Air Plan Approval; California; San Joaquin Valley 1-Hour Ozone Area; Maintenance Plan and Redesignation Request

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Parts 52 and 81</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R09-OAR-2024-0611; FRL-12521-02-R9]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; California; San Joaquin Valley 1-Hour Ozone Area; Maintenance Plan and Redesignation Request</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 taking final action to approve the “2023 Maintenance Plan and Redesignation Request for the Revoked 1-Hour Ozone Standard” (“San Joaquin Valley Maintenance Plan” or “Plan”) as a revision to the state implementation plan (SIP) for the State of California. The San Joaquin Valley Maintenance Plan includes, among other elements, an emissions inventory consistent with attainment and contingency provisions. The EPA is also finalizing its finding that the State of California's request to redesignate the San Joaquin Valley area from nonattainment to attainment for the revoked 1979 1-hour national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS or “standard”) for ozone (“1979 ozone NAAQS,” “1-hour ozone NAAQS,” or “1-hour ozone standard”) meets all the Clean Air Act (CAA or “the Act”) criteria for redesignation. Therefore, the EPA is terminating all anti-backsliding obligations for the San Joaquin Valley area for the revoked 1-hour ozone NAAQS. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This action will be effective on October 27, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-R09-OAR-2024-0611. 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 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> section for additional availability information. 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> Andrew Ledezma, EPA Region IX, 75 Hawthorne St., San Francisco, CA 94105. By phone: (415) 972-3985 or by email at <E T="03">Ledezma.Andrew@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-1">I. Summary of Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">II. Public Comments and EPA Responses</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">III. Final Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">IV. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Summary of Proposed Action</HD> On June 23, 2025, under CAA section 110(k)(3), the EPA proposed to approve the San Joaquin Valley Maintenance Plan submitted by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) on July 21, 2023, as a revision to the California SIP. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Consistent with the requirements in CAA section 175A and EPA guidance, <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> we proposed to find that the San Joaquin Valley Maintenance Plan adequately addressed the required elements of a maintenance plan: an emissions inventory, a maintenance demonstration, a commitment to maintain an air quality monitoring network, verification of continued attainment, and a contingency plan. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  90 FR 26469 (June 23, 2025). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  See memorandum dated September 4, 1992, from John Calcagni, Director, Air Quality Management Division, Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, EPA, Subject: “Procedures for Processing Requests to Redesignate Areas to Attainment.” </FTNT> In our proposed action, we also proposed to find that California's redesignation request meets all five criteria for redesignation in CAA section 107(d)(3)(E) for the 1-hour ozone NAAQS. We proposed to find that the San Joaquin Valley area meets the criteria in CAA section 107(d)(3)(E) based on the following: the San Joaquin Valley area attained the 1979 ozone NAAQS based on the 2021-2023 period of quality-assured, certified, and complete ozone data; the applicable portions of the California SIP are fully approved; the improvement in air quality is due to permanent and enforceable emissions reductions; California has met all requirements applicable to the San Joaquin Valley area with respect to section 110 and part D of the CAA; and based on our proposed approval as described above, the San Joaquin Valley Maintenance Plan meets the requirements for maintenance plans under section 175A of the CAA. Therefore, California has met the criteria for redesignation under CAA section 107(d)(3)(E) for the San Joaquin Valley area with respect to the 1979 ozone NAAQS. Although CAA section 107(d)(3) applies explicitly only to revisions of area designations and the designations for this area have been revoked along with the NAAQS, the EPA's view is that, consistent with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit's findings in <E T="03">South Coast Air Quality Management District</E> v. <E T="03">EPA (</E> “ <E T="03">South Coast II”)</E> , <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> satisfaction of the statutory redesignation criteria permits the termination of any remaining anti-backsliding obligations for the San Joaquin Valley area as to the revoked 1979 ozone NAAQS. Therefore, we proposed to terminate anti-backsliding obligations, identified at 40 CFR 51.1100(o), for the San Joaquin Valley area associated with the 1-hour ozone NAAQS and to revise the table in 40 CFR part 81 to reflect the status of applicable anti-backsliding obligations in the San Joaquin Valley area for the revoked 1979 ozone NAAQS. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  882 F.3d 1138 (D.C. Cir. 2018). </FTNT> Our proposed rulemaking has a detailed discussion of the background for this action, our procedural and substantive review of the San Joaquin Valley Maintenance Plan, and our rationale for terminating anti-backsliding obligations for the San Joaquin Valley area associated with the 1-hour ozone NAAQS. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Public Comments and EPA Responses</HD> Our June 23, 2025 proposed rulemaking provided a 30-day public comment period that closed on July 22, 2025. During this period, we received comment letters from two organizations and one anonymous commenter. CARB and the San Joaquin Valley Unified Air Pollution Control District (“SJVUAPCD”) submitted letters supporting the EPA's proposed action. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> The anonymous commenter submitted a comment objecting to our proposed action. In the following paragraphs, we will summarize the comment objecting to our proposed action and provide our response. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  Letter dated July 22, 2025, from Edie Chang, Deputy Executive Officer, CARB to Joshua F.W. Cook, Regional Administrator, EPA Region IX; and letter dated July 23, 2025, from Emily Kneeland, Director of Air Quality Planning, SJVUACPD. </FTNT> The anonymous commenter states the EPA's regulations should be updated to address new sources of environmental issues, such as wildfires and changes in the ozone. The commenter states that this implementation plan should be revised to address outdated EPA standards and to ensure citizens are protected. We acknowledge the comment; however, it fails to assert or explain how the EPA's approval of the San Joaquin Valley Maintenance Plan and finding that the redesignation request meets all criteria in CAA section 107(d)(3)(E) is erroneous or otherwise inconsistent with the CAA, applicable regulations, or other authorities. We also note that the San Joaquin Valley area remains in nonattainment for several more recent and more stringent ozone standards, which requires the development and implementation of state implementation plans to reduce ozone concentrations in the San Joaquin Valley area to levels the EPA has determined are protective of human health. As such, the comment does not require further response in order to finalize the action as proposed. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Final Action</HD> Under CAA section 110(k)(3), and for reasons set forth in our June 23, 2025 proposed rule, the EPA is taking final action to approve the San Joaquin Valley Maintenance Plan submittal as a revision to the California SIP. The EPA finds that the maintenance demonstration showing the area will continue to maintain the 1979 ozone NAAQS for 10 years beyond redesignation, the contingency provisions describing the actions that SJVUAPCD and CARB will take in the event of a future monitored violation, and the other elements of the San Joaquin Valley Maintenance Plan meet all applicable requirements for maintenance plans and related contingency provisions in CAA section 175A. We are also determining that all five of the redesignation criteria at CAA section 107(d)(3)(E) for the San Joaquin Valley area have been met for the standard. We are terminating the anti-backsliding obligations for the San Joaquin Valley area with respect to the revoked 1-hour ozone NAAQS. Consistent with the <E T="03">South Coast II</E> decision, anti-backsliding obligations for the revoked ozone standard may be terminated when the redesignation criteria for that standard are met. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</HD> Under the Clean Air Act, ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━