Air Plan Approval; South Carolina; Second Planning Period Regional Haze Plan

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R04-OAR-2022-0367; FRL-10406-02-R4]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; South Carolina; Second Planning Period Regional Haze Plan</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 a regional haze State Implementation Plan (SIP) revision submitted by the State of South Carolina on March 3, 2022 (hereinafter referred to as “Haze Plan”), as satisfying applicable requirements under the Clean Air Act (“CAA” or “Act”) and EPA's Regional Haze Rule (RHR) for the regional haze program's second planning period. South Carolina's SIP submission was submitted to address the requirement that states must periodically revise their long-term strategies (LTSs) for making reasonable progress toward the national goal of preventing any future, and remedying any existing, anthropogenic impairment of visibility, including regional haze, in mandatory Class I Federal areas (hereinafter referred to as “Class I areas”). This SIP submission also addresses other applicable requirements for the second planning period of the regional haze program. EPA is taking this action pursuant to sections 110 and 169A of the Act. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective January 12, 2026. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket Identification No. EPA-R04-OAR-2022-0367. All documents in the docket are listed on the <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> website. Although listed in the index, some information may not be publicly available, <E T="03">i.e.,</E> Confidential Business Information 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 either electronically through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> or in hard copy at the Air Regulatory Management Section, Air Planning and Implementation Branch, Air and Radiation Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 4, 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, Georgia 30303-8960. EPA requests that if at all possible, you contact the person listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section to schedule your inspection. The Regional Office's official hours of business are Monday through Friday 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., excluding Federal holidays. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Matthew Bloemer, Multi-Air Pollutant Coordination Section, Air Planning and Implementation Branch, Air and Radiation Division, Region 4, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, Georgia 30303-8960. The telephone number is (404) 562-9653. Mr. Bloemer can also be reached via electronic mail at <E T="03">bloemer.matthew@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> On March 3, 2022, the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC)  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> submitted a revision to its SIP to address regional haze for the second planning period. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> South Carolina made this SIP submission to satisfy the requirements of the CAA's regional haze program pursuant to CAA sections 169A and 169B and 40 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 51.308. EPA has determined that the regional haze SIP revision for the second planning period meets the applicable statutory and regulatory requirements and is thus approving South Carolina's submission. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  On July 1, 2024, DHEC was restructured into a health agency, the Department of Public Health, and an environmental agency, the Department of Environmental Services (DES). In a letter dated June 20, 2024, South Carolina represented to EPA that all the functions, powers, and duties of the environmental divisions, offices, and programs of DHEC, including the authority to administer and enforce state implementation plans, are retained and continued in full force and effect under DES. The letter is in the docket for this rulemaking. The state agency will simply be referred to as “the State” or “South Carolina” for the remainder of this document. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  The March 3, 2022, SIP submission, with exception of the supporting modeling files and Confidential Business Information, is included in the docket for this rulemaking. </FTNT> Through a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) published on July 31, 2025 (90 FR 36005), EPA proposed to approve South Carolina's Haze Plan as satisfying the regional haze requirements for the second planning period contained in the CAA and 40 CFR 51.308. EPA described its rationale for proposing to approve the Haze Plan in the July 31, 2025, NPRM. Comments on the July 31, 2025, NPRM were due on or before September 29, 2025. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Response to Comments</HD> In response to the NPRM, EPA received one set of comments from the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), Sierra Club, and the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks (hereinafter “Conservation Groups”); one set of comments from the Mid-Atlantic/Northeast Visibility Union (MANE-VU); and one set of comments from the Augusta Aiken Audubon Society, Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, NPCA, South Carolina Environmental Law Project, and Waccamaw Audubon Society. Additionally, EPA received a comment letter from an anonymous commenter about greenhouse gases  <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> that is not relevant to this action, and two identical comments in support of this action from one individual. All comments received are available in the docket for this rulemaking. Summaries of the significant comments received and EPA's responses to these comments are below. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  Specifically, the commenter asks EPA to “account for the economic costs of carbon dioxide” in this action. However, greenhouse gases are non-haze forming and are therefore beyond the scope of this action, which is focused solely on visibility impairing pollutants and specifically the approvability of South Carolina's regional haze SIP for the second planning period. Nor does the commenter identify any legal duty for EPA to calculate such costs. The commenter cites to Executive Order 13990 as authority, but that executive order was revoked on January 20, 2025. The commenter also cites generally to the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”), but it is long-settled that NEPA does not apply to EPA's actions approving SIPs. <E T="03">See Appalachian Power Co.</E> v. <E T="03">EPA</E> , 477 F.2d 495, 508 (4th Cir. 1973) <E T="03">(quoting</E> the holding in <E T="03">Getty Oil Co. (Eastern Operations), Inc.</E> v. <E T="03">Ruckelshaus</E> , 467 F.2d 349, 359 (3d Cir. 1972) that “[it] is apparent that the Clean Air Act itself contains sufficient provisions for the achievement of those goals sought to be attained by NEPA”). </FTNT> <E T="03">Comment 1:</E> The Conservation Groups claim that EPA's new uniform rate of progress (URP) policy violates the CAA. These comments are discussed in more detail in Comments 1.a through 1.d. A response to these comments follows after Comment 1.d. First, the Conservation Groups assert that EPA recently announced a new policy whereby if “visibility conditions for a Class I area impacted by a State are below the URP and the State has evaluated potential control measures and considered the four statutory factors, the State will have presumptively demonstrated reasonable progress for the second planning period.” However, they state EPA's description of the new policy in its proposal to approve South Carolina's 2022 SIP Revision differs from earlier descriptions of the policy as originally announced in the Agency's proposal to approve West Virginia's SIP. They state that in the West Virginia proposal, EPA explained that, if visibility conditions at affected Class I areas  <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> are projected to be below the URP, and the state considered the four factors, the state presumptively demonstrates reasonable progress and that absent from EPA's description of the new URP policy in the West Virginia proposal is a need for states to have “evaluate[d] potential control measures.” The Conservation Groups assert that in EPA's proposal here, EPA incorporates this additional phrase into its description of the new URP policy for the first time, without explaining the significance of that purported change. Additionally, they state that EPA explicitly states that the new policy reflects only “a change in policy from <E T="03">current guidance</E> as to how the URP should be used in the evaluation of regional haze second planning period SIPs.” <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  Areas statutorily designated as mandatory Federal Class I areas consist of national parks exceeding 6,000 acres, wilderness areas and national memorial parks exceeding 5,000 acres, and all international parks that were in existence on August 7, 1977. CAA section 162(a). There are 156 mandatory Class I areas. The list of areas to which the requirements of the visibility protection program apply is in 40 CFR part 81, subpart D. </FTNT> <E T="03">Response 1:</E> EPA disagrees with the Conservation Groups. EPA has not substantively changed the URP policy since it was announced in the West Virginia regional haze NPRM, <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> including in the South Carolina regional haze NPRM. In the South Carolina regional haze NPRM, EPA noted that “it is the Agency's policy, as announced in the recent proposed action f ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 306k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━