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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 167 / Wednesday, September 1, 2021 / Proposed Rules implementation of a contingency measure. In response to the commitment made in the 2018 PM2.5 Plan, in June 2019, the District adopted amendments to Rule 4901 including a contingency measure in section 5.7.3 of the amended rule, and CARB submitted the amended rule to the EPA for approval as an attachment to a letter dated July 19, 2019.268 The EPA has taken final action to approve amended Rule 4901, but in that approval, we noted that we were not evaluating the contingency measure in section 5.7.3 of revised Rule 4901 for compliance with all requirements of the CAA and the EPAs implementing regulations that apply to such measures.269 Rather, we approved the measure into the SIP because it strengthened the rule by providing a possibility of additional curtailment days, and thus potentially additional emissions reductions. We indicated that we would evaluate whether this provision, in conjunction with other submitted provisions, meets the statutory and regulatory requirements for contingency measures in future actions. In this proposal, we are now evaluating District Rule 4901, specifically, section 5.7.3, for compliance with the requirements for contingency measures for purposes of the 2006 PM2.5 NAAQS.
District Rule 4901 is designed to limit emissions generated by the use of wood burning fireplaces, wood burning heaters, and outdoor wood burning devices. The rule establishes requirements for the sale/transfer, operation, and installation of wood burning devices and for advertising the sale of seasoned wood consistent with a moisture content limit within the SJV.
The rule includes a two-tiered, episodic wood burning curtailment requirement that applies during four winter months, November through February. During a level one episodic wood burning curtailment, section 5.7.1
prohibits any person from operating a wood burning fireplace or unregistered wood burning heater but permits the use of a properly operated wood burning heater that meets certification requirements and has a current registration with the District. Sections 5.9 through 5.11 impose specific registration requirements on any person operating a wood burning fireplace or wood burning heater and section 5.12
imposes specific certification requirements on wood burning heater 268 Letter dated July 19, 2019, from Richard W.
Corey, Executive Officer, CARB, to Mike Stoker, Regional Administrator, EPA Region IX.
269 85 FR 44206 July 22, 2020 final approval of District Rule 4901; 85 FR 1131, 113233 January 9, 2020 proposed approval of District Rule 4901.

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professionals. During a level two episodic wood burning curtailment, operation of any wood burning device is prohibited by section 5.7.2.
Prior to the 20192020 wood burning season, the District imposed a level one curtailment when the PM2.5
concentration was forecasted to be between 2065 mg/m3 and imposed a level two curtailment when the PM2.5
concentration was forecasted to be above 65 mg/m3 or the PM10
concentration was forecasted to be above 135 mg/m3. In 2019, the District adopted revisions to Rule 4901 to lower the wood burning curtailment thresholds in the hot spot counties of Madera, Fresno, and Kern. The District lowered the level one PM2.5 threshold for these three counties from 20 mg/m3
to 12 mg/m3, and the level two PM2.5
threshold from 65 mg/m3 to 35 mg/m3.
The District did not modify the curtailment thresholds for other counties in the SJV, and those levels remained at 20 mg/m3 for level one and 65 mg/m3 for level two.
The Districts 2019 revision to Rule 4901 also included the addition of a contingency measure in section 5.7.3 of the rule, requiring that 60 days following the effective date of an EPA
final rulemaking that the SJV has failed to attain the 1997, 2006, or 2012 PM2.5
NAAQS by the applicable attainment date, the PM2.5 curtailment levels for any county that has failed to attain the applicable standard will be lowered to the curtailment levels in place for hot spot counties. The District estimates that the potential emissions reduction in direct PM2.5 would be in the range of 0.014 tpd if the contingency is triggered in Kings County but not the other nonhot-spot counties to 0.387 tpd if the contingency is triggered in all five of the non-hot-spot counties, but there would be no emissions reduction if, at the time of the determination of failure to attain the 2006 PM2.5 NAAQS by the attainment date, violations of the 2006
PM2.5 NAAQS were only observed at monitors in the hot-spot counties.270
Corresponding potential emissions reduction in NOX would be in the range of 0.002 tpd to 0.060 tpd, respectively, but as noted in the preceding paragraphs there may be no emissions reduction if the violations are monitored in the hot-spot counties only.271
270 See Table B13 in Appendix B from the Districts Final Staff Report June 20, 2019 for revisions to Rule 4901.
271 NO emissions reductions from the X
contingency measure are based on the Districts estimates for direct PM2.5 emissions using the ratio of direct PM2.5 to NOX in Table 1 of the Districts Final Staff Report June 20, 2019 for revisions to Rule 4901.

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The 2018 PM2.5 Plan also provides estimates of regional emissions in the year following the attainment year with which to evaluate the sufficiency of the emissions reductions from the contingency measure i.e., section 5.7.3
of Rule 4901. For the 2006 PM2.5
NAAQS, the attainment year is 2024
and the year after the attainment year is therefore 2025.272 Based on Table H5
in the 2018 PM2.5 Plan, the annual average emission reductions from 2024
to 2025 due to baseline measures and CARB and the Districts aggregate tonnage commitment are estimated to be 0 tpd direct PM2.5 and 5.2 tpd NOX. For comparison purposes, one years worth of RFP based on emissions estimates in the 2018 PM2.5 Plan is approximately 0.6 tpd direct PM2.5 and 18.4 tpd NOX.273
C. EPA Evaluation and Proposed Action For the 2006 PM2.5 NAAQS, we have similarly evaluated the contingency measure demonstration in the 2018
PM2.5 Plan and associated contingency provision of the 2019 amendment to Rule 4901. Specifically, we have evaluated the contingency provision in District Rule 4901 i.e., section 5.7.3 of the rule against the requirements of CAA section 172c9 and 40 CFR
51.1014 for both attainment and RFP
contingency measures, the latter of which also includes submittal of quantitation milestone reports and compliance with quantitative milestones.
As noted in our summary of the States submission, the contingency provision in District Rule 4901 is structured to provide for implementation if the area fails to attain the 2006 PM2.5 NAAQS, not before, and is therefore consistent with CAA section 172c9. However, as structured by the District, the contingency provision of Rule 4901 i.e., section 5.7.3 would provide for emissions reductions only in Kings, Merced, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and/or Tulare counties, not the hot spot counties of Fresno, Kern, and Madera, and only if a violating monitoring site i.e., a site where the collected data represent a violation of the NAAQS is located in said county.
In other words, if the EPAs determination of failure to attain the NAAQS by the applicable attainment date indicates violations at monitoring location sites in Fresno and Kern hot spot counties and Tulare non-hotspot county counties, the contingency 272 85

FR 44192, 44192.
years worth of RFP is based on the difference between the emissions estimates for 2013
and 2024 in Table H6 of Appendix H, divided by 11 i.e., the number of years from 2013 to 2024.
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