Air Plan Approval; Oklahoma; Updates to the State Implementation Plan for New Source Review Permitting and General SIP Provisions

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R06-OAR-2024-0031; FRL-12970-01-R6]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Oklahoma; Updates to the State Implementation Plan for New Source Review Permitting and General SIP Provisions</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 identified portions of revisions to the Oklahoma State Implementation Plan (SIP) submitted by the State of Oklahoma designee between 2002 and 2025 to update the Oklahoma New Source Review (NSR) permit program and make general updates to the Oklahoma SIP. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before December 17, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket No. EPA-R06-OAR-2024-0031, at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or via email to <E T="03">wiley.adina@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 Adina Wiley, telephone number (214) 665-2115, email address: <E T="03">wiley.adina@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">https://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> Adina Wiley, EPA Region 6 Office, Air Permits Section (ARPE), telephone number: (214) 665-2115, email address: <E T="03">wiley.adina@epa.gov.</E> We encourage the public to submit comments via <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> 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> Section 110 of the Act requires states to develop air pollution regulations and control strategies to ensure that air quality meets the EPA's National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). These ambient standards are established under section 109 of the Act and they currently address six criteria pollutants: carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, lead, particulate matter, and sulfur dioxide. The state's air regulations are contained in its SIP, which is basically a clean air plan. Each state is responsible for developing SIPs to demonstrate how the NAAQS will be achieved, maintained, and enforced. The SIP must be submitted to the EPA for approval and any changes a state makes to the approved SIP also must be submitted to the EPA for approval. When reviewing SIP submissions, the EPA's role is to approve state choices provided they meet the criteria of the CAA, and the applicable federal regulations pertaining to the specific submitted revision(s) being acted on. Section 110(a)(2)(C) of the CAA requires states to develop and submit to the EPA for approval into the SIP, preconstruction review and permitting programs applicable to certain new and modified stationary sources of air pollutants for attainment/unclassifiable and nonattainment areas that cover both major and minor new sources and modifications, collectively referred to as the NSR SIP. The CAA NSR SIP program is composed of three separate programs: Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD), Nonattainment New Source Review (NNSR), and minor NSR. PSD is established in part C of title I of the CAA and applies in areas that meet the NAAQS—“attainment areas”—as well as areas where there is insufficient information to determine if the area meets the NAAQS—“unclassifiable areas.” The NNSR program is established in part D of title I of the CAA and applies in areas that are not in attainment of the NAAQS—“nonattainment areas.” The minor NSR program addresses construction or modification activities that do not emit, or have the potential to emit, beyond certain major source/major modification thresholds and thus do not qualify as “major” and applies regardless of the designation of the area in which a source is located. The EPA regulations governing criteria that states must satisfy for EPA approval of their NSR programs as part of the SIP are contained in 40 CFR 51.160-51.166. The requirements at 40 CFR 51.160-51.164 apply generally to all preconstruction permitting programs and establish the minimum requirements for minor NSR programs that cover the construction and modification of minor sources and minor modifications to existing major stationary sources. Requirements specific to construction of new stationary sources and major modifications in nonattainment areas are codified in 40 CFR 51.165 for the NNSR program. Requirements for permitting of new stationary sources and major modifications in attainment areas subject to PSD, including additional public participation requirements, are found at 40 CFR 51.166. Title V of the CAA requires states to develop and submit to the EPA for approval, operating permit programs for major sources of air pollution and certain other sources. The EPA regulations governing criteria that states must satisfy for EPA approval of the title V permitting programs are contained in 40 CFR part 70. The Oklahoma air quality permit program addresses the CAA title I and title V permitting requirements through the Oklahoma implementing regulations in Oklahoma Administrative Code (OAC), Title 252—Department of Environmental Quality, Chapter 4—Rules of Practice and Procedure, and Chapter 100—Air Pollution Control. This proposed rulemaking will address the following revisions to the Oklahoma SIP to update the Oklahoma NSR program and make general updates to the Oklahoma SIP. Portions of the submitted Oklahoma regulations that are severable and specific to the Oklahoma title V permitting program will be addressed by the EPA in a separate, title V specific action. • By letter dated February 14, 2002, Mr. Brian C. Griffin, Oklahoma Secretary of Environment, submitted revisions to the Oklahoma SIP. This submittal was received by the EPA on March 5, 2002. The submittal includes updates and amendments to Oklahoma Administrative Code (OAC) 252, Chapter 100. The EPA has acted on all aspects of this submittal except for the portions pertaining to minor NSR changes at major NSR sources. • By letter dated June 24, 2010, Mr. J.D. Strong, Oklahoma Secretary of Environment, submitted revisions to the Oklahoma SIP. This submittal was received by the EPA on June 30, 2010. This proposed rulemaking addresses the updates and amendments to the Oklahoma major source permit program at OAC 252:100, Subchapter 8. • By letter dated July 16, 2010, Mr. J.D. Strong, Oklahoma Secretary of Environment, submitted revisions to the Oklahoma SIP. This submittal was received by the EPA on July 27, 2010. This proposed rulemaking evaluates the revisions to OAC 252:100-5-1.1 adopted on May 1, 2009, effective July 1, 2009. The EPA has taken separate actions on all other submitted revisions. • By letter dated July 16, 2010, Mr. J.D. Strong, Oklahoma Secretary of Environment, submitted revisions to the Oklahoma SIP specific for air permitting. This submittal was received by the EPA on July 27, 2010. This proposed rulemaking evaluates the revisions to OAC 252:100-8-2 adopted on April 28, 2006, effective on June 15, 2006. The EPA has taken separate actions on all other submitted revisions. • By letter dated February 6, 2012, Mr. Gary Sherrer, Oklahoma Secretary of Environment, submitted revisions to the Oklahoma SIP. This submittal was received by the EPA on March 23, 2012. This proposed rulemaking evaluates the revisions to the Oklahoma major source permit program at OAC 252:100-8-2 adopted on May 3, 2011, effective July 1, 2011. The EPA has taken separate actions on all other submitted revisions. • By letter dated January 18, 2013, Mr. Gary Sherrer, Oklahoma Secretary of Environment, submitted revisions to the Oklahoma SIP. This submittal was received by the EPA on February 6, 2013. This proposed rulemaking evaluates the revisions to the Oklahoma major source permit program at OAC 252:100-8-2 and OAC 252:100-8-4 adopted on March 29, 2012, effective July 1, 2012. The EPA has taken separate actions on all other submitted revisions. • By letter dated January 8, 2018, Mr. Michael Teague, Oklahoma Secretary of Energy Environment, submitted revisions to the Oklahoma SIP. This submittal was received by the EPA on January 12, 2018. This proposed rulemaking evaluates the revisions to the Oklahoma major source permit program at OAC 252:100-8-2 adopted on June ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 116k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━