Air Plan Approval; Michigan; Revisions to Part 1 and 2 Rules

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R05-OAR-2022-0295; FRL-10162-05-R5]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Michigan; Revisions to Part 1 and 2 Rules</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 revisions to the Michigan State Implementation Plan (SIP) that Michigan's Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) submitted on March 8, 2022. These revisions amend Michigan's SIP-approved rules for minor New Source Review (NSR) found in Michigan Air Pollution Control Rules Part 2, Air Use Approval. This action updates Michigan's minor NSR rules in the SIP to exempt certain processes and equipment from the requirement to obtain a preconstruction permit. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective on December 18, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-R05-OAR-2022-0295. 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">i.e.,</E> Confidential Business Information (CBI), Proprietary Business Information (PBI), 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 either through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or at the Environmental Protection Agency, Region 5, Air and Radiation Division, 77 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60604. This facility is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, excluding Federal holidays. We recommend that you telephone David Ogulei, Environmental Engineer, at (312) 353-0987 before visiting the Region 5 office. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> David Ogulei, Air and Radiation Division (AR-18J), Environmental Protection Agency, Region 5, 77 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60604, (312) 353-0987, <E T="03">Ogulei.david@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document whenever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean EPA. This supplementary information section is arranged as follows: <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Summary of EPA Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. EPA's Response to Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. What action is EPA taking?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Incorporation by Reference.</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> Section 110(a)(2)(C) of the Clean Air Act (CAA or Act) requires that the SIP include a program to provide for the regulation of the modification and construction of any stationary source within the areas covered by the plan as necessary to ensure that National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) are achieved. This includes a program for permitting construction and modification of both major sources and minor sources that the State deems necessary to protect air quality. Specific elements for an approvable construction permitting plan are found in the implementing regulations at 40 CFR 51 subpart I—Review of New Sources and Modifications. Requirements relevant to minor construction programs are 40 CFR 51.160-51.164. Generally, State minor NSR programs must set forth legally enforceable procedures that allow the State to determine if a planned construction activity would result in a violation of the State's SIP or a national standard and prevent any activity that would do so. In accordance with 40 CFR 51.162, the State plan must identify the responsible agency for making permitting decisions. Under 40 CFR 51.160, the plan must identify the types and sizes of activities that are subject to the plan, including a discussion of the basis for determining which facilities will be subject to review, provide that sources undertaking an activity submit adequate information regarding the location, design, and emissions related information, and discuss the air quality data and dispersion or other air quality modeling used to determine whether the activity would comply with the CAA. Restrictions on allowable stack heights are found in 40 CFR 51.164. Under 40 CFR 51.161, the plan must meet specific criteria for public availability of information and opportunity for public comment. Finally, 40 CFR 51.163 requires that the plan identify the administrative procedures that will be followed in making permitting decisions. Michigan's minor source preconstruction permitting rules are contained in Part 2 of the Michigan Administrative Code, which EPA last approved into the Michigan SIP on April 27, 2023 (88 FR 25498). <E T="03">See</E> 40 CFR 52.1170. Michigan's SIP generally requires a permit to install (PTI) for any change resulting in an increase in the emissions of a regulated pollutant unless the change falls into one or more of the categories of exemptions contained in Michigan R 336.1280 through Michigan R 336.1290. On September 27, 2022 (87 FR 58471), EPA proposed to approve (via a direct final rulemaking) revisions to the Michigan SIP that EGLE submitted on March 8, 2022. During the public comment period, EPA received adverse comments on the proposed approval of revisions to Michigan R 336.1285 “Permit to install exemptions; miscellaneous” and R 336.1291 “Permit to install exemptions; emission units with “de minimis” emissions.” These rules exempt certain processes and equipment from Michigan's minor NSR permitting program. On November 15, 2022 (87 FR 68364), EPA published an action withdrawing the direct final rule. On April 27, 2023 (88 FR 25498), EPA approved the revisions to Michigan's Air Pollution Control Rules Part 1, Definitions, and Part 2, Air Use Approval, for inclusion in the Michigan SIP but deferred action on the Michigan Part 2 rule revisions to R 336.1285 and R 336.1291. On November 14, 2023, in response to comments we received on the 2022 direct final rule, Michigan supplemented its March 8, 2022, submittal with additional information regarding Michigan R 336.1285(2)(oo) and R 336.1291. On April 25, 2024 (89 FR 31677), EPA proposed approval of the Michigan Part 2 rule revisions to Michigan R 336.1285 “Permit to install exemptions; miscellaneous” and R 336.1291 “Permit to install exemptions; emission units with “de minimis” emissions.” <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Summary of EPA Analysis</HD> When determining approvability of State permitting exemption rules, EPA evaluates the possibility that an exemption might allow an activity that should be subject to major or minor source permitting requirements to escape appropriate review and permitting, that sources are required to maintain information adequate for the State to ensure that exemptions have been applied appropriately, and that the exemptions would not interfere with any applicable requirement concerning attainment of any NAAQS and reasonable further progress, or any other applicable requirement of the CAA. Consistent with 40 CFR 51.160-51.164 and section 110 of the Act, EPA has previously approved into the Michigan SIP certain minor source air permit exemptions found in Michigan R 336.1280 through R 336.1290 (Rules 280-290), as well as Michigan R 336.1278 and R 336.1278a (Rules 278 and 278a), which explain the scope of those exemptions. <E T="03">See</E> 40 CFR 52.1170. These rules provide the requirements for certain sources and emission units that are seeking to avoid air permitting, subject to the recordkeeping requirements of those provisions. The existing air permit exemptions are specific to certain categories of equipment such as oil and gas processing, plastic processing, and surface coating, among others. Michigan's air permit exemption rules have restrictions on the use of the exemptions in Michigan R 336.1280-336.1290 and require sources using the exemptions to maintain certain records to demonstrate that the exemptions have been applied appropriately. Specific exemptions may include additional monitoring and recordkeeping as necessary to ensure that the equipment is operating as required under the exemption. As further explained below, this action pertains to additional air permit exemptions found in Michigan R 336.1285(oo) and R 336.1291. Sources seeking to rely on the new exemptions in Michigan R 336.1285(oo) and R 336.1291 would generally be subject to the same recordkeeping requirements as those that currently apply to those relying on Michigan R 336.1280-336.1290. Under Michigan R 336.1278, the exemptions in R 336.1280 to R 336.1291 do not apply to any “activity” that is subject to the prevention of significant deterioration of air quality (PSD) regulations or NSR regulations for major sources in nonattainment areas. An “activity” is defined to include all “concurrent and related installation, construction, reconstruction, relocation, or modification of any process or process equipment,” which will ensure that projects are aggregated properly before applying an exemption. The exemptions in Michigan R 336.1280 to R 336.1291 also do not apply to the construction, modification, or reconstruction of major sources of hazardous pollutants as defined in 40 CFR parts 61 and 63. Further, the exemptions apply to the requirement to obtain a PTI only and do not exempt any source from complying with any other applicable requirement or existing permit limitation. In this final action, EPA finds that EGLE's proposed revisions to Michigan's SIP-approved Part 2 rules meet the requirements of section 110(a)(2) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 54k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━