Air Plan Approval; Ohio; 2015 Ozone Moderate Reasonably Available Control Technology

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R05-OAR-2022-0352; EPA-R05-OAR-2023-0093; FRL-9995-02-R5]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Ohio; 2015 Ozone Moderate Reasonably Available Control Technology</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 revisions to Ohio Administrative Code (OAC) Chapters 3745-21 and 3745-110 into the Ohio State Implementation Plan (SIP). The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (“Ohio” or “Ohio EPA”) submitted these revisions on March 30, 2022, and supplemented the submittal on February 1, 2023, and August 28, 2023. The EPA is approving parts of OAC Chapters 3745-21 and 3745-110 as satisfying some of the Moderate Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) Reasonably Available Control Technology (RACT) and Nitrogen Oxide (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) RACT requirements for the Cleveland, OH nonattainment area (Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina, Portage, and Summit counties) under the 2015 ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standard (“NAAQS” or “standard”) and as SIP strengthening for Ashtabula County and the Ohio portion of the Cincinnati, OH-KY maintenance area (Butler, Clermont, Hamilton, and Warren counties). The EPA is also approving Table (M)(1) in OAC rule 3745-21-07 into the SIP, with the exception of the row for The Ruscoe Company. Finally, the EPA is approving OAC rule 3745-15-03, submitted by Ohio on February 9, 2023, and supplemented on December 1, 2023, and December 30, 2024. The EPA proposed to approve this action on August 28, 2025 and received two comments. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective on February 19, 2026. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID Nos. EPA-R05-OAR-2022-0352 and EPA-R05-OAR-2023-0093. All documents in the docket are listed on the <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> website. Although listed in the index, some information is not publicly available, <E T="03">i.e.,</E> Confidential Business Information (CBI), Proprietary Business Information (PBI), 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 through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or at the Environmental Protection Agency, Region 5, Air and Radiation Division, 77 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60604. This facility is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, excluding Federal holidays. We recommend that you telephone Katie Caskey, at (312) 353-3490 before visiting the Region 5 office. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Katie Caskey, Air and Radiation Division (AR18J), Environmental Protection Agency, Region 5, 77 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60604, (312) (312) 353-3490, <E T="03">Caskey.Kathleen@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document whenever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean the EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background Information</HD> On August 28, 2025 (90 FR 41925), the EPA proposed to approve parts of OAC Chapters 3745-21 and 3745-110 as satisfying some of the Moderate VOC RACT requirements of 182(b)(2) and NO <E T="52">X</E> RACT requirements of 182(f) of the Clean Air Act (CAA), respectively, for the Cleveland, OH nonattainment area under the 2015 ozone standard. The EPA also proposed to approve OAC 3745-21-11 and 3745-110-03(J) as SIP strengthening measures for the Cleveland nonattainment area. In addition, the EPA proposed to approve OAC Chapter 3745-21 and 3745-110-03(J) as SIP strengthening for Ashtabula County and the Ohio portion of the Cincinnati, OH-KY maintenance area (Butler, Clermont, Hamilton, and Warren counties) under the 2015 ozone standard. Finally, the EPA proposed to approve OAC rule 3745-15-03, which sets forth reporting requirements for sources in Ohio. An explanation of the CAA requirements, a detailed analysis of the revisions, and the EPA's reasons for proposing approval were provided in the notice of proposed rulemaking, and will not be restated here. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Public Comments</HD> The EPA provided a 30-day review and comment period for this action in the Proposal. The comment period ended on September 29, 2025. The EPA received two comments, which are summarized and addressed below. <E T="03">Comment:</E> The commenter opposes approval of Ohio's SIP, stating that “Ohio is a failed state that is unable to clean the air.” The commenter further contends that if an area is in nonattainment, the top 100 polluters in the State should be required to shut down until air quality meets the National Standards. <E T="03">Response:</E> This action is limited to assessing whether the regulations submitted by the State of Ohio and associated analysis are sufficient to meet the requirements under CAA section 182 related to the requirement to implement reasonably available control technology for defined emission sources. The commenter has not provided any information that calls into question the sufficiency of the Ohio SIP at issue here. This rule fulfills RACT requirements stemming from sections 182(b)(2) and 182(f) of the CAA, which will continue to improve air quality in the area. <E T="03">Comment:</E> Ohio EPA requests that the EPA not approve the addition of “TRC Buyer Co. dba “The Ruscoe Company” Plant II” (fac ID 1677010204) into the Ohio SIP. This facility is listed in the table of affected facilities in paragraph (M)(1) of OAC rule 3745-21-07, which regulates facilities using liquid organic materials and requires at least 85% VOC control efficiency. In its comment, Ohio EPA noted that the Ruscoe Company's emissions units were mistakenly retained in the final rulemaking despite Ohio's intent to remove them. These emissions units—mixers P025, P026, P028, P030, P031, P032, P033, P034, P035, and P036—perform only mixing and blending of sealant and adhesive components, with no chemical reactions occurring. <E T="03">Response:</E> The EPA acknowledges Ohio's statement that the “TRC Buyer Co. dba “The Ruscoe Company” Plant II” (fac ID 1677010204) was erroneously included in the table of affected sources in OAC R 3745-21-07(M), and Ohio EPA's intention that these facilities not be subject to the rule. The EPA further acknowledges Ohio EPA's request that the EPA not approve the addition of “TRC Buyer Co. dba “The Ruscoe Company” Plant II” (fac ID 1677010204) into the Ohio SIP. The EPA is therefore approving OAC R 3745-21-07(M) with the exception of “TRC Buyer Co. dba “The Ruscoe Company” Plant II (fac ID 1677010204)” in this rulemaking. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. What action is the EPA taking?</HD> The EPA is approving parts of OAC Chapters 3745-21 as satisfying some of the Moderate VOC RACT requirements of 182(b)(2) of the CAA for the Cleveland, OH nonattainment area under the 2015 ozone standard. The EPA is approving parts of OAC Chapter 3745-110 as satisfying some of the Moderate NO <E T="52">x</E> RACT requirements of 182(f) of the CAA for the Cleveland, OH nonattainment area under the 2015 ozone standard. The EPA is approving OAC 3745-21-11 and 3745-110-03(J) as SIP strengthening measures for the Cleveland, OH nonattainment area under the 2015 ozone standard. The EPA is approving OAC Chapter 3745-21 and 3745-110-03(J) as SIP strengthening for Ashtabula County and the Ohio portion of the Cincinnati, OH-KY maintenance area under the 2015 ozone standard. The EPA is approving OAC 3745-21-07(M)(1), except for the row of the table referencing “TRC Buyer Co. dba “The Ruscoe Company” Plant II” (fac ID 1677010204). Finally, the EPA is approving OAC rule 3745-15-03, which sets forth reporting requirements for sources in Ohio. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Incorporation by Reference</HD> In this rule, the EPA is finalizing regulatory text that includes incorporation by reference. In accordance with requirements of 1 CFR 51.5, the EPA is finalizing the incorporation by reference of the Ohio Regulations described in section III. of this preamble and set forth in the amendments to 40 CFR part 52 below. The EPA has made, and will continue to make, these documents generally available through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> and at the EPA Region 5 Office (please contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section of this preamble for more information). Therefore, these materials have been approved by the EPA for inclusion in the SIP, have been incorporated by reference by the EPA into that plan, are fully federally enforceable under sections 110 and 113 of the CAA as of the effective date of the final rulemaking of the EPA's approval, and will be incorporated by reference in the next update to the SIP compilation. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  62 FR 27968 (May 22, 1997). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</HD> Under the CAA, the Administrator is required to approve a SIP submission that complies with the provisions of the CAA and applicable Federal regulations. 42 U.S.C. 7410(k); 40 CFR 52.02(a). Thus, in reviewing SIP submissions, the EPA's role is to approve State choices, provided that they meet the criteria of the CAA. Accordingly, this action merely approves State law as meeting Federal requirements and does not impose additional requirements beyond those imposed by State law. For that reason, this action: • Is not a significant regulatory action subject to review by the Office of Management and Budget under Exe ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 23k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━