E9-12137. Approval and Promulgation of Air Quality Implementation Plans; California; Finding of Attainment of the 1-Hour Ozone Standard for the Ventura County Area

AGENCY:

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

ACTION:

Proposed rule.

SUMMARY:

On April 15, 2009 the California Air Resources Board (CARB) requested that EPA find that the Ventura County ozone nonattainment area has attained the revoked 1-hour ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS). After a review of this submission and of the relevant monitoring data, EPA is proposing to make such a finding.

This finding would relieve the area of the requirement to implement contingency measures for failure to attain the standard by its attainment date, as well as Clean Air Act penalty fee requirements for severe and extreme ozone nonattainment areas that have not attained the 1-hour standard by the applicable attainment date.

DATES:

Any comments on this proposal must arrive by June 26, 2009.

ADDRESSES:

Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R09-OAR-2009-0133, by one of the following methods:

1. http://www.regulations.gov. Follow the on-line instructions for submitting comments.

2. E-mail: [e-mail].

3. Fax: [phone].

4. Mail or Delivery: Greg Nudd (AIR-2), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region IX, 75 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, CA 94105-3901.

Instructions: Direct your comments to Docket ID No. EPA-R09-OAR-2009-0133. EPA's policy is that all comments received will be included in the public docket without change and may be made available online at http://www.regulations.gov,, including any personal information provided, unless a comment includes information claimed to be Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Do not submit information that you consider to be CBI or otherwise protected through http://www.regulations.gov or e-mail. The http://www.regulations.gov Web site is an “anonymous access” system, which means EPA will not know your identity or contact information unless you provide it in the body of your comment. If you send an e-mail comment directly to EPA without going through http://www.regulations.gov, your e-mail address will be automatically captured and included as part of the comment that is placed in the public docket and made available on the Internet. If you submit an electronic comment, EPA recommends that you include your name and other contact information in the body of your comment and with any disk or CD-ROM you submit. If EPA cannot read your comment due to technical difficulties and cannot contact you for clarification, EPA may not be able to consider your comment. Electronic files should avoid the use of special characters, any form of encryption, and be free of any defects or viruses.

Docket: The index to the docket for this action is available electronically at www.regulations.gov and in hard copy at EPA Region IX, 75 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, California. While all documents in the docket are listed in the index, some information may be publicly available only at the hard copy location (e.g., copyrighted material), and some may not be publicly available at either location (e.g., confidential business information). To inspect the hard copy materials, please schedule an appointment during normal business hours with the contact listed in the FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT section.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

Greg Nudd, Environmental Engineer, EPA Region IX, [phone], [e-mail].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

Throughout this document whenever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean EPA.

This proposal addresses the California Air Resources Board (CARB) request that EPA find that the Ventura County ozone nonattainment area has attained the revoked 1-hour ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS). In the Rules and Regulations section of this Federal Register, we are making this finding as a direct final rule without prior proposal because we believe this action is not controversial. If we receive adverse comments, however, we will publish a timely withdrawal of the direct final rule and address the comments in a subsequent action based on this proposed rule.

We do not plan to open a second comment period, so anyone interested in commenting should do so at this time. If we do not receive adverse comments, no further activity is planned. For further information, please see the direct final action.

Dated: May 14, 2009.

Jane Diamond,

Acting Regional Administrator, Region IX.