="1">Rule title</CHED> <CHED H="1">Amended</CHED> <CHED H="1">Submitted</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">MCAQD</ENT> <ENT>313</ENT> <ENT>Incinerators, Burn-Off Ovens, and Crematories</ENT> <ENT>December 11, 2024</ENT> <ENT>December 23, 2024.</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> <GPOTABLE COLS="6" OPTS="L2,nj,i1" CDEF="xs60,10,r75,r50,r50,xs76"> <TTITLE>Table 2—Rules To Be Rescinded</TTITLE> <CHED H="1"> Local agency </CHED> <CHED H="1">Rule No. </CHED> <CHED H="1">Rule title</CHED> <CHED H="1">Local revision date</CHED> <CHED H="1">SIP approved date</CHED> <CHED H="1">FR citation</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">MCAQD</ENT> <ENT>313</ENT> <ENT>Incinerators, Burn-Off Ovens, and Crematories</ENT> <ENT>May 9, 2012</ENT> <ENT>September 25, 2014</ENT> <ENT>79 FR 57445.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">MCAQD</ENT> <ENT>35</ENT> <ENT>Incinerators</ENT> <ENT>August 12, 1971</ENT> <ENT>July 27, 1972</ENT> <ENT>37 FR 15080.</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> On June 23, 2025, the 2024 SIP submittal was deemed complete by operation of law. We have reviewed the submittal to ensure it meets the completeness criteria in 40 CFR part 51, appendix V. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Are there other related submittals?</HD> In 2016, the EPA reformatted the Arizona SIP as codified in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) into a tabulated “notebook” format. While developing the updated SIP tables for that conversion, the EPA worked closely with ADEQ and the local air agencies to clarify what was in their applicable SIP, including older provisions that had not been updated or replaced to reflect local rulemakings. On September 13, 2017, because of that coordination, ADEQ submitted a SIP revision from MCAQD that requested to rescind or replace many obsolete rules in their federally enforceable SIP in favor of rules that reflect their current locally enforceable rulebook (“2017 SIP submittal”). The 2017 SIP submittal requested that the EPA rescind the SIP-approved version of Rule 35 and replace it with the version of Rule 313 currently in the SIP. However, the 2024 SIP submittal clarifies that this request has been superseded by the request to replace Rule 35 with the currently submitted revised version of Rule 313. If we finalize this rulemaking as proposed, the December 11, 2024 version of Rule 313 will replace the SIP-approved version of Rule 313 and Rule 35 in the MCAQD portion of the Arizona SIP. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. What is the purpose of the submittal?</HD> Rule 313 contains particulate matter (PM) and opacity standards for incinerators, burn-off ovens, and crematories. It also contains additional requirements such as work practice standards for specific cremation procedures (such as large charges or nighttime operations), as well as monitoring, recordkeeping, and reporting requirements. Rule revisions in the version adopted on December 14, 2024, include additional monitoring provisions and PM performance testing requirements, clarifications to several definitions, additional detail and clarity regarding recordkeeping requirements, and the addition of provisions or requirements established in Rule 35 to ensure that Rule 35 rescission does not result in interference with any existing CAA requirements. There are no revisions to the existing PM or opacity standards. In addition, MCAQD does not rely upon the standards established in Rule 313 to meet any nonattainment area requirements. A technical support document (TSD) that provides further analysis of Rule 313 revisions is included in the docket for this rulemaking. Rule 35 controls the emissions of PM from any incinerators located in the MCAQD. The rule includes permit conditions, daily limits, and monitoring for PM and opacity. A separate TSD that provides further analysis of Rule 35 rescission is included in the docket for this rulemaking. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. The EPA's Evaluation and Action</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. How is the EPA evaluating the rule and the request for rescission and replacement?</HD> Emissions limitations in the SIP must be enforceable (see CAA section 110(a)(2)) and must not interfere with applicable requirements concerning attainment and reasonable further progress or other CAA requirements (see CAA section 110(l)). Once a rule has been approved as part of a SIP, the rescission of that rule from the SIP constitutes a SIP revision. To approve such a revision, the EPA must determine whether the revision meets relevant CAA criteria for stringency, if any, and complies with restrictions on relaxation of SIP measures under CAA section 110(l), and the General Savings Clause in CAA section 193 for SIP approved control requirements in effect before November 15, 1990. Guidance and policy documents that we use to evaluate enforceability, revision/relaxation and rule stringency requirements for the applicable criteria pollutants include the following: <EXTRACT> 1.”Issues Relating to VOC Regulation Cutpoints, Deficiencies, and Deviations,” EPA, May 25, 1988 (the ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 16k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━