Document ID: EPA-R05-OAR-2014-0860-0002
Agency: epa
Document Type: Rule
Title: Direct Final Approval of the Wisconsin Base Year Emission Inventories for the 2008 8-Hour Ozone Standard
Posted Date: 2016-03-07T05:00Z

[Federal Register Volume 81, Number 44 (Monday, March 7, 2016)]
[Rules and Regulations]
[Pages 11673-11677]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2016-04897]

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ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

40 CFR Part 52

[EPA-R05-OAR-2014-0860; FRL 9943-31-Region 5]

Air Plan Approval; Wisconsin; Base Year Emission Inventories for 
the 2008 8-Hour Ozone Standard

AGENCY: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

ACTION: Direct final rule.

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SUMMARY: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is approving a State 
Implementation Plan (SIP) revision submitted by the Wisconsin 
Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) on November 14, 2014, to address 
emission inventory requirements for the Sheboygan nonattainment area 
(Sheboygan area) and the Wisconsin portion (Kenosha area) of the 
Chicago-Naperville, Illinois-Indiana-Wisconsin (Chicago-Naperville, IL-
IN-WI) nonattainment area under the 2008 ozone National Ambient Air 
Quality Standard (NAAQS or standard). The Clean Air Act (CAA) requires 
emission inventories for all ozone nonattainment areas. The emission 
inventories contained in Wisconsin's November 14, 2014, submission meet 
this CAA requirement.

DATES: This direct final rule is effective on May 6, 2016, unless the 
EPA receives

[[Page 11674]]

adverse comments by April 6, 2016. If adverse comments are received by 
EPA, EPA will publish a timely withdrawal of the direct final rule in 
the Federal Register informing the public that the rule will not take 
effect.

ADDRESSES: Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R05-
OAR-2014-0860 at http://www.regulations.gov or via email to 
Aburano.Douglas@epa.gov. For comments submitted at Regulations.gov, 
follow the online instructions for submitting comments. Once submitted, 
comments cannot be edited or removed from Regulations.gov. For either 
manner of submission, EPA may publish any comment received to its 
public docket. Do not submit electronically any information you 
consider to be Confidential Business Information (CBI) 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 or multimedia 
submissions, and general guidance on making effective comments, please 
visit http://www2.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Edward Doty, Attainment Planning and 
Maintenance Section, Air Programs Branch (AR-18J), Environmental 
Protection Agency, Region 5, 77 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, 
Illinois 60604, (312) 886-6057, Doty.Edward@epa.gov.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Throughout this document, whenever ``we,'' 
``us,'' or ``our'' is used, we mean the EPA. This SUPPLEMENTARY 
INFORMATION section is arranged as follows:

I. The 2008 Ozone NAAQS and Emission Inventory Requirements
II. Wisconsin's Emission Inventories
    A. Base Year
    B. How did the State develop the emission inventories?
III. EPA's Evaluation
    A. Did the State adequately document the derivation of the 
emission estimates?
    B. Did the State quality assure the emission estimates?
    C. Did the State provide for public review of the requested SIP 
revision?
IV. Final Action
V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews

I. The 2008 Ozone NAAQS and Emission Inventory Requirements

    On March 12, 2008, EPA promulgated a revised 8-hour ozone NAAQS of 
0.075 parts per million (ppm). See 73 FR 16436 (March 27, 2008). The 
Sheboygan and Kenosha areas were designated as marginal nonattainment 
areas for the 2008 ozone NAAQS. See 77 FR 30088 (May 21, 2012) and 77 
FR 34221 (June 11, 2012). The Sheboygan area is Sheboygan County. The 
Kenosha area is the portion of Kenosha County bounded by the Illinois/
Wisconsin border (Kenosha County border) on the south, Lake Michigan on 
the east, the Kenosha County/Racine County border on the north, and the 
Interstate 94 (I-94) corridor (including all of the I-94 corridor) on 
the west. Both of these areas are classified as marginal nonattainment 
for the 2008 ozone standard.
    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, 
emission inventories for all areas designated as nonattainment for the 
ozone NAAQS. An emission inventory for ozone is an estimation of actual 
emissions of air pollutants that contribute to the formation of ozone 
in an area. Ozone is a gas that is formed by the reaction of Volatile 
Organic Compounds (VOC) and Oxides of Nitrogen (NOX) in the 
atmosphere in the presence of sunlight. VOC and NOX are 
referred to as ozone precursors. Therefore, an emission inventory for 
ozone focuses on the emissions of VOC and NOX. VOC is 
emitted by many types of pollution sources, including power plants, 
industrial sources, on-road and off-road mobile sources, smaller 
stationary sources, collectively referred to as area sources, and 
biogenic sources.\1\ NOX is primarily emitted by combustion 
sources, both stationary and mobile.
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    \1\ Biogenic emissions are produced by living organisms and are 
typically not included in the base year emission inventories, but 
are considered in ozone modeling analyses, which must consider all 
emissions in a modeled area.
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    The emission inventories provide emissions data for a variety of 
air quality planning tasks, including establishing baseline emission 
levels for anthropogenic (manmade) emissions associated with ozone 
standard violations, calculating emission reduction targets needed to 
attain the NAAQS and achieving reasonable further progress toward 
attainment of the ozone standard (not required in the areas considered 
here), determining emission inputs for ozone air quality modeling 
analyses, and tracking emissions over time to determine progress toward 
achieving air quality and emission reduction goals. As stated above, 
the CAA requires the states to submit emission inventories for areas 
designated as nonattainment for ozone. For the 2008 ozone NAAQS, EPA 
has recommended that states submit typical summer day emission 
estimates for 2011 (78 FR 34178, 34190, June 6, 2013). However, EPA 
also allows states to submit base year emissions for other years during 
a recent ozone standard violation period. States are required to submit 
estimates of VOC and NOX emissions for four general classes 
of anthropogenic sources: Stationary point sources; area sources; on-
road mobile sources; and off-road mobile sources. The base year 
emission inventories must be submitted for ozone nonattainment within 
two years after EPA designates nonattainment areas for a new ozone 
standard.

II. Wisconsin's Emission Inventories

    Tables 1 and 2 summarize the 2011 VOC and NOX emissions 
in the Wisconsin ozone nonattainment areas for a typical summer day.\2\
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    \2\ The highest ozone concentrations are typically monitored 
during the summer months and, in Wisconsin, ozone standard 
exceedances are typically monitored during the months of July 
through September.

            Table 1--Sheboygan County 2011 Emission Inventory
                             [Tons per day]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
               Source type                      VOC             NOX
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Point...................................            2.63           11.73
Area....................................            7.35            1.35
On-Road Mobile..........................            2.49            5.18

[[Page 11675]]

 
Off-Road Mobile.........................            4.36            3.26
                                         -------------------------------
    Totals..............................           16.83           21.52
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              Table 2--Kenosha Area 2011 Emission Inventory
                             [Tons per day]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
               Source type                      VOC             NOX
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Point...................................            0.70            8.80
Area....................................            4.78            1.09
On-Road Mobile..........................            2.14            4.67
Off-Road Mobile.........................            2.42            2.33
                                         -------------------------------
    Totals..............................           10.04           16.89
------------------------------------------------------------------------

A. Base Year

    WDNR chose 2011 as the base year for these emission inventories, as 
recommended by EPA.

B. How did the State develop the emission inventories?

    The point source NOX and VOC emissions were derived from 
facility-reported emissions for 2011. Wisconsin requires major source 
facilities to report emissions annually. WDNR used seasonal process-
level source activity information contained in the annual emission 
reports along with emission control information to calculate both the 
summer day emissions and the annual emissions for each facility. The 
source location and emissions data contained in the facility emission 
reports were used to determine the emissions specific to the Sheboygan 
and Kenosha areas.
    The 2011 area source emissions were derived using the 2011 National 
Emissions Inventory (NEI), version 2, emission estimates for Sheboygan 
and Kenosha Counties. The area source emissions data have been derived 
for each appropriate Source Classification Code (SCC) covered by the 
NEI for Sheboygan and Kenosha Counties. The WDNR used various source 
surrogate data, such as population, land use data, and employment 
source sector or SCC, to allocate the area source emissions to the 
nonattainment portion of Kenosha County. The emission inventory 
documentation contained in Appendix 5 of Wisconsin's submittal includes 
documentation explaining how the emissions were derived for each area 
source type.
    On-road mobile source emissions were determined using EPA's Motor 
Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES), version MOVES2010b, Vehicle Miles 
Traveled (VMT) and other vehicle class-specific data supplied by the 
Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWRPC), the Bay-
Lake Regional Planning Commission (BLRPC), the metropolitan planning 
organizations that cover the two ozone nonattainment areas, and the 
Wisconsin Department of Transportation.
    Non-road mobile source emissions were derived by dividing the 
various area source types into two groups: (1) Commercial marine 
vessels, aircraft, and railroads (collectively referred to as MAR); and 
(2) all other non-road source types. For the aircraft and railroad 
components of the MAR, the WDNR relied on the emissions for these 
source types contained in EPA's 2011 NEI, version 1. For commercial 
marine vessel emissions, the WDNR used emissions derived by the Lake 
Michigan Air Directors Consortium (LADCO), but used the county-specific 
commercial marine vessel emissions in the 2011 NEI to allocate the 
LADCO-supplied commercial marine vessel emissions to the Sheboygan and 
Kenosha ozone nonattainment areas. For the non-MAR area source 
emissions, the WDNR used the National Mobile Inventory Model (NMIM) to 
generate annual and summer day NOX and VOC emissions for 
each non-road mobile source type.
    To quality assure (QA) and quality check (QC) the emission 
estimates, the WDNR developed a quality assurance plan. This plan was 
applied for each source category and source type to ensure accuracy, 
completeness, comparability, and representativeness of the estimated 
emissions. One of the major quality assurance procedures employed was 
the comparison of the calculated emissions to emissions data contained 
in the 2011 NEI.

III. EPA's Evaluation

    EPA has reviewed Wisconsin's November 14, 2014, requested SIP 
revision for consistency with CAA and EPA emission inventory 
requirements. In particular, EPA has reviewed the techniques used by 
the WDNR to derive and quality assure the emission estimates. EPA has 
also determined whether Wisconsin has provided the public with the 
opportunity to review and comment on the development of the emission 
estimates and whether the State has addressed all public comments.

A. Did the State adequately document the derivation of the emission 
estimates?

    The State documented the general procedures used to estimate the 
emissions for each of the major source types. The documentation of the 
emission estimation procedures is adequate for us to determine that 
Wisconsin followed acceptable procedures to estimate the emissions.

B. Did the State quality assure the emission estimates?

    As noted above, WDNR developed a quality assurance plan and 
followed this plan during various phases of the emissions estimation 
and documentation process to QA and QC the emissions for completeness 
and accuracy. The quality assurance procedures have been determined to 
be adequate and acceptable. We conclude that Wisconsin has developed 
inventories of VOC and NOX emissions that are comprehensive 
and complete.

[[Page 11676]]

C. Did the State provide for public review of the requested SIP 
revision?

    WDNR notified the public of the opportunity for comment both in 
newspapers and on the WDNR Web site. A public hearing was held on 
September 25, 2014, and WDNR provided for the review of written 
comments received outside of the public hearing. The only comments 
received were those from EPA, and WDNR addressed those comments through 
revisions reflected in the final emission inventories and associated 
documentation.

IV. Final Action

    We are approving a Wisconsin SIP revision submitted to address the 
ozone-related emission inventory requirements for the Sheboygan and 
Kenosha areas for the 2008 ozone NAAQS. The emission inventories we are 
approving into the SIP are specified in Tables 1 and 2 above. We are 
approving the emission inventories because they contain comprehensive, 
accurate, and current inventories of actual emissions for all relevant 
VOC and NOX sources in accordance with CAA sections 
172(c)(3) and 182(a) and because Wisconsin adopted the emission 
inventories after providing for reasonable public notice and a public 
hearing.
    We are publishing this action without prior proposal because we 
view this as a noncontroversial amendment and anticipate no adverse 
comments. However, in the proposed rules section of this Federal 
Register publication, we are publishing a separate document that will 
serve as the proposal to approve the state plan if relevant adverse 
written comments are filed. This rule is effective on May 6, 2016 
without further notice unless we receive relevant adverse written 
comments by April 6, 2016. If we receive such comments, we will 
withdraw this action before the effective date by publishing a 
subsequent document withdrawing the final action. All public comments 
received will then be addressed in a subsequent final rule based on the 
proposed action. EPA will not institute a second comment period. Any 
parties interested in commenting on this action should do so at this 
time. Please note that if EPA receives adverse comment on an amendment, 
paragraph, or section of this rule and if that provision may be severed 
from the remainder of the rule, EPA may adopt as final those provisions 
of the rule that are not the subject of an adverse comment. If we do 
not receive any comments, this action will be effective May 6, 2016.

V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews

    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, 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 Executive Orders 
12866 (58 FR 51735, October 4, 1993) and 13563 (76 FR 3821, January 21, 
2011);
     Does not impose an information collection burden under the 
provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act (44 U.S.C. 3501 et seq.);
     Is certified as not having a significant economic impact 
on a substantial number of small entities under the Regulatory 
Flexibility Act (5 U.S.C. 601 et seq.);
     Does not contain any unfunded mandate or significantly or 
uniquely affect small governments, as described in the Unfunded 
Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (Pub. L. 104-4);
     Does not have Federalism implications as specified in 
Executive Order 13132 (64 FR 43255, August 10, 1999);
     Is not an economically significant regulatory action based 
on health or safety risks subject to Executive Order 13045 (62 FR 
19885, April 23, 1997);
     Is not a significant regulatory action subject to 
Executive Order 13211 (66 FR 28355, May 22, 2001);
     Is not subject to requirements of Section 12(d) of the 
National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act of 1995 (15 U.S.C. 272 
note) because application of those requirements would be inconsistent 
with the CAA; and
     Does not provide EPA with the discretionary authority to 
address, as appropriate, disproportionate human health or environmental 
effects, using practicable and legally permissible methods, under 
Executive Order 12898 (59 FR 7629, February 16, 1994).
    In addition, the SIP is not approved to apply on any Indian 
reservation land or in any other area where EPA or an Indian tribe has 
demonstrated that a tribe has jurisdiction. In those areas of Indian 
country, the rule does not have tribal implications and will not impose 
substantial direct costs on tribal governments or preempt tribal law as 
specified by Executive Order 13175 (65 FR 67249, November 9, 2000).
    The Congressional Review Act, 5 U.S.C. 801 et seq., as added by the 
Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996, generally 
provides that before a rule may take effect, the agency promulgating 
the rule must submit a rule report, which includes a copy of the rule, 
to each House of the Congress and to the Comptroller General of the 
United States. EPA will submit a report containing this action and 
other required information to the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of 
Representatives, and the Comptroller General of the United States prior 
to publication of the rule in the Federal Register. A major rule cannot 
take effect until 60 days after it is published in the Federal 
Register. This action is not a ``major rule'' as defined by 5 U.S.C. 
804(2).
    Under section 307(b)(1) of the CAA, petitions for judicial review 
of this action must be filed in the United States Court of Appeals for 
the appropriate circuit by May 6, 2016. Filing a petition for 
reconsideration by the Administrator of this final rule does not affect 
the finality of this action for the purposes of judicial review nor 
does it extend the time within which a petition for judicial review may 
be filed, and it shall not postpone the effectiveness of such rule or 
action. Parties with objections to this direct final rule are 
encouraged to file a comment in response to the parallel notice of 
proposed rulemaking for this action published in the proposed rules 
section of today's Federal Register, rather than file an immediate 
petition for judicial review of this direct final rule, so that EPA can 
withdraw this direct final rule and address the comment in the proposed 
rulemaking. This action may not be challenged later in proceedings to 
enforce its requirements. (See section 307(b)(2).)

List of Subjects in 40 CFR Part 52

    Environmental protection, Air pollution control, Carbon monoxide, 
Incorporation by reference, Intergovernmental relations, Nitrogen 
dioxide, Ozone, Reporting and recordkeeping requirements, Volatile 
organic compounds.

    Dated: February 22, 2016.
Robert A. Kaplan,
Acting Regional Administrator, Region 5.

    40 CFR part 52 is amended as follows:

[[Page 11677]]

PART 52--APPROVAL AND PROMULGATION OF IMPLEMENTATION PLANS

0
1. The authority citation for part 52 continues to read as follows:

    Authority:  42 U.S.C. 7401 et seq.

0
2. Section 52.2585 is amended by adding paragraph (dd) to read as 
follows:

Sec.  52.2585  Control strategy: Ozone.

* * * * *
    (dd) On November 14, 2014, Wisconsin submitted 2011 volatile 
organic compounds and oxides of nitrogen emission inventories for the 
Sheboygan County and Wisconsin portion (Kenosha area) of the Chicago-
Naperville, Illinois-Indiana-Wisconsin nonattainment areas for the 2008 
ozone national ambient air quality standard as a revision of the 
Wisconsin state implementation plan. The documented emission 
inventories are approved as a revision of the State's implementation 
plan.

[FR Doc. 2016-04897 Filed 3-4-16; 8:45 am]
 BILLING CODE 6560-50-P