Air Plan Approval; Texas and Oklahoma; Texas Regional Haze Plans for the First and Second Implementation Periods and Five-Year Progress Report; Oklahoma Regional Haze Plan for the First Implementation Period

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R06-OAR-2025-0197; FRL-12217-02-R6]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Texas and Oklahoma; Texas Regional Haze Plans for the First and Second Implementation Periods and Five-Year Progress Report; Oklahoma Regional Haze Plan for the First Implementation Period</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 the regional haze State Implementation Plan (SIP) revisions submitted by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ or Texas), dated March 20, 2014, and July 20, 2021, as satisfying applicable requirements under the Clean Air Act (CAA or Act) and EPA's Regional Haze Rule (RHR). Additionally, the EPA is approving portions of the 2009 Texas Regional Haze SIP submission and portions of the 2010 Oklahoma Regional Haze SIP submission that relate to reasonable progress requirements for the first planning period from 2007 through 2018. The EPA is taking these actions pursuant to sections 110 and 169A of the Act. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective on January 5, 2026. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID EPA-R06-OAR-2025-0197. All documents in the docket are listed on the <E T="03">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">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. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Michael Feldman, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 6, Air and Radiation Division, SO <E T="52">2</E> and Regional Haze Section (ARSH), 1201 Elm Street, Suite 500, Dallas, Texas 75270, 214-665-9793, <E T="03">Feldman.Michael@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Rationale for This Final Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Public Comments Received on the Proposed Action and Responses to Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Impact on Areas of Indian Country</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Final Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> On March 31, 2009, Texas submitted a revision to its SIP to address regional haze for the first planning period  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> (2009 Plan). Texas made this SIP submission to satisfy the requirements of the CAA's regional haze program pursuant to CAA sections 169A and 169B and 40 CFR 51.308. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  We use the term “planning period” and “implementation period” interchangeably throughout this preamble and in the associated RTC Document. </FTNT> As detailed in our May 2025 Proposed Rule, the EPA is approving the portions of the Texas 2009 Plan addressing the following requirements which were previously disapproved:  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  81 FR 296 (January 5, 2016). As explained in the May 2025 Proposed Rule, the Fifth Circuit granted the EPA's motion for partial voluntary vacatur on December 17, 2024, vacating the SIP disapprovals and FIP portions of the 2016 Final Rule. <E T="03">Texas</E> v. <E T="03">EPA,</E> Case No. 16-60118, Order (December 17, 2024). </FTNT> • Section 51.308(d)(1)(i)(A) and (d)(1)(ii), regarding Texas's consideration of the four statutory factors in establishing its reasonable progress goals for the Guadalupe Mountains and Big Bend National Parks; • Section 51.308(d)(1)(i)(B), regarding Texas's calculation of the emission reductions needed to achieve the uniform rates of progress for the Guadalupe Mountains and Big Bend National Parks; • Section 51.308(d)(2)(iii), regarding Texas's calculation of natural visibility conditions for the Guadalupe Mountains and Big Bend National Parks; • Section 51.308(d)(2)(iv)(A), regarding Texas's calculation of the number of deciviews by which baseline conditions exceed natural visibility conditions for the Guadalupe Mountains and Big Bend National Parks; • Section 51.308(d)(3)(i), regarding consultation requirements with other states where emissions from Texas are reasonably anticipated to contribute to visibility impairment in any Class I area located in another state or states; • Section 51.308(d)(3)(ii), regarding Texas securing its share of reductions necessary to achieve the reasonable progress goals at impacted Class I areas in other states; • Section 51.308(d)(3)(iii), regarding Texas's documentation of its technical basis for which it is relying on to determine its apportionment of emission reductions necessary for those Class I areas in other states for which it affects; and • Section 51.308(d)(3)(v)(C), regarding Texas's emission limitations and schedules for compliance to achieve the reasonable progress goals. Similarly, we are also approving the portion of Oklahoma's first planning period SIP addressing 40 CFR 51.308(d)(1)  <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> which we previously disapproved. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> The May 2025 Proposed Rule provided background on the requirements of the CAA and RHR, summarized Texas's 2009 Plan and Oklahoma's 2010 Plan, and explained the rationale for our proposed approvals. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> That background and rationale will not be restated in full here. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  Excluding the portion addressing 40 CFR 51.308(d)(1)(vi), which we previously approved. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  81 FR 296 (January 5, 2016). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  90 FR 22166 (May 23, 2025). See sections II, III, and V of the proposal. </FTNT> On March 20, 2014, Texas submitted its five-year progress report as a SIP revision (2014 Plan) to satisfy the requirements of 40 CFR 51.308(g) and (h). The May 2025 Proposed Rule provided background on the requirements of the CAA and RHR, summarized Texas's 2014 Plan, and explained the rationale for our proposed approval. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> That background and rationale will not be restated in full here. <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  90 FR 22166 (May 23, 2025). See sections II, III, and V of the proposal. </FTNT> On July 20, 2021, the TCEQ submitted a revision to its SIP (2021 Plan) to address the State's regional haze obligations for the second planning period, which runs through 2028, in accordance with CAA sections 169A and the RHR at 40 CFR 51.308(f). On October 15, 2024, the EPA proposed to approve the elements of the 2021 Plan related to requirements contained in 40 CFR 51.308(f)(1), (f)(4), (f)(5), <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> and (f)(6) and to disapprove the elements of the 2021 Plan related to requirements contained in 40 CFR 51.308(f)(2), (f)(3), and (i). During that public notice-and-comment period, the EPA received several adverse comments. The full text of comments received on the October 15, 2024, proposal are available via Docket ID Number EPA-R06-OAR-2021-0539 at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> On May 23, 2025 (May 2025 Proposed Rule), the EPA withdrew the October 15, 2024, proposal and proposed to approve Texas's 2021 Plan in full. The May 2025 Proposed Rule provided background on the requirements of the CAA and RHR, summarized Texas's 2021 Plan, and explained the rationale for our proposed approval. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> That background and rationale will not be restated in full here. <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  40 CFR 51.308(f)(5) requires that the second planning period SIP revision address the requirements listed in 40 CFR 51.308(g)(1) through (5). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>  90 FR 22166 (May 23, 2025). See sections II, III, and VII of the proposal. </FTNT> As discussed in our May 2025 Proposed Rule, in sections II and III of this preamble, and in the accompanying Response to Comments document (RTC Document), the EPA finds that Texas's, and where relevant Oklahoma's, regional haze SIPs meet the statutory and specific regulatory requirements of the regional haze first planning period, the five-year progress report for the first planning period, and for the regional haze second planning period. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Rationale for This Final Action</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Rationale for First Planning Period and Progress Report</HD> In this final rule, the EPA is approving portions of Texas's 2009 Plan and portions of Oklahoma's 2010 Plan. As articulated in the May 2025 Proposed Rule, and the RTC Document in support of this final rule, the EPA's evaluation takes into account the requirements of the CAA and RHR and is informed by the published Stay Opinion from the Fifth Circuit. The Stay Opinion outlined that the Petitioners had a strong likelihood of success on the merits in showing that the EPA was arbitrary and capricious and exceeded its statutory authority in partially disapproving the Texas and Oklahoma plans and replacing portions of them with a Federal Implementation Plan (FIP). Because Texas considered the four factors and otherwise met the outstanding first planning period rule requirements contained in 40 CFR 51.308(d), we are finalizing approval of Texas's 2009 Plan. As discussed in greater detail in the proposal and the RTC Document, the RHR provides states with flexibility in the sources they sele ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 61k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━