Air Plan Approval; District of Columbia; Creation of Synthetic Minor Permit Program

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R03-OAR-2025-0734; FRL-13009-01-R3]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; District of Columbia; Creation of Synthetic Minor Permit Program</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to approve a state implementation plan (SIP) revision submitted by the Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE, the “Department”) on behalf of the District of Columbia (DC, the “District”). The revisions pertain to creating a synthetic minor permit program and resolving the regulatory differences between the District's current regulations and those regulations approved previously in Chapters 1 and 2 of the Air Quality Regulations. The intended effect of this action is to enable DC to create federally enforceable synthetic minor permit conditions for sources of criteria pollutants pursuant to section 110 of the Clean Air Act (CAA, the “Act”). This action is being taken under the CAA. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before December 22, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R03-OAR-2025-0734 at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> or via email to <E T="03">Talley.David@epa.gov.</E> For comments submitted at <E T="03">Regulations.gov,</E> follow the online instructions for submitting comments. Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from <E T="03">Regulations.gov.</E> For either manner of submission, 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 the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. 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">www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Yongtian He, Permits Branch (3AD10), Air & Radiation Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region III, 1600 John F Kennedy Boulevard, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103. The telephone number is (215) 814-2339. Mr. He can also be reached via electronic mail at <E T="03">he.yongtian@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> On August 11, 2023, the Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE) submitted a revision to the DC SIP to create a synthetic minor permit program and address regulatory differences between the District's current regulations and those approved previously in Chapters 1 and 2 of the Air Quality Regulations. DOEE submitted the SIP revision request along with a SIP revision related to Startup, Shutdown, and Malfunction (SSM). Those proposed SIP Revisions related to Chapter 1 and SSM will be processed in a separate SIP action. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> A SIP-approved minor source permitting program can include provisions for issuing permits that establish federally enforceable emissions limits to restrict the Potential to Emit (PTE) of certain pollutants below major stationary source and major modification applicability thresholds. “Synthetic minor” permits establish these federally enforceable emission limits for sources obtaining construction permits, and also establish these emission limits in the corresponding operating permits. This DC SIP revision is intended to create a synthetic minor permit program through provisions in title 20 of the District of Columbia Municipal Regulations (20 DCMR), specifically 20 DCMR Chapter 2 Section 200.6 and 200.7 as amended, in conjunction with other provisions that already existed in 20 DCMR Chapter 2 and were previously approved into the DC SIP. These provisions enable a new source or modification of an existing source to limit its PTE below major source thresholds in order to qualify as minor and avoid major new source review (NSR) applicability, including the prevention of significant deterioration (PSD) in attainment areas and nonattainment NSR (NNSR) in nonattainment areas. These provisions also allow new sources or modifications of existing sources to avoid major source status under title V of the CAA through limiting PTE. A stationary source may request federally enforceable permit limits to limit its PTE to below major source threshold, thus becoming a minor source “synthetically.” The intended effect is similar to federally enforceable state operating permit (FESOP) programs established in many states. State operating permit programs which have been incorporated into the SIP render operating permits issued pursuant to such a program federally enforceable. This FESOP mechanism allows sources to reduce their PTE to below the title V applicability thresholds and thereby legally avoid being subject to title V. On June 28, 1989 (54 FR 27274), the EPA published criteria for approving and incorporating into the SIP regulatory programs for the issuance of federally enforceable state operating permits (“June 28, 1989 Final Rule”). <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Permits issued pursuant to an operating permit program meeting these criteria and approved into the SIP are considered federally enforceable. The EPA has encouraged States to consider developing such programs in conjunction with title V operating permit programs for the purpose of creating federally enforceable limits on a source's PTE. The EPA published a guidance document on September 18, 1992 entitled “Limitation of Potential to Emit with Respect to Title V Applicability Thresholds” to address a state's ability to utilize a title V permit, or other federally-enforceable means, to limit the PTE for various purposes. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> On January 22, 1996, the EPA released the Seitz memo “EPA Interim Policy on Federal Enforceability Requirement for Limitations on Potential to Emit.” <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> This mechanism would enable sources to reduce their PTE of criteria pollutants to below the title V applicability thresholds and avoid being subject to title V. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  See “Requirements for the Preparation, Adoption, and Submittal of Implementation Plans; Approval and Promulgation of Implementation Plans,” June 28, 1989 (54 FR 27274). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-08/documents/threshld.pdf.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-08/documents/pottoemi.pdf.</E> </FTNT> The purpose of DC's synthetic minor program is to provide sources a mechanism to avoid Title V and new source review major source applicability and make those synthetic minor permit conditions both enforceable by the District and federally enforceable. Therefore, requirements for the development of a FESOP program are appropriate criteria with which to evaluate the DOEE synthetic minor program. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Summary of SIP Revision and EPA Analysis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. SIP Revisions</HD> The District of Columbia submitted a SIP revision to create a synthetic minor permitting program. The revisions are also intended to address regulatory differences between the District's current regulations and those regulations approved previously, thus clarifying and resolving errors in the existing regulations. Section 200 (General Permit Requirements) of 20 DCMR Chapter 2 (General and Non-attainment Area Permits) establishes synthetic minor program provisions. Section 200.6 allows the Department to establish a condition in a permit issued pursuant to this chapter that limits, in a manner that is enforceable as a practical matter, emissions from a source so as to avoid applicability of the permitting requirements of 20 DCMR Section 300.1 ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> DC's title V regulations). Essentially, this provision creates a synthetic minor operating permit program, along with other provisions in 20 DCMR Chapter 2. Section 200.7 allows the Department to establish a condition in a permit issued pursuant to this chapter that limits, in a manner that is enforceable as a practical matter, emissions from a source so as to avoid applicability of a District or Federal air quality regulation, other than the requirements of 20 DCMR section 300.1, except when prohibited by another District or Federal regulation. Essentially, the provision creates a synthetic minor preconstruction permit program. Through provisions in sections 200.6, 200.7 and other sections in 20 DCMR Chapter 2, DOEE establishes a synthetic minor program to issue synthetic minor operating permits and synthetic minor preconstruction permits in DC. Other substantive changes in Chapter 2 include revisions in the following sections: (1) in 20 DCMR section 200.8 establishes a source category permit covering a group of similar sources or emission units; (2) in 20 DCMR sections 200.9, 200.10, 200.11, 200.12, 200.13, 200.14, and 200.15 cover administrative aspects of permits issued in Chapter 2 including applications, data requirements, fees, signature process, exceptions and compliance; (3) in 20 DCMR section 202, Amendment, Suspensions, Revocation, and Denial of Permits, rev ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 22k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━