[Federal Register Volume 89, Number 187 (Thursday, September 26, 2024)]
[Proposed Rules]
[Pages 78837-78840]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2024-21895]


=======================================================================
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

40 CFR Part 52

[EPA-R05-OAR-2020-0385; FRL-12224-01-R5]


Determination of Attainment by the Attainment Date; Michigan; St. 
Clair 2010 Sulfur Dioxide Nonattainment Area

AGENCY: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

ACTION: Proposed rule.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

SUMMARY: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to 
determine that the St. Clair, MI sulfur dioxide (SO<INF>2</INF>) 
nonattainment area attained the 2010 1-hour primary SO<INF>2</INF> 
national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) by the date of September 
12, 2021. This determination is based on annual SO<INF>2</INF> 
emissions data, modeled data, and certified ambient air quality data 
from EPA's December 7, 2021, Clean Data Determination for St. Clair, as 
well as publicly available additional supporting 2020 data. This 
action, if finalized, will address EPA's obligation under the Clean Air 
Act (CAA) to determine whether the St. Clair SO<INF>2</INF> 
nonattainment area (referred to hereafter as the St. Clair area, or 
simply the area) attained the 2010 SO<INF>2</INF> NAAQS by the 
September 12, 2021, attainment date.

DATES: Written comments for this proposed rule must be received on or 
before October 28, 2024.

ADDRESSES: Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R05-
OAR-2020-0385 at https://www.regulations.gov or via email to 
<a href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#96f7e4e4f7b8c5f7e4f7fed6f3e6f7b8f1f9e0"><span class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="f796858596d9a49685969fb7928796d9909881">[email protected]</span></a>. For comments submitted at Regulations.gov, 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 https://www.regulations.gov 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 (i.e., on the web, cloud, or 
other file sharing system). For additional submission methods, please 
contact the person identified in the FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT 
section. For the full EPA public comment policy, information about CBI, 
PBI, or multimedia submissions, and general guidance on making 
effective comments, please visit https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Alexis Bender, Air and Radiation 
Division (AR-18J), Environmental Protection Agency, Region 5, 77 West 
Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60604, (312) 886-9497, 
<a href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#f092959e949582de919c95889983b0958091de979f86"><span class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="3b595e555f5e49155a575e4352487b5e4b5a155c544d">[email protected]</span></a>. The EPA Region 5 office is open from 8:30 a.m. 
to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, excluding Federal holidays and 
facility closures due to COVID-19.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Throughout this document whenever ``we,'' 
``us,'' or ``our'' is used, we mean EPA.

I. Background

A. The 2010 1-Hour Primary SO2 NAAQS

    Under section 109 of the CAA, EPA has established primary and 
secondary NAAQS for certain pervasive air pollutants (referred to as 
``criteria pollutants'') and conducts periodic reviews of the NAAQS to 
determine whether they should be revised or whether new NAAQS should be 
established.
    On June 22, 2010 (75 FR 35520), EPA published in the Federal 
Register a strengthened, primary 1-hour SO<INF>2</INF> NAAQS, 
establishing a new standard at a level of 75 ppb, based on the 3-year 
average of the annual 99th percentile of daily maximum 1-hour average 
concentrations of SO<INF>2.</INF> This revised SO<INF>2</INF> NAAQS 
provided increased protection of public health and provided for 
revocation of the 1971 primary annual and 24-hour SO<INF>2</INF> 
standards for most areas of the country following area designations 
under the new NAAQS.

B. Designations and Attainment Dates for the 2010 SO2 NAAQS

    Following promulgation of a new or revised NAAQS, EPA is required 
to designate all areas of the country as either ``attainment,'' 
``nonattainment,'' or ``unclassifiable,'' pursuant to CAA section 
107(d)(1). On July 12, 2016 (81 FR 45039), EPA finalized its second 
round of initial designations under the 2010 SO<INF>2</INF> NAAQS. 
During the second round of designations, the St. Clair area of Michigan 
was designated as nonattainment for the 2010 SO<INF>2</INF> NAAQS (40 
CFR 81.323) based on modeling of actual emissions for the designated 
area.
    CAA section 191(a) directs states containing an area designated 
nonattainment for the 2010 SO<INF>2</INF> NAAQS to develop and submit a 
nonattainment area State Implementation Plan (SIP) to EPA within 18 
months of the effective date of an area's designation as nonattainment. 
The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) 
was required to submit a SIP by March 12, 2018, to bring the St. Clair 
area into attainment by the attainment date of September 12, 2021.
    EGLE submitted a request for a Clean Data Determination (CDD) on 
July 24, 2020. When a nonattainment area is attaining the 2010 
SO<INF>2</INF> NAAQS based on the most recent available data, EPA may 
issue a CDD suspending planning requirements. EPA issued a CDD for the 
St. Clair area based on monitoring and modeling data for the 2017-2019 
period via a final rule published on December 7, 2021 (86 FR 69173).

[[Page 78838]]

C. Requirement To Determine Attainment by the Attainment Date

    Section 179(c)(1) of the CAA requires EPA to determine whether a 
nonattainment area attained a standard by the applicable attainment 
date based on the area's air quality as of the attainment date. EPA is 
to issue this determination within six months of the attainment date. 
Thus, EPA had a mandatory duty under CAA section 179(c) to determine by 
March 12, 2022 whether the area attained by September 12, 2021. This 
action proposes to determine the St. Clair area did attain the 2010 
SO<INF>2</INF> NAAQS by the attainment date of September 12, 2021.
    A determination of whether an area's air quality meets applicable 
standards is generally based upon the most recent three years of 
complete, quality-assured data gathered at established State and local 
air monitoring stations in a nonattainment area and entered into EPA's 
Air Quality System (AQS) database. Data from ambient air monitors 
operated by State and local agencies in compliance with EPA monitoring 
requirements must be submitted to AQS. Monitoring agencies annually 
certify that these data are accurate to the best of their knowledge. 
All data are reviewed to determine the area's air quality status in 
accordance with 40 CFR part 50, appendix T (for SO<INF>2</INF>). In 
general, for SO<INF>2</INF>, EPA does not rely exclusively on 
monitoring data to determine whether the NAAQS is met unless it has 
been demonstrated that the monitors were appropriately sited to record 
expected maximum ambient concentrations of SO<INF>2</INF> in an area. 
As such, monitoring data can be supplemented with other relevant 
information, including dispersion modeling and emissions inventories, 
for determining attainment.

II. Proposed Determination of Attainment by the Attainment Date

A. Area Characterization

    The St. Clair area is located within the lower southeastern corner 
of Michigan northeast of Detroit and shares a border with Ontario, 
Canada along the St. Clair River. The area is defined by the St. Clair 
River for the eastern boundary, an extension from the St. Clair River 
straight west to the intersection of State Highway M-29 and St. Clair 
River Drive, continuing west on State Highway M-29 to Church Road to 
Arnold Road to County Line Road for the southern boundary, County Line 
Road and the Macomb/St. Clair County boundary to Stoddard Road to Wales 
Ridge Road for the western boundary, and Alpine Road to Fitz Road to 
Smith Creek Road to Range Road to Huron Avenue, extending straight east 
from the intersection of Huron Road and River Road to the St. Clair 
River for the northern boundary.
    The St. Clair area contains two SO<INF>2</INF>-emitting facilities 
that are both coal-fired power plants. Additionally, the area contains 
two SO<INF>2</INF> monitors which reside near the facilities. The two 
monitors have been operating since 2016 and have had no recorded 
violations of the NAAQS. As these monitors were sited to operate under 
guidance per the ``SO<INF>2</INF> NAAQS Designations Source-Oriented 
Monitoring Technical Assistance Document'' (SO<INF>2</INF> Monitoring 
TAD), EPA believes that these monitors' locations adequately represent 
the locations of potential maximum SO<INF>2</INF> impacts from the two 
power plants.

B. St. Clair Nonattainment Area's Attainment of the 2010 SO2 NAAQS

    We propose to determine that the St. Clair nonattainment area 
attained the 2010 SO<INF>2</INF> NAAQS by the attainment date of 
September 12, 2021. EPA previously determined that the St. Clair 
SO<INF>2</INF> nonattainment area was attaining the 2010 SO<INF>2</INF> 
NAAQS in its December 7, 2021 (86 FR 69173), CDD. EPA issued the CDD 
based on SO<INF>2</INF> monitoring and modeling data from EGLE. For 
this determination of attainment by the attainment date, EPA is in part 
relying on the approved CDD of the St. Clair area as well as additional 
supporting information. The data cited by the CDD demonstrated 
attainment for the 2017-2019 time period, with averaged SO<INF>2</INF> 
monitoring values of 54 ppb for the Belle River-Mills Monitor and 45 
ppb for the St. Clair-Remer Monitor. The CDD modeled 2017-2019 emission 
sources for an overall maximum 99th percentile impact output of 64.4 
ppb, which falls below the 2010 SO<INF>2</INF> NAAQS of 75 ppb.
    As noted, determinations of whether areas attained the NAAQS by the 
attainment date are generally based on the area's design value as of 
the attainment date, i.e., the three most recent calendar years of 
data, in this case 2018-2020. Therefore, in this proposal EPA is 
closely examining monitoring and emissions data from 2020 to supplement 
the analysis already concluded in the CDD, which looked at air quality 
information from 2017-2019. In 2020, primary source SO<INF>2</INF> 
emissions and monitored SO<INF>2</INF> ambient air concentrations in 
the area continued to decline. The SO<INF>2</INF> emissions from the 
Belle River and St. Clair power plants decreased by an additional total 
of 8,996 tons per year from 2019 to 2020 (Table 1). As seen in Table 2, 
the 2018-2020 design values at the two air quality monitors in the area 
continued to show SO<INF>2</INF> levels below the 75 ppb level of the 
NAAQS and a decline in SO<INF>2</INF> concentration from 2017-2019. 
Therefore, the additional information EPA has examined for 2020, 
coupled with the existing CDD based on 2017-2019 monitoring and 
emissions data, leads the agency to conclude that the St. Clair 
nonattainment area attained by its attainment date.

       Table 1--St. Clair, MI Nonattainment Area Annual Emissions
------------------------------------------------------------------------
         SO2 emissions
-------------------------------      Power plant        Total tons/year
             Year
------------------------------------------------------------------------
2017..........................  Belle River/St. Clair             36,918
2018..........................  Belle River/St. Clair             41,381
2019..........................  Belle River/St. Clair             30,751
2020..........................  Belle River/St. Clair             21,755
------------------------------------------------------------------------


[[Page 78839]]


             Table 2--St. Clair, MI Nonattainment Area 2010 SO2 NAAQS Standard 3-Year Design Values
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                              Power plant monitors        3-Year design values (ppb)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                     Site ID                                           2017-2019       2018-2020
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
26-147-0913................................  Belle River-Mills..................              45              40
26-147-0914................................  St. Clair-Remer....................              54              45
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

III. Proposed Action and Request for Public Comment

    Based on EPA's review of all available evidence described in this 
notice, EPA is proposing to determine that the St. Clair nonattainment 
area attained the 2010 SO<INF>2</INF> NAAQS by the relevant attainment 
date of September 12, 2021.
    The determination of attainment by the attainment date does not 
constitute a redesignation of the St. Clair, MI nonattainment area to 
attainment of the 2010 SO<INF>2</INF> NAAQS under section 107(d)(3) of 
the CAA. If this action is finalized, the St. Clair area will remain 
designated nonattainment for the 2010 SO<INF>2</INF> NAAQS until such 
time as EPA approves a redesignation request and accompanying 10-year 
maintenance plan, and EPA determines that the area meets the 
requirements of CAA section 107(d)(3) and provides for maintenance as 
required by CAA section 175A.
    If finalized, this action will address EPA's obligation under CAA 
section 179(c) to determine if the St. Clair Area attained the 2010 
SO<INF>2</INF> NAAQS by the attainment date of September 12, 2021.
    EPA is soliciting public comments on this action. These comments 
will be considered before taking final action.

IV. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews

A. Executive Order 12866: Regulatory Planning and Review, and Executive 
Order 14094: Modernizing Regulatory Review

    This action is not a ``significant regulatory action'' under the 
terms of Executive Order 12866 (58 FR 51735, October 4, 1993) and is 
therefore not subject to review under Executive Order 14094 (88 FR 
21879, April 11, 2023).

B. Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA)

    This rule does not impose an information collection burden under 
the provisions of the PRA of 1995 (44 U.S.C. 3501 et seq.). This action 
does not contain any information collection activities and serves only 
to make a final determination that the St. Clair, Michigan 
nonattainment area attained the 2010 SO<INF>2</INF> NAAQS by the 
September 12, 2021, attainment date.

C. Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA)

    I certify that this action will not have a significant economic 
impact on a substantial number of small entities under the RFA (5 
U.S.C. 601 et seq.). The determination of attainment by attainment date 
action of attaining the 2010 SO<INF>2</INF> NAAQS will not impose any 
requirements on small entities or will not create any new requirements 
beyond what is mandated by the CAA.

D. Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA)

    This action does not contain any unfunded mandate as described in 
UMRA, 2 U.S.C. 1531-1538, and does not significantly or uniquely affect 
small governments. The action imposes no enforceable duty on any State, 
local or Tribal governments or the private sector.

E. Executive Order 13132: Federalism

    This action does not have federalism implications. It will not have 
substantial direct effects on the States, on the relationship between 
the national government and the States, or on the distribution of power 
and responsibilities among the various levels of government. The 
division of responsibility between the Federal Government and the 
States for purposes of implementing the NAAQS is established under the 
CAA.

F. Executive Order 13175: Consultation and Coordination With Indian 
Tribal Governments

    Executive Order 13175 (65 FR 67249, November 9, 2000), requires EPA 
to develop an accountable process to ensure ``meaningful and timely 
input by Tribal officials in the development of regulatory policies 
that have Tribal implications.'' This action does not have Tribal 
implications as specified in Executive Order 13175. This action does 
not apply on any Indian reservation land, any other area where EPA or 
an Indian Tribe has demonstrated that a Tribe has jurisdiction, or non-
reservation areas of Indian country. Thus, Executive Order 13175 does 
not apply to this action.

G. Executive Order 13045: Protection of Children From Environmental 
Health and Safety Risks

    EPA interprets Executive Order 13045 (62 FR 19885, April 23, 1997) 
as applying to those regulatory actions that concern environmental 
health or safety risks that EPA has reason to believe may 
disproportionately affect children, per the definition of ``covered 
regulatory action'' in section 2-202 of the Executive Order. This 
action is not subject to Executive Order 13045 because it does not 
establish an environmental standard intended to mitigate health or 
safety risks.

H. Executive Order 13211: Actions That Significantly Affect Energy 
Supply, Distribution, or Use

    This action is not subject to Executive Order 13211 (66 FR 28355, 
May 22, 2001) because it is not a significant regulatory action under 
Executive Order 12866.

I. National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act (NTTAA)

    This rulemaking does not involve technical standards. Therefore, 
EPA is not considering the use of any voluntary consensus standards.

J. Executive Order 12898: Federal Actions To Address Environmental 
Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations

    Executive Order 12898 (Federal Actions To Address Environmental 
Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations, 59 FR 7629, 
February 16, 1994) directs Federal agencies to identify and address 
``disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental 
effects'' of their actions on communities with environmental justice 
(EJ) concerns to the greatest extent practicable and permitted by law. 
EPA defines EJ as ``the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of 
all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with 
respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of 
environmental laws, regulations, and policies.'' EPA further defines 
the term fair treatment to mean that ``no group of people should bear a 
disproportionate burden of environmental harms and

[[Page 78840]]

risks, including those resulting from the negative environmental 
consequences of industrial, governmental, and commercial operations or 
programs and policies.''
    EPA did not perform an EJ analysis and did not consider EJ in this 
action. Due to the nature of the action being taken here, this action 
is expected to have a neutral to positive impact on the air quality of 
the affected area. Consideration of EJ is not required as part of this 
action, and there is no information in the record inconsistent with the 
stated goal of E.O. 12898 of achieving environmental justice for 
communities with EJ concerns.

List of Subjects in 40 CFR Part 52

    Environmental protection, Air pollution control, Incorporation by 
reference, Intergovernmental relations, Sulfur dioxide.

    Dated: September 18, 2024.
Debra Shore,
Regional Administrator, Region 5.
[FR Doc. 2024-21895 Filed 9-25-24; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6560-50-P


</pre><script data-cfasync="false" src="/cdn-cgi/scripts/5c5dd728/cloudflare-static/email-decode.min.js"></script></body>
</html>