Air Plan Approval; Pennsylvania; Redesignation of the Beaver County Nonattainment Area to Attainment and Approval of the Area's Maintenance Plan for the 2010 1-Hour Primary Sulfur Dioxide National Ambient Air Quality Standard

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Parts 52 and 81</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R03-OAR-2024-0624; FRL-12500-02-R3]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Pennsylvania; Redesignation of the Beaver County Nonattainment Area to Attainment and Approval of the Area's Maintenance Plan for the 2010 1-Hour Primary Sulfur Dioxide National Ambient Air Quality Standard</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 both a redesignation request and state implementation plan (SIP) revision submitted on August 12, 2024 by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The request asked the EPA to redesignate the Beaver County, Pennsylvania area (Beaver County Area) from nonattainment to attainment for the 2010 1-hour primary sulfur dioxide (SO <E T="52">2</E> ) national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS), while the SIP revision included Beaver County's maintenance plan for the 2010 1-hour primary SO <E T="52">2</E> standard for the Beaver County Area. The EPA is approving this redesignation of the Beaver County Area from nonattainment to attainment for the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS and the revision to the Pennsylvania SIP in accordance with the requirements of the Clean Air Act (CAA). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective on December 18, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID Number EPA-R03-OAR-2024-0624. All documents in the docket are listed on the <E T="03">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 (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 through <E T="03">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. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Philip McGuire, Planning & Implementation Branch (3AD30), Air & Radiation Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region III, 1600 John F Kennedy Boulevard, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103. The telephone number is (215) 814-2251. Mr. McGuire can also be reached via electronic mail at <E T="03">mcguire.philip@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> On July 24, 2025 (90 FR 34815), the EPA published a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In the NPRM, the EPA proposed to redesignate the Beaver County, Pennsylvania area from nonattainment to attainment for the 2010 1-hour primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS. The EPA also proposed approval of a revision to the Pennsylvania SIP which included Beaver County's maintenance plan for the 2010 1-hour primary SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS, the approval of which is required for redesignation under CAA section 107(d)(3)(E). The formal SIP revision was submitted by Pennsylvania on August 12, 2024. The public comment period for the proposed rulemaking ended on August 25, 2025 and the EPA received no comments during the public comment period. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Summary of SIP Revision and the EPA Analysis</HD> The July 24, 2025 proposal (90 FR 34815) provides a detailed discussion of the requirements of CAA section 107(d)(3)(E)—which identifies the five criteria that must be met before a nonattainment area may be redesignated to attainment—and the EPA's analysis of how each requirement was met. To summarize this discussion: (1) the EPA determined that the Beaver County Area attained the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS based on air quality monitoring data in compliance with the standard and on emissions data that is below modeled emissions limits identified in Pennsylvania's 2017 attainment plan; (2) the EPA determined that Pennsylvania has a fully approved SIP for the Beaver County Area under section 110(k) of the CAA for all requirements applicable for purposes of redesignation; (3) the EPA determined that the improvement in the Beaver County Area's air quality is due to permanent and enforceable reductions in emissions, including the closures of multiple facilities and permitted SO <E T="52">2</E> emissions limits at various sources throughout the Beaver County Area; (4) the EPA determined that Pennsylvania's maintenance plan was fully approvable and ensures that the Beaver County Area will continue to attain the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS for at least 10 years following redesignation and further includes contingency measures to correct for any potential future 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS violations;  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> and (5) the EPA determined that Pennsylvania has met all applicable requirements for the Beaver County Area under CAA section 110 and part D. Additional rationale for the EPA's proposed action are explained in the NPRM, and will not be restated here. No public comments were received on the NPRM. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Any measured monitor exceedances of the NAAQS will also prompt a Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection-led investigation and enforcement, as appropriate. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Final Action</HD> The EPA is approving the redesignation of the Beaver County Area from nonattainment to attainment in accordance with Pennsylvania's August 12, 2024, request. The criteria under CAA section 107(d)(3)(E) as specific to the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS have been met. The EPA is determining that the Beaver County Area is attaining the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS, the state has a fully approved applicable state implementation plan under CAA section 110(k), the improvement in air quality is due to permanent and enforceable SO <E T="52">2</E> emissions reductions in the Beaver County Area, the state now has a fully approved maintenance plan for the area (as noted below), and the state has met all requirements applicable to the area under CAA section 110 and part D of title I of the CAA. On this basis, the EPA is approving the redesignation request from Pennsylvania for the Beaver County Area and changing the legal designation of the Beaver County Area at 40 CFR part 81 to attainment for the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS. The EPA is also approving the Beaver County 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS maintenance plan as a revision to the Pennsylvania SIP. The maintenance plan demonstrates that the area will continue to maintain the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS for at least 10 years following redesignation and includes a process to implement contingency measures to remedy any future violations of the 2010 SO <E T="52">2</E> NAAQS. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</HD> Under the Clean Air Act, the Administrator is required to approve a SIP submission that complies with the provisions of the Clean Air Act and applicable Federal regulations. 42 U.S.C. 7410(k); 40 CFR 52.02(a). Thus, in reviewing SIP submissions, the EPA's role is to approve state choices, provided that they meet the criteria of the Clean Air Act. Accordingly, this action merely approves state law as meeting Federal requirements and does not impose additional requirements beyond those imposed by state law. For that reason, this action: • Is not a significant regulatory action subject to review by the Office of Management and Budget under Executive Order 12866 (58 FR 51735, October 4, 1993); • Is not subject to Executive Order 14192 (90 FR 9065, February 6, 2025) because SIP actions are exempt from review under Executive Order 12866; • Does not impose an information collection burden under the provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act (44 U.S.C. 3501 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ); • Is certified as not having a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities under the Regulatory Flexibility Act (5 U.S.C. 601 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ); • Does not contain any unfunded mandate or significantly or uniquely affect small governments, as described in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (Pub. L. 104-4); • Does not have federalism implications as specified in Executive Order 13132 (64 FR 43255, August 10, 1999); • Is not subject to Executive Order 13045 (62 FR 19885, April 23, 1997) because it approves a state program; • Is not a significant regulatory action subject to Executive Order 13211 (66 FR 28355, May 22, 2001); and • Is not subject to requirements of section 12(d) of the National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act of 1995 (15 U.S.C. 272 note) because application of those requirements would be inconsistent with the Clean Air Act. In addition, the SIP is not approved to apply on any Indian reservation land or in any other area where the EPA or an Indian Tribe has demonstrated that a Tribe has jurisdiction. In those areas of Indian country, the rule does not have Tribal implications and will not impose substantial direct costs on Tribal governments or preempt Tribal law as specified by Executive Order 13175 (65 FR 67249, November 9, 2000). This action is subject to the Congressional Review Act, and the EPA will submit a rule report to each House of the Congress and to the Comptroller General of the United States. This action is not a “major rule” as defined by 5 U.S.C. 804(2). Under section 307(b)(1) of the Clean Air Act, petitions for judicial review of this action must be filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the appropriate circuit by January 20, 2026. Filing ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 15k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━