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

Résumé

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to approve revisions to the State Implementation Plans (SIP) for Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska and is also proposing to approve 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 completed in 2007, this action approves several States' rules that modify the definition of chemical process plant to exclude ethanol manufacturing facilities that produce ethanol by natural fermentation processes. This will clarify 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 Iowa's and Nebraska's Title V operating permit programs that remove the requirement to include fugitive emissions when determining if a source is major