Air Plan Approval; Oregon; 2024 Vehicle Inspection Program Updates

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R10-OAR-2025-0181, FRL-12873-01-R10]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Oregon; 2024 Vehicle Inspection Program Updates</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 revisions to the Oregon State Implementation Plan (SIP) submitted by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality on April 3, 2025. The SIP revision updates rules for the Vehicle Inspection Program (VIP) which is applicable in the Portland and Medford areas, and includes a demonstration that the requested revisions will not interfere with attainment or maintenance of any national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) or with any other applicable requirement of the Clean Air Act (CAA or Act). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before October 27, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R10-OAR-2025-0181 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">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, 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> Tess Bloom, EPA Region 10, 1200 6th Ave., Seattle, WA 98101, at (206) 553-6362, or <E T="03">bloom.tess@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document, wherever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, it is intended to refer to the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> I. Background II. Evaluation of Revisions III. Proposed Action IV. Incorporation by Reference V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> Each state has a SIP containing the control measures and strategies used to attain and maintain the NAAQS established by the EPA for the criteria pollutants (carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, particulate matter, sulfur dioxide). The SIP contains elements such as air pollution control regulations, emission inventories, attainment demonstrations, and enforcement mechanisms. Section 110 of the CAA requires each state to periodically revise its SIP. As a result, the SIP is a living compilation of regulatory and non-regulatory elements that are updated to address Federal requirements and changing air quality issues in the state. The Oregon SIP includes VIP program rules for the Portland and Medford areas to maintain compliance with the NAAQS. The Portland area is part of the Portland-Vancouver air quality maintenance area (AQMA) for ozone (62 FR 27204, May 19, 1997). Medford, Oregon is a maintenance area for CO (67 FR 48388, July 24, 2002). The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) implements and enforces the Oregon SIP through rules set out in the Oregon Administrative Rules. Chapter 340, Division 256—Motor Vehicles includes the provisions for Oregon's VIP. The vehicle testing schedule for the VIP coincides with the dates for vehicle registration generally, as a vehicle owner residing within the testing boundary must obtain a certificate of compliance before renewing their vehicle's registration. The Oregon legislature passed a bill in 2001 that changed the initial registration period for new vehicles from two years to four years (2001 HB 2132), which can be found in Oregon's statute, ORS 803.415. In 2004, DEQ completed a rulemaking to update the VIP rules to reflect this change. After the initial four-year registration period, vehicle registration must be renewed, and receive a passing emissions test, every two years. Although the initial four-year exemption has been in effect since 2004, explicit rule language prescribing that a vehicle is not required to obtain a certificate of compliance that the vehicle emissions controls are adequately maintained during this period was not previously included in the SIP. This SIP revision includes that update as well as other minor changes to the VIP rules. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Evaluation of Revisions</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Summary of Rule Changes</HD> DEQ revised the Oregon Administrative Rules (OAR) section 340-256-0010 to include non-substantiative changes including the addition of definitions for “fleet participant,” “host participant,” “test equipment,” and “VIP.” Some definitions in this section were renumbered to accommodate the new definitions. DEQ revised OAR 340-256-0300 to describe the scope of rules through 340-256-0471, where it previously only extended to 340-256-0465. OAR 340-256-0466 through 340-256-0471 are new, non-SIP approved state rules that relate to criteria for remote on-board diagnostic (OBD) test equipment and requirements for participation in Oregon's remote OBD testing program. DEQ added a new provision under OAR 340-256-0300(4) to make explicit that new vehicles are exempt from on-board diagnostic (OBD) test requirements of the VIP program contained in OAR 340-256-0355 until January 1st of the calendar year that is four years after a vehicle's designated model year. DEQ also revised OAR 340-256-0370 to clarify the Oregon vehicle inspection boundary, outside of which vehicles that are temporarily operating qualify for a temporary exemption from the vehicle testing requirement. Because the exemption only applies to vehicles that will be operating outside the inspection program's target areas, the EPA does not believe Oregon's minor clarifying changes to the exemption will result in impacts to the ambient air within these areas. Lastly, DEQ amended OAR 340-256-0465 to remove the word “licensing” in the title, to state that electronic vehicle test results be transferred to “DEQ online computer servers,” and requirement (3), “meeting additional fleet operations specifications as DEQ prescribes,” is removed. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Vehicle Emission Trends in Oregon State</HD> The April 3, 2025, Oregon SIP revision includes an evaluation of projected changes in mobile source emissions that may be caused by the change in the vehicle inspection requirement from two to four years following a new vehicle's model year. The analysis focuses on the emissions of carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> and fine particulate matter (PM <E T="52">2.5</E> ). <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> DEQ used the EPA's Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES) model, version 4.0.1, to assess emissions for a typical day. MOVES 4.0.1 was the most recent version of MOVES available at the time work on this SIP began. The modeling demonstration in the SIP submittal compares vehicle emissions with the testing exemption for the first four model years to a baseline exemption of the first two model years based on vehicle data for 2023. DEQ chose to use a two-year exemption as a baseline because in the Portland and Medford areas, vehicles receive an emissions test on a biennial schedule. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> Additionally, although the four-year testing exemption has already been in effect since 2004, only the biennial testing schedule was made explicit in the SIP. Therefore, modeling completed by DEQ is consistent with what is currently approved into the SIP. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Both nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds are precursors to the formation of ozone and fine particulate matter. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  Fine particulate matter, also known as PM <E T="52">2.5</E> , refers to tiny particles and droplets in the air that are 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter. Particulate matter that is less than 10 micrometers in diameter (PM <E T="52">10</E> ) was not analyzed due to on-road sources contributing a small percentage to the overall PM <E T="52">10</E> concentrations. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  The final rule by the EPA, “Approval and Promulgation of State Implementation Plans; Oregon,” published on September 9, 1994, includes more information about the EPA's approval of Oregon's inspections of motor vehicles on a biennial schedule. </FTNT> The EPA reviewed the on-road modeling performed by the DEQ. Based on this modeling, motor vehicle emissions in the four impacted Oregon Counties are generally projected to decrease even with the exemption from emissions testing for the first four model years after a vehicle is new. This continued decrease in emissions, despite increases in vehicle miles travelled (VMT), <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> are the result of fleet turnover, with old vehicles being replaced with new vehicles that meet more stringent engine standards. The downward trend of emissions from on-road sources is reflected in the EPA's 2020 National Emissions Inventory (NEI) and Trends Report. Specifically, the NEI Tool found on the 2020 NEI website  <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> demonstrates that from 2008 until 2020, criteria pollutant emissions from on- ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 20k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━