Environmental Protection Agency April 28, 2006 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

EPA expressed environmental concerns about the potential for adverse impacts to water and air quality. In particular, acid generation from highly mineralized rock which has the potential to produce acid drainage impacting wetlands and aquatic life. Rating EC1.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established the CAAAC on November 19, 1990, to provide independent advice and counsel to EPA on policy issues associated with implementation of the Clean Air Act of 1990. The Committee advises on economic, environmental, technical, scientific, and enforcement policy issues. Open Meeting Notice: Pursuant to 5 U.S.C. App. 2 section 10(a)(2), notice is hereby given that the Air Quality Management subcommittee to the Clean Air Act Advisory Committee will hold its next open meeting on Thursday, May 18 and Friday, May 19, 2006 from approximately 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 1101 Slater Road Suite 200, Durham, North Carolina. Any member of the public who wishes to submit written or brief oral comments; or who wants further information concerning this meeting should follow the procedures outlined in the section below titled ``Providing Oral or Written Comments at this Meeting.'' Seating will be limited and available on a first come, first served basis. In order to insure copies of printed materials are available, members of the public wishing to attend this meeting are encouraged to contact Mr. Jeffrey Whitlow, Office of Air and Radiation, U.S. EPA (919) 541-5523, Fax (919) 685-3307 or by mail at U.S. EPA, Office of Quality Planning and Standards (Mail code C 301-04), 109 T.W. Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711 or by e-mail at: whitlow.jeff@epa.gov by noon Eastern Time on January 19, 2006. For information on access or services for individuals with disabilities or to request accommodation of a disability, please contact Mr. Whitlow, preferably at least 10 days prior to the meeting, to give EPA as much time as possible to process your request. Inspection of Committee Documents: The subcommittee agenda and any documents prepared for the meeting will be sent to participants via e- mail prior to the start of the meeting. Thereafter, these documents, together with the meeting minutes, will be available by contacting the Office of Air and Radiation Docket and requesting information under docket OAR-2004-0075 and can be found on the CAAAC Web site: https:// www.epa.gov/air/caaac. The Docket office can be reached by telephoning (202) 260-7548; FAX (202) 260-4400.

Missouri has applied to EPA for Final authorization of the changes to its hazardous waste program under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). EPA proposes to grant final authorization to Missouri.

EPA is proposing to approve two State Implementation Plan (SIP) revisions to the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation's Nitrogen Oxides (NOX) Budget Trading Program (Trading Program) submitted October 27, 2003, and December 10, 2003, by the State of Tennessee. The first revision corrects a miscalculation in Tennessee's NOX trading budget for non-electric generating units (non-EGUs) resulting from the use of an incorrect control efficiency percentage for one of the Trading Program's non-EGU sourcesan Eastman Chemical Company boiler. The correction of this miscalculation results in a 147 tons per season (tps) increase in Tennessee's NOX trading budget for non-EGUsmaking its non- EGU trading budget 5,666 tps, instead of 5,519 tps, and increasing Tennessee's total State-wide NOX budget from 163,928 tpy to 164,075 tpy. Based on this correction, Tennessee's second revision reallocates trading allowances to Eastman Chemical Companyincreasing the NOX trading allowances from 416 tps to 549 tps for the Eastman Chemical Company boiler. In the Final Rules section of this Federal Register, EPA is approving the State's SIP revisions as a direct final rule without prior proposal because the Agency views these as noncontroversial submittals and anticipates no adverse comments. A detailed rationale for the approval is set forth in the direct final rule. If no significant, material, and adverse comments are received in response to this rule, no further activity is contemplated. If EPA receives adverse comments, the direct final rule will be withdrawn and all public comments received will be addressed in a subsequent final rule based on this proposed rule. EPA will not institute a second comment period on this document. Any parties interested in commenting on this document should do so at this time.

EPA is taking final action to approve revisions to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania State Implementation Plan (SIP). The revisions were submitted by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) to establish and require reasonably available control technology (RACT) for five major sources and nitrogen oxides (NOX) pursuant to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's SIP-approved generic RACT regulations. EPA is approving these revisions in accordance with the Clean Air Act (CAA).

In today's action, we are finalizing regulations to include Delaware and New Jersey in the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) for fine particles (PM2.5), based on our assessment that they contribute significantly to a downwind State's nonattainment. In the CAIR, we determined that upwind States that contribute 0.2 [mu]g/ m3 or more to a downwind PM2.5 nonattainment area are potentially deemed to be contributing significantly to nonattainment in the downwind State. The EPA proposed to augment the analytical approach used in the CAIR by supplementing the air quality step of the contribution analysis. Based on the results of this augmented analytical approach, we proposed that Delaware and New Jersey should be covered by the CAIR for annual sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOX) requirements and are finalizing the regulation to include these States in the CAIR for PM2.5.

Today, EPA is taking actions to address the interstate transport of emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOX) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) that contribute significantly to nonattainment and maintenance problems with respect to the national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and 8-hour ozone. As one part of today's action, EPA is providing its final response to a petition submitted to EPA by the State of North Carolina under section 126 of the Clean Air Act (CAA). The petition requests that EPA find that SO2 and/or NOX emissions from electric generating units (EGUs) in 13 States are significantly contributing to PM2.5 and/or 8-hour ozone nonattainment and maintenance problems in North Carolina, and requested that EPA establish control requirements to prohibit such significant contribution. The EPA is denying the petition because, in today's action, EPA is promulgating Federal implementation plans (FIPs) for all jurisdictions covered by the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) to address interstate transport. The FIPs will regulate EGUs in the affected States and achieve the emissions reductions requirements established by the CAIR until States have approved State implementation plans (SIPs) to achieve the reductions. As the control requirement for the FIPs, EPA is adopting the model trading rules that EPA provided in CAIR as a control option for States, with minor changes to account for Federal rather than State implementation. Today's action also revises CAIR SIP model trading rules in order to address the interaction between the EPA-administered CAIR FIP trading programs being promulgated today and the EPA-administered CAIR State trading programs that will be created by any State that elects to submit a SIP establishing such a trading program to meet the requirements of the CAIR. In addition, EPA is taking final action on our reconsideration of the definition of ``EGU'' as it relates to solid waste incinerators. Today's action also makes revisions to the Acid Rain Program in order to make the administrative appeals procedures, which currently apply to final determinations by the Administrator under the EPA- administered CAIR State trading programs, also apply to the EPA- administered trading programs under the FIP action. In addition, we are making certain minor revisions to the Acid Rain Program that will apply to all affected units.