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Adequacy Status of Post-Attainment Year Motor Vehicle Emissions Budgets in 2006 PM2.5 Serious Area Plan for South Coast; California Publication: Federal Register Agency: Environmental Protection Agency Byline: Deborah Jordan Date: 13 October 2021 Subjects: American Government  , The Environment
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[Federal Register Volume 86, Number 195 (Wednesday, October 13, 2021)]
[Notices]
[Pages 56930-56932]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2021-22160]
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ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
[EPA-R09-OAR-2021-0648; FRL-9096-03-R9]
Adequacy Status of Post-Attainment Year Motor Vehicle Emissions
Budgets in 2006 PM2.5 Serious Area Plan for South Coast; California
AGENCY: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
[[Page 56931]]
ACTION: Notice of adequacy.
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SUMMARY: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is notifying the
public that the Agency has found that the motor vehicle emissions
budgets (``budgets'') for the year 2020 in the 2016 Air Quality
Management Plan (AQMP) for the 2006 fine particulate matter
(PM2.5) National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) in
the Los Angeles-South Coast Air Basin ``Serious'' nonattainment area
(``South Coast 2006 PM2.5 Serious Area Plan'') are adequate
for transportation conformity purposes. The California Air Resources
Board (CARB) submitted the South Coast 2006 PM2.5 Serious
Area Plan to the EPA on April 27, 2017, as a revision to the California
State Implementation Plan (SIP). Upon the effective date of this notice
of adequacy, the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG)
and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) must use the adequate
budgets in future transportation conformity analyses.
DATES: This finding is effective October 28, 2021.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Ginger Vagenas, EPA, Region IX, Air
Division AIR-2, 75 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, CA 94105-3901;
(415) 972-3964 or vagenas.ginger@epa.gov.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Throughout this document, whenever ``we,''
``us,'' or ``our'' is used, we mean the EPA.
Today's notice is simply an announcement of a finding that we have
already made. By letter dated September 28, 2021, EPA Region IX
notified CARB that the budgets in the South Coast 2006 PM2.5
Serious Area Plan for the reasonable further progress (RFP) post-
attainment milestone year of 2020 are adequate.\1\ The finding is
available at EPA's conformity website: https://www.epa.gov/state-and-local-transportation/conformity-adequacy-review-region-9. We announced
the availability of the South Coast 2006 PM2.5 Serious Area
Plan and related 2020 budgets on the EPA's transportation conformity
website on April 16, 2021. We received no comments in response to the
adequacy review posting. The adequate motor vehicle emissions budgets
are provided in the following table:
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\1\ Letter from Elizabeth Adams, Director, Air and Radiation
Division, EPA Region IX, to Richard Corey, Executive Officer, CARB.
Adequate Motor Vehicle Emissions Budgets in South Coast 2006 PM2.5 Serious Area Plan
[Annual average, tons per day]
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Directly
emitted fine Nitrogen Volatile
Budget year particulate oxides (NOX) organic
matter (PM2.5) compounds (VOC)
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2020......................................................... 20 152 77
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Transportation conformity is required by Clean Air Act section
176(c). The EPA's conformity rule requires that transportation plans,
transportation improvement programs, and projects conform to SIPs and
establishes the criteria and procedures for determining whether or not
they do conform.\2\ Conformity to a SIP means that transportation
activities will not produce new air quality violations, worsen existing
violations, or delay timely attainment of the NAAQS.
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\2\ 40 CFR part 93, subpart A.
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The criteria by which we determine whether a SIP's budgets are
adequate for conformity purposes are outlined in 40 CFR 93.118(e)(4),
which was promulgated in our August 15, 1997 final rule.\3\ We further
described our process for determining the adequacy of submitted SIP
budgets in our July 1, 2004 final rule \4\ and we used the information
in these resources in making the adequacy determination announced in
this notice.
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\3\ 62 FR 43780, 43781-43783.
\4\ 69 FR 40004, 40038.
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The EPA approved the South Coast 2006 PM2.5 Serious Area
Plan on February 12, 2019.\5\ In that action, we approved the budgets
for the 2017 RFP year and the 2019 attainment year. We also approved a
trading mechanism for transportation conformity analyses that allows
future decreases in NOX from on-road mobile sources to
offset any on-road increases in PM2.5, based on specified
trading ratios.\6\ The South Coast Air Quality Management District
(SCAQMD) indicated that the trading mechanism was included in the 2016
AQMP for approval by the EPA for use by SCAG in conformity
determinations for the 2006 PM2.5 NAAQS for analysis years
after the attainment year of 2019.\7\
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\5\ 84 FR 3305.
\6\ 83 FR 49872, 49891-49894 (October 3, 2018).
\7\ Letter dated March 14, 2018, from Philip Fine, Deputy
Executive Officer, Planning, Rule Development, and Area Sources,
SCAQMD, to Amy Zimpfer, Associate Director, Air Division, EPA Region
IX, regarding trading ratios among PM2.5 precursors.
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Consistent with the requirements set out in our implementation rule
for the PM2.5 NAAQS,\8\ we did not act on the RFP budget for
the post-attainment year of 2020 when we approved the South Coast 2006
PM2.5 Serious Area Plan. As we noted in our proposed
approval of the South Coast 2006 PM2.5 Serious Area Plan, it
is not necessary to demonstrate conformity for 2020 or to use the 2020
budgets until such time as the area fails to attain the 2006 24-hour
PM2.5 NAAQS.
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\8\ ``Fine Particulate Matter National Ambient Air Quality
Standards: State Implementation Plan Requirements Rule,'' 81 FR
58010 (August 24, 2016).
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On September 16, 2020, the EPA determined that the Los Angeles-
South Coast Air Basin had failed to attain the 2006 24-hour
PM2.5 NAAQS by its December 31, 2019 attainment date.\9\
Because of that failure to attain, we evaluated the submitted budgets
for 2020 in the South Coast 2006 PM2.5 Serious Area Plan to
determine whether they are adequate for conformity purposes.
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\9\ 85 FR 57733.
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Pursuant to 40 CFR 93.104(e), within two years of the effective
date of this notice, SCAG and the DOT will need to demonstrate
conformity. For demonstrating conformity to the budgets in this plan,
the on-road motor vehicle emissions from implementation of the
transportation plan or program should be projected consistently with
the budgets in this plan, i.e., by taking the emissions results derived
from CARB's EMFAC model (short for EMission FACtor) and then rounding
the emissions up to the nearest ton. The previously approved trading
mechanism may be used in connection with the new budgets.
Authority: 42 U.S.C. 7401 et seq.
[[Page 56932]]
Dated: October 5, 2021.
Deborah Jordan,
Acting Regional Administrator, Region IX.
[FR Doc. 2021-22160 Filed 10-12-21; 8:45 am]
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