Air Plan Approval; Virginia; Amendment to the State Operating Permit for GP Big Island, LLC

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R03-OAR-2024-0385; FRL-10808-01-R3]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Virginia; Amendment to the State Operating Permit for GP Big Island, LLC</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 Commonwealth of Virginia's (Commonwealth or Virginia) Department of Environmental Quality (VADEQ). This revision pertains to an amendment to an operating permit limiting visibility-impairing air emissions from the GP Big Island, LLC pulp and paper mill facility in Bedford County, Virginia. The EPA is proposing to include this amended operating permit in Virginia's SIP. This proposed action is being taken under the Clean Air Act (CAA). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before January 12, 2026. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R03-OAR-2024-0385 at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> or via email to <E T="03">gordon.mike@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> Philip McGuire, Planning & Implementation Branch (3AD30), Air & Radiation Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region III, 1600 John F Kennedy Boulevard, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103. The telephone number is (215) 814-2251. Mr. McGuire can also be reached via electronic mail at <E T="03">mcguire.philip@epa.gov</E> . </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> On December 14, 2022, VADEQ submitted to the EPA a revision to the Commonwealth's SIP to align the SIP with the state operating permit for Best Available Retrofit Technology (BART permit) and the Title V permit for GP Big Island pulp and paper mill (GP Big Island Mill), located in Bedford County, Virginia. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Currently, the Virginia SIP contains an October 5, 2012 amendment to the BART permit. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> The Commonwealth further amended the BART permit on December 12, 2022 and submitted that newly amended BART permit in its December 14, 2022 SIP revision to the EPA for inclusion in the SIP. Specifically, the December 14, 2022 SIP revision, as reflected in the BART permit amended on December 12, 2022, lowers the permitted emission limits for particulate matter (PM <E T="52">10</E> ), sulfur dioxide (SO <E T="52">2</E> ), and nitrogen oxides (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) at the Number 5 Power Boiler and removes conditions related to the use of coal. The amendments to the BART permit are a result of the fuel conversion of the facility's Number 5 Power Boiler from coal to natural gas, wood, wood residuals, and old corrugated container reject. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  GP Big Island, LLC was formerly named Georgia-Pacific Big Island and supplemental docket documents may use the names interchangeably. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  On June 12, 2008, VADEQ issued a state operating permit for GP Big Island, LLC for the purpose of complying with the Best Available Retrofit Technology (BART) requirements for control of visibility-impairing pollutants under 40 CFR 51.308(e) of the EPA's Regional Haze Program. The state subsequently amended the BART permit on October 5, 2012 which the EPA approved into the SIP effective June 17, 2014. 79 FR 21855 (April 18, 2014). The current BART permit, which includes the December 12, 2022 amendment submitted for inclusion in Virginia's SIP, is available in the docket for this action as <E T="03">VADEQ_State_Operating_Permit_2022_12_12</E> . </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  This condition specifying natural gas, wood, wood residuals, and old corrugated container reject as the allowable fuels for the Number 5 Power Boiler is only included in the April 13, 2021 Title V permit, which VADEQ did not propose to be included in the SIP. The Title V permit is included in the docket as <E T="03">Big_Island_TV_Permit_2021_04_13</E> and is for informational purposes only. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Summary of SIP Revision and EPA Analysis</HD> The December 14, 2022 proposed SIP revision changes two main aspects of the SIP as reflected in the December 12, 2022 amended BART permit. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> The first aspect of the proposed SIP revision submitted to the EPA on December 14, 2022 requests the removal of conditions pertaining to controlling sulfur dioxide emissions when coal is used in the Number 5 Power Boiler. Specifically, the December 12, 2022 amended BART permit no longer contains requirements that were in the October 5, 2012 amended BART permit related to limiting sulfur-content and limiting the firing of coal to a maximum percentage of the annual capacity factor when firing coal at the Number 5 Power Boiler. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  The proposed inclusion of the BART permit amended December 12, 2022 in the SIP also adds some general conditions related to permit suspension/revocation, recording of and notification for malfunctions, and a condition allowing VADEQ to require the permittee to act to prevent a violation of the ambient air quality standard. </FTNT> Currently, the Number 5 Power Boiler no longer fires coal and the coal feed system for this source has been permanently removed. This shutdown was included in a mutual shutdown agreement between GP Big Island Mill and VADEQ, which was finalized on April 24, 2017. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> VADEQ incorporated the removal of the source in the Title V permit for GP Big Island Mill through an April 13, 2021 permit revision. The Number 5 Power Boiler is now permitted to fire natural gas, wood, wood residuals, and old corrugated container reject. GP Big Island Mill requested an amendment to the coal-burning provision of its BART permit through a revision application received by VADEQ on July 26, 2021. VADEQ approved this amendment to the BART permit on December 12, 2022. Now that coal no longer serves as the fuel source for the Number 5 Power Boiler, this action proposes to align the SIP with the December 12, 2022 amended BART permit's removal of conditions regarding SO <E T="52">2</E> control during coal use. <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  The GP Big Island Mill-VADEQ mutual shutdown agreement for the GP Big Island Mill coal handling system is available in the docket for this action as <E T="03">VADEQ_Mutual_Shutdown_Agreement_for_Coal_Handling_PWR09.pdf</E> . </FTNT> The second aspect of the proposed SIP revision requests approval for the lowering of the permitted emissions limits currently in the SIP for PM <E T="52">10</E> , SO <E T="52">2</E> , and NO <E T="52">X</E> . The proposed reduced annual limits include lowering PM <E T="52">10</E> emissions limits from 103.9 tons per year (TPY) to 88.9 TPY, lowering SO <E T="52">2</E> emissions limits from 374 TPY to 104.7 TPY, and lowering NO <E T="52">X</E> emissions limits from 610.1 TPY to 529.9 TPY. The proposed reduced hourly limits include lowering PM <E T="52">10</E> emissions limits from 23.7 pounds per hour (lbs/hr) to 20.3 lbs/hr, lowering SO <E T="52">2</E> emissions limits from 485.1 lbs/hr to 23.9 lbs/hr, and lowering NO <E T="52">X</E> emissions limits from 139.3 lbs/hr to 121.0 lbs/hr. The current, SIP-approved emission limits for the Number 5 Power Boiler were first established by the BART permit issued by VADEQ on June 12, 2008, for the purpose of complying with the BART requirements for control of visibility-impairing pollutants under 40 CFR 51.308(e) of the EPA's Regional Haze Program. The October 5, 2012 BART permit maintained these limits in the SIP. A Title V permit issued on April 13, 2021, lowered these original emission limits to the limits proposed in this SIP revision, and on July 26, 2021 GP Big Island Mill requested VADEQ amend the BART permit to include these new, lower emission limits to align with the April 13, 2021 Title V permit. VADEQ approved these lower emission limits and issued a new BART permit on December 12, 2022 to replace the pre-existing October 5, 2012 BART permit. This action proposes to align the SIP emission limits with the limits identified in the VADEQ-issued December 12, 2022 amended BART permit by incorporating that BART permit into the SIP. No emissions increases are anticipated as a result of this revision. In fact, this proposed revision to the SIP, if finalized, will lower annual and hourly emissions limits for the GP Big Island Mill compared to what is ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━