Air Plan Approval and Air Quality Designation; KY; Redesignation of the Kentucky Portion of the Louisville, KY-IN 2015 8-Hour Ozone Nonattainment Area to Attainment

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 81</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R04-OAR-2022-0789; FRL-10888-02-R4]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval and Air Quality Designation; KY; Redesignation of the Kentucky Portion of the Louisville, KY-IN 2015 8-Hour Ozone Nonattainment Area to Attainment</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final determination. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is denying the request to redesignate the Kentucky portion of the Louisville, Kentucky-Indiana, 2015 8-hour ozone nonattainment area (hereinafter referred to as the “Louisville, KY-IN Area” or “Area”) to attainment for the 2015 8-hour ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS or standards). EPA is taking no action at this time on Kentucky's maintenance plan, including the regional motor vehicle emission budgets for nitrogen oxides (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) and volatile organic compounds (VOC) for the years of 2019 and 2035, submitted with Kentucky's redesignation request for the Louisville, KY-IN Area. The redesignation request and the maintenance plan state implementation plan (SIP) revision were submitted by the Commonwealth of Kentucky, through the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet (Cabinet), Division for Air Quality (KDAQ), on September 6, 2022. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective March 2, 2026. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket Identification No. EPA-R04-OAR-2022-0789. All documents in the docket are listed on the regulations.gov 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> Simone Jarvis, Air Regulatory Management 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) 562-8393. Ms. Jarvis can also be reached via electronic mail at <E T="03">Jarvis.Simone@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED"> SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: </HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> On October 1, 2015, EPA revised both the primary and secondary NAAQS for ozone to a level of 0.070 parts per million (ppm). <E T="03">See</E> 80 FR 65292, October 26, 2015. For ozone, an area may be considered to be attaining the 2015 8-hour ozone NAAQS if it meets those standards, as determined in accordance with 40 CFR 50.19 and Appendix U of 40 CFR part 50, based on three complete, consecutive calendar years of quality-assured air quality monitoring data. To attain the 2015 8-hour ozone NAAQS, the 3-year average of the annual fourth-highest daily maximum 8-hour average ozone concentrations measured at each monitor within an area must not exceed 0.070 ppm. Based on the data handling and reporting convention described in 40 CFR part 50, Appendix U, the 2015 8-hour ozone NAAQS are attained if the design value (DV) is 0.070 ppm or below. The data must be collected and quality-assured in accordance with 40 CFR part 58 and recorded in EPA's Air Quality System (AQS). As part of the designations process for the 2015 8-hour ozone NAAQS, the Louisville, KY-IN Area (Clark and Floyd Counties in Indiana, and Bullitt, Jefferson, and Oldham Counties in Kentucky) was designated as a Marginal ozone nonattainment area, effective August 3, 2018. <E T="03">See</E> 83 FR 25776, June 4, 2018. Areas that were designated as Marginal ozone nonattainment areas were required to attain the 2015 8-hour ozone NAAQS no later than August 3, 2021, based on 2018-2020 monitoring data. The Louisville, KY-IN Area was reclassified by operation of law from Marginal to Moderate nonattainment on October 7, 2022, following EPA's finding of failure to attain by the Marginal area attainment date. <E T="03">See</E> 87 FR 60897, and 40 CFR 81.318. 2015 ozone Moderate areas are to attain the 8-hour ozone NAAQS as expeditiously as practicable, but no later than August 3, 2024, six years after the effective date of the initial nonattainment designations. <E T="03">See</E> 40 CFR 51.1303. On February 21, 2022, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) submitted a redesignation request and maintenance plan for the 2015 8-hour ozone NAAQS for Clark and Floyd Counties in the Indiana portion of the Louisville, KY-IN Area. On May 18, 2022, EPA proposed to approve the request to redesignate the Indiana portion of the Area. <E T="03">See</E> 87 FR 30129. On July 5, 2022, EPA finalized approval of the redesignation request and maintenance plan for the Indiana portion of the Louisville, KY-IN Area. <E T="03">See</E> 87 FR 39750. On September 6, 2022, KDAQ submitted a redesignation request and maintenance plan for the Kentucky portion of the Louisville, KY-IN Area. On April 18, 2023, EPA proposed to approve KDAQ's redesignation request and maintenance plan SIP revision based, in part, on complete, quality-assured, and certified 2019-2021 DVs for each monitor in the Louisville, KY-IN Area. <E T="03">See</E> 88 FR 23598, April 18, 2023. These DVs are equal to or less than the level of the 2015 8-hour ozone NAAQS and were the most current DVs at the time of proposal. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Violation of the NAAQS for Ozone in the Louisville, KY-IN Area</HD> Although data indicated an attaining DV at the time of the proposed approval, the Area preliminarily violated the 2015 8-hour ozone standards in June 2023. Through a NPRM published on January 3, 2025, EPA withdrew its proposed approval of KDAQ's redesignation request and proposed instead to deny the request because the Area did not meet the first statutory criterion for redesignation to attainment. <E T="03">See</E> 90 FR 294. At the time of the proposed denial, the certified DV for 2021-2023 for the Area was 0.072 ppm, which exceeded the standard of 0.070 ppm. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Final air quality DVs for all criteria pollutants, including ozone, are available at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/air-trends/air-quality-design-values.</E> These DVs are calculated in accordance with 40 CFR part 50. </FTNT> After the close of the comment period for the proposed denial, the Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control District (LMAPCD) submitted an Exceptional Events (EE) demonstration for nine days in 2023 at the Cannons Lane monitor, believed to have been influenced by the 2023 Canadian Wildfires. However, the EE demonstration did not have regulatory significance for this action because concurrence on all nine days would not affect the relevant analysis. Since the proposed denial, EPA received certified 2024 monitoring data indicating a 2022-2024 DV of 0.074 ppm for the Area. The data shows that even with EE concurrence on all nine days, the 2022-2024 DV would still exceed the NAAQS. Thus, notwithstanding the EE demonstration, the Louisville, KY-IN Area does not meet the first statutory criterion for redesignation to attainment of the 2015 8-hour ozone NAAQS. In this final rule, EPA is finalizing the denial of the KDAQ's September 6, 2022, request to redesignate the Kentucky portion of the Louisville, KY-IN, nonattainment area to attainment for the 2015 8-hour ozone NAAQS. Comments on the NPRM were due on or before February 3, 2025. EPA received five adverse comments and one supportive comment on the NPRM. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Response to Comments</HD> EPA received adverse comments from the Greater Louisville Inc., the Metro Chamber of Commerce; the Commonwealth of Kentucky, Office of the Attorney General; LMAPCD; KDAQ; and the public, (collectively, the “commenters”) as well as a set of supportive comments from Kentucky Resources Council, Inc. and Sierra Club. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> All comments received are available in the docket for this action. In this section of this document, EPA has summarized and grouped, for clarity and ease of discussion, the significant adverse comments and responded to them. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  As mentioned above, EPA initially proposed approving KDAQ's redesignation request on April 18, 2023. In response to that proposal, EPA received several adverse comments. As explained in the January 3, 2025, NPRM, those comments are moot because EPA withdrew its proposed approval, and EPA has determined that it is therefore unnecessary to respond to them. </FTNT> <E T="03">Comment 1:</E> Several commenters argue that CAA section 107(d)(3)(E)(i)'s requirement that a nonattainment area “has attained” the NAAQS does not require that the area continue to attain the NAAQS after submission of a redesignation request. One commenter asserts that because KDAQ's redesignation request was based on data from 2019 to 2021, EPA's action “must be based on monitoring data from that period or snapshot, not subsequent years.” Another comment ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 42k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━