Air Plan Approval; Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Approval of Operating Permit Program for Iowa and Nebraska; Definition of Chemical Process Plants Under State Prevention of Significant Deterioration Regulations and Operating Permit Programs

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is approving revisions to the State Implementation Plans (SIPs) for Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska and is also approving revisions to the Operating Permit Programs for Iowa and Nebraska. The SIP revisions incorporate changes to the definition of chemical process plants under the States' Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) regulations and change the same definition in the approved State operating permit programs. Consistent with an EPA regulation finalized in 2007, this action approves several State rules that modify the definition of chemical process plant to exclude ethanol manufacturing facilities that produce ethanol by natural fermentation processes. Approving these modified definitions into the SIP establishes that the PSD major source applicability threshold in the SIPs for these ethanol plants is 250 tons per year (tpy) (rather than 100 tpy) and removes the requirement to include fugitive emissions when determining if the source is major for PSD. In addition, this action approves changes to the Iowa and Nebraska Title V operating permit programs that remove the requirement to include fugitive emissions when determining if a source is major for Title V purposes. The EPA concludes that the changes to the State rules described herein are approvable because they are consistent with EPA regulations governing State PSD and Title V programs and will not interfere with any applicable requirement concerning attainment and reasonable further progress (as defined in section 171 of the Clean Air Act (CAA)), or any other applicable requirement of the CAA.