Air Plan Approval; Michigan; Moderate Attainment Plan Elements for the Allegan County, Berrien County, and Muskegon County Areas for the 2015 Ozone Standard

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R05-OAR-2023-0515; EPA-R05-OAR-2023-0516; EPA-R05-OAR-2023-0517; FRL-12810-01-R5]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Michigan; Moderate Attainment Plan Elements for the Allegan County, Berrien County, and Muskegon County Areas for the 2015 Ozone Standard</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 revisions to the Michigan State Implementation Plan (SIP) as meeting the reasonable further progress (RFP) requirements of the Clean Air Act (CAA) for the Allegan County (partial county), Berrien County, and Muskegon County (partial county) Moderate nonattainment areas for the 2015 ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS). EPA is also proposing to approve updated 2017 base year emissions inventories and is initiating the adequacy process and proposing approval of the 2023 motor vehicle emissions budgets (budgets) associated with the Allegan County, Berrien County, and Muskegon County Moderate ozone nonattainment RFP demonstrations. EPA is proposing to approve these portions of the State's SIP submission pursuant to section 110 and part D of the CAA, and EPA's regulations. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> 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-R05-OAR-2023-0515, EPA-R05-OAR-2023-0516, or EPA-R05-OAR-2023-0517 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> or via email to <E T="03">arra.sarah@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 the docket. EPA may publish any comment received to its public docket. Do not submit to EPA's docket at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> any information you consider to be Confidential Business Information (CBI), Proprietary Business Information (PBI), 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. 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, PBI, 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> Kathleen D'Agostino, Air and Radiation Division (AR-18J), Environmental Protection Agency, Region 5, 77 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60604, (312) 886-1767, <E T="03">dagostino.kathleen@epa.gov.</E> The EPA Region 5 office is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, excluding Federal holidays. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document whenever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> On December 28, 2015, EPA promulgated a revised 8-hour ozone NAAQS of 0.070 parts per million (ppm). <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Promulgation of a revised NAAQS triggers a requirement for EPA to designate all areas of the country as nonattainment, attainment, or unclassifiable for the NAAQS. For the ozone NAAQS, this also involves classifying any nonattainment areas at the time of designation. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> Ozone nonattainment areas are classified based on the severity of their ozone levels as determined based on the area's “design value,” which represents air quality in the area for the most recent 3 years. The classifications for ozone nonattainment areas are Marginal, Moderate, Serious, Severe, and Extreme. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  80 FR 65292, October 26, 2015, codified at 40 CFR 50.19. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  CAA sections 107(d)(1) and 181(a)(1). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  CAA section 181(a)(1). </FTNT> Areas that EPA designates nonattainment for the ozone NAAQS are subject to the general nonattainment area planning requirements of CAA section 172 and the ozone-specific planning requirements of CAA section 182. Ozone nonattainment areas in the lower classification levels have fewer and/or less stringent mandatory air quality planning and control requirements than those in higher classifications. In EPA's December 6, 2018 (83 FR 62998), rule, “Implementation of the 2015 National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Ozone: Nonattainment Area State Implementation Plan Requirements,” known as the “SIP Requirements Rule,” EPA set forth nonattainment area requirements for the 2015 ozone NAAQS. These requirements are codified at 40 CFR part 51 subpart CC. For Marginal areas, a State is required to submit a baseline emissions inventory, adopt provisions into the SIP requiring emissions statements from stationary sources, and implement a nonattainment new source review program for the relevant ozone NAAQS. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> For Moderate areas, a State needs to comply with the Marginal area requirements, plus additional Moderate area requirements, including the requirement to submit a modeled demonstration that the area will attain the NAAQS as expeditiously as practicable but no later than 6 years after designation, the requirement to submit an RFP plan, the requirement to adopt and implement certain emissions controls, such as Reasonably Available Control Technology (RACT) and motor vehicle inspection and maintenance programs, and the requirement for greater emissions offsets for new or modified major stationary sources under the State's nonattainment new source review program. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  CAA section 182(a). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  CAA section 182(b). </FTNT> Effective August 3, 2018, EPA designated the Allegan County (partial county), Berrien County, and Muskegon County (partial county) areas as Marginal nonattainment areas for the 2015 ozone NAAQS. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> The Allegan County area includes Casco Township, Cheshire Township, the City of Douglas, the City of Holland, the City of Saugatuck, Clyde Township, Fillmore Township, Ganges Township, Heath Township, Laketown Township, Lee Township, Manilus Township, Overisel Township, Saugatuck Township, and Valley Township. The Muskegon County area includes Blue Lake Township, the City of Montague, the City of Muskegon, the City of Muskegon Heights, the City of North Muskegon, the City of Roosevelt Park, the City of Whitehall, Dalton Township, (incl. the Village of Lakewood Club), Fruitland Township, Fruitport Township (incl. the Village of Fruitport), Laketon Township, Montague Township, Muskegon Township, Norton Shores Township, White River Township, and Whitehall Township. <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  83 FR 25776, June 4, 2018. </FTNT> On October 7, 2022 (87 FR 60897), pursuant to section 181(b)(2) of the CAA, EPA determined that the Allegan County, Berrien County and Muskegon County areas failed to attain the 2015 ozone NAAQS by the August 3, 2021, Marginal area attainment deadline and thus reclassified the areas from Marginal to Moderate nonattainment. In that action, EPA established January 1, 2023, as the due date for the State to submit all Moderate area nonattainment plan SIP requirements applicable to newly reclassified areas. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Evaluation of Michigan's Submittal</HD> The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) submitted a SIP revision on October 16, 2023, to address Moderate area requirements for the Allegan County, Berrien County and Muskegon County areas under the 2015 ozone NAAQS. The submittal contained a number of nonattainment plan elements, including an updated 2017 base year emissions inventory for volatile organic compounds (VOC) and oxides of nitrogen (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) and a 15% RFP plan with 2023 VOC and NO <E T="52">X</E> motor vehicle emissions budgets. The submission also included an attainment demonstration, a reasonably available control measures demonstration, and contingency measures, which are not being addressed in this action. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. 2017 Base Year Emissions Inventory</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD3">1. Background</HD> CAA sections 172(c)(3) and 182(a)(1), 42 U.S.C. 7502(c)(3) and 7511a(a)(1), require States to develop and submit, as SIP revisions, comprehensive, accurate, and complete emissions inventories for all areas designated as nonattainment for the ozone NAAQS. This requirement is codified at 40 CFR 51.1315, and the term “base year inventory” is defined at 51.1300(p). For ozone, the base year inventory is an estimation of actual emissions of VOC and NO <E T="52">X</E> from all sources within the boundaries of the nonattainment area. The regulation at 40 CFR 51.1315(a) requires that the inventory year be selected consistent with the baseline year for the RFP plan as required by 40 CFR 51.1310(b), which states that the baseline emissions inventory shall be the emissions inventory for the most recent calendar year for which a complete triennial inventory is required to be submitted to EPA under the provisions of subpart A of 40 CFR part 51, Air Emissions Reporting Requirements, 40 CFR 51.1 through 50. For areas designated as nonattainment in 2018, the most recent triennial inventory year conducted for the Nationa ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 38k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━