Air Plan Approval; New York; Athens Generating Plant

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <SUBAGY>40 CFR Part 52</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R02-OAR-2025-0243; FRL 12785-01-R2]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; New York; Athens Generating Plant</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 revision to the State of New York's State Implementation Plan (SIP) for the ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) related to a Source-specific SIP (SSSIP) revision for the Athens Generating Plant, located at 9300 US Route 9 West, Athens, NY 12015 (“Athens” or “the Facility”). The EPA is proposing to find that the control options in this SSSIP revision implement Reasonably Available Control Technology (RACT) with respect to Oxides of Nitrogen (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) emissions from the relevant Facility sources, which are identified as three combined-cycle Westinghouse model 501G combustion turbines with associated heat recovery steam generators and steam turbines (identified as Emission Units U-00001, U-00002, and U-00003 in the Facility's Title V permit and New York's submission). This SSSIP revision is intended to implement NOx RACT for the relevant Facility sources in accordance with the requirements for implementation of the 2008 and 2015 ozone NAAQS. The EPA proposes to determine that this action will not interfere with ozone NAAQS requirements and that it meets all applicable requirements of the Clean Air Act (CAA). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before December 22, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID Number EPA-R02-OAR- 2025-0243 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Although listed in the index, some information is not publicly available, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) (formerly referred to as 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 electronically through <E T="03">https://www.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> . The EPA may publish any comment received to its public docket. Do not submit electronically any information you consider to be CUI 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, the full EPA public comment policy, information about CUI or multimedia submissions, and general guidance on making effective comments, please visit <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Nicholas Ferreira, Environmental Protection Agency, Region 2 Office, 290 Broadway, 25th Floor, New York, New York 10007-1866, at (212) 637-3127, or by email at <E T="03">ferreira.nicholas@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> For additional information on regulatory background and the EPA's technical findings relating to the Facility RACT, the reader can refer to the Technical Support Document (TSD) that is contained in the EPA docket assigned to this <E T="04">Federal Register</E> document. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. The EPA's Evaluation of New York's Submission</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Proposed 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. Background</HD> Ground level ozone is a secondary air pollutant that is created by the chemical reactions that occur when ozone precursors, including nitrogen oxides (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) and volatile organic compounds (VOC), chemically react in the presence of sunlight. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Emissions from industrial facilities are anthropogenic sources of ozone precursors. The EPA regulates criteria pollutants, such as ozone, by establishing NAAQS. With respect to this proposed action, there are two relevant ozone NAAQS. First, on March 12, 2008, the EPA promulgated a revision to the ozone NAAQS, setting both the primary and secondary standards at 0.075 parts per million (ppm), averaged over an 8-hour time frame (“The 2008 8-hour Ozone Standard”). <E T="03">See</E> 73 FR 16436 (March 27, 2008). Second, on October 1, 2015, the EPA lowered these standards to 0.070 ppm, averaged over an 8-hour time frame (“The 2015 8-hour Ozone Standard”). <E T="03">See</E> 80 FR 65292 (October 26, 2015). <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">Primary standards</E> provide public health protection, including protecting the health of “sensitive” populations such as asthmatics, children, and the elderly. <E T="03">Secondary standards</E> provide public welfare protection, including protection against decreased visibility and damage to animals, crops, vegetation, and buildings. </FTNT> The State of New York has two ozone nonattainment areas. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> CAA section 182 requires states with ozone NAAs to include in their SIPs, among other things, provisions to require the implementation of RACT. In addition, under CAA section 184, the State of New York is located within the Ozone Transport Region (OTR), which means that all major sources of VOC and NOx within the State are subject to statewide RACT requirements. RACT is defined as the lowest emission limit that a source is capable of meeting through the application of control technology that is reasonably available considering technological and economic feasibility. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  The two ozone nonattainment areas in New York are: (1) Jamestown, and (2) the New York Metro Area, consisting of the Bronx County, Kings County, Nassau County, New York County, Queens County, Richmond County, Rockland County, Suffolk County, Westchester County. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  See, EPA, “Guidance for determining acceptability of SIP regulations in non-attainment areas,” memo 1976, Roger Strelow, <E T="03">https://www3.epa.gov/ttn/naaqs/aqmguide/collection/cp2/19761209_strelow_ract.pdf.</E> </FTNT> CAA section 184(b)(2) and 182(f)(1) set forth the requirements to establish control measures to implement RACT for major sources of VOC and/or NO <E T="52">X</E> located in the OTR. RACT for a particular source is determined on a case-by-case basis, considering the technological and economic circumstances of the individual source. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) RACT regulations require applicable facilities to meet certain requirements, referred to as “presumptive RACT requirements.” These presumptive requirements generally require sources to implement emission limits, control efficiency requirements, specific control technologies, averaging plans, and/or fuel/raw material switching practices. Under existing NYSDEC RACT regulations, facilities are required to assess all technologically feasible control options that meet the State's cost threshold. The cost threshold for NYSDEC RACT requirements is found under NYSDEC 2013 policy, “DAR-20 Economic and Technical Analysis for Reasonably Available Control Technology (RACT).” Under this policy, facilities must consider in their RACT determinations control technologies that remove VOC or NO <E T="52">X</E> emissions up to a certain cost threshold, expressed in a dollar amount per ton of VOC or NO <E T="52">X</E> removed, which includes an inflation-adjusted economic threshold. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  The DAR-20 cost threshold is based on 1994 dollars. State of New York relies on the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics inflationary calculator to adjust the RACT economic feasibility threshold over time for inflation. <E T="03">See https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm.</E> </FTNT> In some instances, the presumptive RACT requirements may not be technologically or economically feasible for a certain source, and the State can make a source-specific RACT determination, which is submitted to the EPA as a SSSIP. A SSSIP should include a facility's RACT plan that demonstrates how a facility will implement RACT; as well as the applicable CAA Title V operating permit conditions that address RACT requirements. Upon the EPA's final approval of a SSSIP, the relevant RACT permit conditions for a Facility become part of the Federally enforceable SIP. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. The EPA's Evaluation of New York's Submission</HD> This action relates to a SSSIP revision that concerns Athens Generating Plant (“Athens” or “the Facility”), which is combined-cycle power plant that generates 1,080 megawatts (MW) of electricity for sale to New York State's electricity grid system. The sources at issue in this action are the Facility's three combined-cycle Westinghouse 501G combustion turbines, each with a base load of 245 MW, with associated heat recovery steam generators (HRSGs) and steam turbines, each with a base load of 115MW used to generate electricity (Emission Units U-00001, U-00002, and U-00003). ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 23k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━