Finding of Failure To Attain and Reclassification of Tribal Portions of the Greater Connecticut Ozone Nonattainment Area as Serious for the 2015 Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R01-OAR-2024-0325; FRL-13014-01-R1]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Finding of Failure To Attain and Reclassification of Tribal Portions of the Greater Connecticut Ozone Nonattainment Area as Serious for the 2015 Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards</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) previously granted the State of Connecticut's request to reclassify the Greater Connecticut ozone nonattainment area from Moderate to Serious under the 2015 ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). That request, however, did not include areas governed by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and the Mohegan Indian Tribe that are located within this nonattainment area. Given that ozone monitoring data indicate that the Greater Connecticut area failed to attain the 2015 ozone NAAQS by the applicable attainment date, we are proposing to find that these tribal portions of the area did not attain the standards by the attainment date and to reclassify those portions of the area by operation of law to Serious nonattainment for the 2015 ozone NAAQS. This action, if finalized as proposed, would fulfill the EPA's statutory obligation to determine whether the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and the Mohegan Indian Tribe portions of the Greater Connecticut area attained the NAAQS by the attainment date. This action also solicits public comment on EPA's prior action on CT DEEP's request to exclude event-influenced air quality monitoring data from regulatory decisions. EPA is required to provide an opportunity for public comment on the claimed exceptional events and all supporting data. This proposed action provides the public with an opportunity to comment on the claimed exceptional events, all supporting documents, and the EPA's July 22, 2024 concurrence and nonconcurrence with CT DEEP's request. </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-R01-OAR-2024-0325 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> or via email to <E T="03">lillis.patrick@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">https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> Publicly available docket materials are available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Region 1 Regional Office, Air and Radiation Division, 5 Post Office Square—Suite 100, Boston, MA. EPA requests that if at all possible, you contact the contact listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section to schedule your inspection. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Patrick Lillis, Air and Radiation Division (Mail Code 5-MI), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 1 5 Post Office Square, Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts 02109-3912; tel. (617)-918-1067, or by email at <E T="03">lillis.patrick@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document whenever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1"> Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background and Purpose</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Ozone Reclassification</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">1. What is the background for the proposed action?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">2. Overview of Proposal</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">3. What is the statutory authority for the proposed actions?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">4. How does EPA determine whether an area has attained the 2015 ozone standard?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Exceptional Events</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">1. What is the background for the proposed action?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">2. Overview of Proposal</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. What is the EPA proposing and what is the rationale?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Evaluation of Design Value Data and Exceptional Events Documentation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Determination of Failure To Attain and Reclassification</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Serious Area Requirements and Proposed Schedule</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background and Purpose</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Ozone Reclassification</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD3">1. What is the background for the proposed action?</HD> The CAA requires the EPA to establish primary and secondary NAAQS for certain pervasive pollutants that “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health and welfare.” The primary NAAQS is designed to protect public health with an adequate margin of safety, and the secondary NAAQS is designed to protect public welfare and the environment. The EPA has set NAAQS for six common air pollutants, referred to as criteria pollutants, including ozone. The NAAQS represent the air quality levels an area must meet to comply with the CAA. Ozone is a gas composed of three oxygen atoms and is created by chemical reactions between volatile organic compounds (VOC) and oxides of nitrogen (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) in the atmosphere in the presence of sunlight. Ground-level ozone can harm human health and the environment. Ozone exposure has been associated with increases in susceptibility to respiratory infections, medication use by asthmatics, doctor visits, and emergency department visits and hospital admissions for individuals with respiratory disease. Ozone exposure may also contribute to premature death, especially in people with heart and lung disease. In October 2015, the EPA strengthened the primary and secondary eight-hour ozone NAAQS from 0.075 parts per million (ppm) to 0.070 ppm (“2015 ozone NAAQS”). <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> In accordance with section 107(d) of the CAA, the EPA must designate an area “nonattainment” if it is violating the NAAQS or if it is contributing to a violation of the NAAQS in a nearby area. With respect to the ozone NAAQS, the EPA further classifies nonattainment areas as “Marginal,” “Moderate,” “Serious,” “Severe,” or “Extreme,” depending upon the ozone design value for an area. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> As a general matter, higher classified ozone nonattainment areas are subject to additional CAA planning requirements than lower classified areas but are allowed more time to demonstrate attainment of the ozone NAAQS. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  80 FR 65291, October 26, 2015. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  See CAA section 181(a)(1). For the 2015 ozone NAAQS, the design value at each monitoring site is the annual fourth-highest daily maximum 8-hour average ozone concentration, averaged over three years. The design value for an area is the highest design value among the monitoring sites in the area. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  See, generally, subpart 2 of part D of title I of the CAA. </FTNT> Effective on August 3, 2018, the EPA designated 52 areas throughout the country as nonattainment for the 2015 ozone NAAQS. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> In a separate action, the EPA assigned classification thresholds and attainment dates based on the severity of an area's ozone problem, determined by the area's design value (DV). <E T="51">5 6</E> <FTREF/> The EPA established the attainment date for Marginal, Moderate, and Serious nonattainment areas as 3 years, 6 years, and 9 years, respectively, from the effective date of the final designations. Thus, the attainment date for Marginal nonattainment areas for the 2015 ozone NAAQS was August 3, 2021, the attainment date for Moderate areas was August 3, 2024, and the attainment date for Serious areas is August 3, 2027. On October 7, 2022, the EPA determined that 22 areas including the Greater Connecticut area, did not attain the standards by the Marginal attainment date, <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> and these areas were reclassified as Moderate by operation of law. The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and the Mohegan Indian Tribe, which are the two tribal territories being addressed in this proposed action, are located within the boundaries of the Greater Connecticut nonattainment area. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  83 FR 25776, June 4, 2018. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  83 FR 10376, May 8, 2018. <SU>6</SU>  CAA section 181(b)(2)(A). A DV is a statistic used to compare data collected at an ambient air quality monitoring site to the applicable NAAQS to determine compliance with the standard. The data handling conventions for calculating DVs for the 2015 ozone NAAQS are specified in appendix U to 40 CFR part 50. <E T="03">See ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 41k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━