December 3-9, 2022
In this week's issue:
- NACAA Meets with OMB on Forthcoming EPA Final Heavy-Duty Truck NOx Rule (December 5, 2022)
- EPA Science Advisory Board Office Announces Upcoming Membership Solicitation (December 5, 2022)
- EPA Oil and Gas Supplemental Rule Published in Federal Register (December 6, 2022)
- EPA’s Final Boiler Rule is Subject to Legal Challenges (December 5, 2022)
- Washington, New York, Delaware Take Up NACAA Leadership Roles (December 8, 2022)
This Week in Review
Representatives of NACAA met with officials from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and EPA, as part of the OMB-led interagency review of EPA’s final rule to reduce NOx emissions from heavy-duty trucks. During the meeting, the NACAA representatives highlighted the critical need for a far more rigorous federal NOx emission standard than that currently in place, set over 21 years ago, in January 2001, and for final promulgation of the rule by the end of this year so the new standard will apply beginning with the 2027 model year (MY). Cleaning up this sector as soon as possible, they told the Administration officials, is imperative to putting the nation on a path to attaining and maintaining the health-based National Ambient Air Quality Standards and protecting public health, particularly in environmental justice communities through which a disproportionate share of heavy-duty trucks are routed. The key points on which the NACAA representatives elaborated were the critical needs across the county in many nonattainment and attainment areas necessitating the federal standards and requirements recommended by NACAA, including a standard to reduce NOx emissions by at least 90 percent, down to 20 mg/hp-hr, beginning with MY 2027. Over the past 20 years, the NACAA representatives told the federal officials, technical capacity to cut heavy-duty truck emissions has flourished and tremendous experience has been gained creating a huge opportunity to require and achieve NOx reductions at least as deep as NACAA urges. The group also noted NACAA’s support for the California Air Resources Board’s Heavy-Duty Omnibus Regulation and the need for the federal program to be consistent with the Omnibus. In terms of what EPA proposed, the NACAA representatives articulated the association’s concerns with both Proposed Option 1 – the stronger of the two options, though still far short of what is necessary and feasible – and Proposed Option 2 – a wholly deficient and unacceptable option for various reasons, and urged that in the final rule EPA revise Proposed Option 1 to pull forward to 2027 the 20-mg/hp-hr NOx emission standard for classes with a proposed useful life standard of 435,000 miles for heavy heavy-duty engines. Finally, the NACAA representatives summarized key program provisions that NACAA does or does not support. Under an August 5, 2021, Executive Order, President Biden directed EPA to issue the proposed rule by January 2022 and the final rule by December 2022. EPA sent the final rulemaking package to OMB for interagency review on November 4, 2022. At this time, OMB has additional stakeholders meetings on the final rule scheduled through December 13, 2022. Those who represented NACAA at the meeting were Erik White (Placer County, CA) and Tracy Babbidge (CT), Co-Chairs of NACAA’s Mobile Sources and Fuels Committee, and Miles Keogh and Nancy Kruger, Executive Director and Deputy Director of NACAA, respectively.
For further information:
EPA’s Science Advisory Board (SAB) Staff Office is preparing to solicit nominations of experts to serve on the chartered SAB, a federal advisory committee that provides independent scientific and technical peer review, advice and recommendations to the EPA Administrator on the technical bases for EPA actions. The request for nominations will appear in a Federal Register notice in early 2023, as well as on the SAB website. In its announcement of the forthcoming solicitation, the SAB Staff Office indicates that it will invite nominations of individuals with expertise or extensive experience in the following scientific disciplines and topics as they relate to human health and the environment: air quality; agricultural sciences and economics; analytical chemistry; atmospheric sciences; benefit-cost analysis; chemical safety; climate science; citizen science; community environmental health; dose-response assessment; drinking water; drinking water engineering; ecological sciences and ecological assessment; ecological risk assessment; ecosystem services; economics; energy and the environment; engineering; environmental justice; epidemiology; exposure assessment; forestry; geochemistry; health sciences; human health risk assessment; hydrology; hydrogeology; medicine; microbiology; modeling; pediatrics; pesticide risk assessment, public health; physiologically based pharmacokinetic modeling; risk assessment; social, behavioral and decision sciences; statistics; sustainability; radiological risk assessment; toxicology; uncertainty analysis; water quality; water quantity and reuse; and waste management. Members of the chartered SAB are appointed to serve as Special Government Employees (SGEs) by the EPA Administrator. Further information on how to submit nominations of experts to serve on the SAB will be provided in the 2023 notice.
For further information: https://sab.epa.gov/
EPA’s Supplemental Oil and Gas sector proposal, originally issued by the agency on November 11, 2022, has been published in the Federal Register (87 Fed. Reg. 74702). EPA issued the supplemental proposal, “Standards of Performance for New, Reconstructed, and Modified Sources and Emissions Guidelines for Existing Sources: Oil and Natural Gas Sector Climate Review”, to update and expand standards proposed on November 15, 2021. The supplemental rulemaking takes two distinct rulemaking actions, for new sources and for existing sources. The supplemental proposal adds regulatory text and analysis as well as new facility standards for sources that were not addressed in the 2021 proposal, revises requirements for fugitive emissions monitoring, and establishes a “super emitter” response program requiring mitigation of emissions events identified by third-party sources. Low-producing and marginal wells are included in the monitoring and compliance requirements until they are closed and plugged. Provisions allow for flaring if a matrix of alternative technologies are considered first. The proposal also includes a zero-emissions standard for pneumatic controllers and pumps and new standards for dry seal compressors. The proposal gives agencies 18 months to submit plans to EPA for existing sources, with 36 month compliance deadlines after that (for more detail, see the November 11-18, 2022 edition of NACAA’s Washington Update). EPA says that comments must be received on or before February 13, 2023, although in a November 29, 2022 letter, NACAA requested a 30 day extension of the comment period to March 15, 2022 – no response has yet been received from EPA. EPA will also hold virtual public hearings on January 10, 2023, and January 11, 2023.
For further information:
A group of environmental organizations has sued EPA over a final rule amending the Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) standard for Major Source Industrial, Commercial, and Institutional Boilers and Process Heaters published in the Federal Register on October 6, 2022 (87 Fed. Reg. 60816). The suit, brought jointly by the California Communities against Toxics, the Sierra Club and others, is one of several challenging EPA over the final rule in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. On December 2, 2022, the American Forest and Paper Association, the American Wood Council and the Council of Industrial Boiler Owners also sued EPA over the regulation, joining with the U.S. Sugar Corporation, which sued on October 24, 2022. The final boiler rule amendments, which were effective December 5, 2022, were issued in response to three remands by the D.C. Circuit Court. They include 34 recalculated emission limits for certain subcategories of boilers (the court had ruled that EPA improperly excluded certain sources when calculating the MACT floor). The rule also provides explanations to satisfy the court’s findings 1) that EPA did not respond to a comment related to potentially available control technologies to reduce emissions of organic hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) without affecting carbon monoxide (CO) and whether the best performing boilers might be using alternative controls to reduce organic HAPs and 2) regarding the establishment of 130 parts per million as the most stringent emission limit for CO consistent with the requirements of the Clean Air Act. While the court challenges did not articulate the reasons for the lawsuits, the environmental groups have previously opposed the use of a carbon monoxide emission limit as a surrogate for certain other hazardous air pollutants.
For further information:
https://www.4cleanair.org/wp-content/uploads/enviro-boiler-suit.pdf
https://www.4cleanair.org/wp-content/uploads/AFPA-boilers.pdf
https://www.4cleanair.org/wp-content/uploads/USSugar-boiler-suit.pdf
Following the elevation of Connecticut’s Tracy Babbidge to fill the vacancy of NACAA’s State Co-President (see related story in the October 29 – November 4, 2022 edition of NACAA’s Washington Update), the NACAA Board of Directors has elected members of the state air agency director community to serve in other remaining leadership roles in the association. Kathy Taylor, the Air Division Director for the Washington Department of Ecology, will serve the rest of Babbidge’s term as NACAA’s State Co-Vice President. (She was previously serving as NACAA’s State Co-Treasurer.) Chris LaLone, NACAA’s air director with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, was elected to serve as NACAA’s State Co-Treasurer. Finally, Angela Marconi, the Air Division Director for Delaware’s Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, will serve as the NACAA State Board Director representing Region 3. Each will serve a term though October 2023. We appreciate their leadership and look forward to working with these directors!