Air Plan Approval; California; Eastern Kern Air Pollution Control District; Stationary Combustion Turbines

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R09-OAR-2025-0060; FRL-12608-03-R9]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; California; Eastern Kern Air Pollution Control District; Stationary Combustion Turbines</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 a revision to the Eastern Kern Air Pollution Control District (EKAPCD or “District”) portion of the California State Implementation Plan (SIP). This revision concerns emissions of oxides of nitrogen (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) from stationary gas turbines. We are approving a local rule that regulates these emissions sources under the Clean Air Act (CAA or “Act”). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective December 22, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-R09-OAR-2025-0060. 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 (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">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> La Kenya Evans-Hopper, EPA Region IX, 75 Hawthorne St., San Francisco, CA 94105; phone: (415) 972-3245; email: <E T="03">evanshopper.lakenya@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-2">I. Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Public Comments and EPA Responses</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. EPA Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Proposed Action</HD> On June 20, 2025 (90 FR 26232), the EPA proposed to approve the following rule into the California SIP. <GPOTABLE COLS="5" OPTS="L2,nj,tp0,i1" CDEF="xs66,9,r50,12,12"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Local agency</CHED> <CHED H="1">Rule No.</CHED> <CHED H="1">Rule title</CHED> <CHED H="1">Amended</CHED> <CHED H="1">Submitted</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">EKAPCD</ENT> <ENT>425</ENT> <ENT>Stationary Gas Turbines (Oxides of Nitrogen)</ENT> <ENT>11/13/2024</ENT> <ENT>12/12/2024</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> We proposed to approve this rule because we determined that it complies with the relevant CAA requirements. Our proposed action contains more information on the rule and our evaluation. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Public Comments and EPA Responses</HD> The EPA's proposed action provided a 30-day public comment period. During this period, we received four anonymous comments. The full texts of these comments are available in the docket for this rulemaking. Two of the comments were positive in response to our Determination to Defer Sanctions. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> One comment was in support of our decision to defer offset and highway sanctions for California and encouraged the EPA to maintain oversight for the implementation of EKAPCD Rule 425—Stationary Gas Turbines (Oxides of Nitrogen), amended November 13, 2024 (“Rule 425”). The commenter stated that long-term compliance and transparency will be key to protecting public health in the Eastern Kern region. The second comment was in support of approving Rule 425 into the SIP. The EPA thanks the commenters for their comments. As discussed in more detail below, we received two additional comments addressing specific aspects of the proposed rulemaking. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  “Determination to Defer Sanctions; California; Eastern Kern Air Pollution Control District; Stationary Combustion Turbines,” June 20, 2025 (90 FR 26207). </FTNT> The first of these two additional comments recommended that the EPA not revise the air pollution requirements in Eastern Kern and use “the stricter CA regulations” for every State in the Union. The EPA thanks the commenter for their comment. This rulemaking is for a specific local air pollution control district within California, the EKAPCD, and air pollution control requirements outside of the EKAPCD are beyond the scope of this rule. With respect to the recommendation that the EPA not revise the air pollution requirements within EKAPCD, and instead use “stricter CA regulations” in EKAPCD, such an approach is not available in the current rulemaking. Firstly, the commenter has not identified any specific California regulations believed to be “stricter” than Rule 425. Rule 425 regulates emissions of oxides of nitrogen (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) from combustion turbines. In California, local air pollution control districts typically adopt regulations for these types of emissions sources and submit them to the California Air Resources Board (CARB). CARB then decides whether to submit these rules to the EPA for inclusion in the SIP. It is the California State Government, through CARB, that maintains the California SIP and chooses which regulations and materials to submit to the EPA for including into the SIP. Rule 425 is thus the applicable California regulation for the area. Accordingly, it is not clear what other “stricter CA regulation” the commenter is referring to. There is no other applicable California regulation that has been submitted to the EPA. Although CARB may directly regulate some categories of sources, we are not aware of any CARB regulations that establish NO <E T="52">X</E> emissions limitations for combustion turbines. Secondly, under the cooperative federalism framework established by the Act, the states adopt regulations and submit them to the EPA for approval into the SIP. Under section 110(k)(3) of the CAA, the EPA must approve a SIP submission if it meets the applicable requirements of the Act. Accordingly, unless the EPA has identified a deficiency with the present submission, the EPA does not have discretion to disapprove the submission. In addition, CAA section 110(c)(1)(B) specifies that the EPA may only impose its own regulations, using a Federal Implementation Plan (FIP), if the EPA has disapproved a SIP submission and identified a deficiency in that submission that prevents full approval. The EPA may not otherwise substitute its own regulations for those submitted by the state. To the extent that the commenter may be suggesting that the EPA disapprove the submission because Rule 425 should be “stricter” to meet CAA requirements, the commenter has not specified a deficiency that would permit the EPA to disapprove the submission, and we disagree with this suggestion. Our proposed action and technical support document (TSD) contained an analysis of the rule, including its stringency, concluding that it meets the applicable requirements of the Act. As explained in our proposal, the EKAPCD is required to implement Reasonably Available Control Technology (RACT) requirements for any category of sources covered by a Control Techniques Guidelines document and for any major stationary source of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) or NO <E T="52">X</E> . See CAA sections 182(b)(2) and (f). The District relies on Rule 425 to establish RACT-level controls for combustion turbines at major sources of NO <E T="52">X</E> within the District. In this action, California is correcting a deficiency that we previously identified related to the stringency of the NO <E T="52">X</E> emissions limitations in Rule 425 for a single combustion turbine in the District, the Westinghouse W251B10 combustion turbine. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> In 2023, we determined that Rule 425 was largely consistent with the relevant CAA requirements, including the requirement to implement RACT for covered major sources, except for the Westinghouse W251B10 combustion turbine. To address the deficiency, the District amended Rule 425 by lowering the NO <E T="52">X</E> emissions limitation applicable to the unit when burning gaseous fuel from 25 parts per million by volume (ppmv) to 20 ppmv and removed the liquid fuel emissions limitation of 65 ppmv. With respect to the RACT requirement, the Westinghouse W251B10 combustion turbine is currently equipped with dry low NO <E T="52">X</E> combustors to control NO <E T="52">X</E> emissions. The EKAPCD provided a response document with an analysis to demonstrate that it is not cost effective for this Westinghouse turbine to be retrofitted with selective catalytic reduction (SCR), and that SCR is thus not required to meet RACT for this unit. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> The EPA concluded that Rule 425 represents RACT level control for this unit and that the District has addressed the prior deficiency. Please see our proposal and TSD for additional details. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  88 FR 39182 (June 15, 2025). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  Response to Eastern Kern Air Pollution Control District Request regarding the SIP and Rule 425 Modification, sent on January 3, 2024 (Response Document) as found in our docket at EPA-R09-OAR-2025-0060. </F ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 19k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━