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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 38 / Monday, March 1, 2021 / Proposed Rules
than or equal to 0.075 ppm. See 40 CFR
50.15.2
Both the DFW and HGB areas were designated as nonattainment for the 2008 ozone NAAQS 77 FR 30088, May 21, 2012. The DFW area consists of Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, Johnson, Kaufman, Parker, Rockwall, Tarrant and Wise counties. The HGB area consists of Brazoria, Chambers, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Liberty, Montgomery and Waller counties.
On December 23, 2014, the D.C.
Circuit Court issued a decision rejecting, among other things, our attainment deadlines for the 2008 ozone nonattainment areas, finding that we did not have statutory authority under the CAA to extend those deadlines to the end of the calendar year. NRDC v.
EPA, 777 F.3d 456, 46469 D.C. Cir.
2014. Consistent with the courts decision we modified the attainment deadlines for all nonattainment areas for the 2008 ozone NAAQS, and set the attainment deadline for all 2008
moderate ozone nonattainment areas, including the DFW area as July 20, 2018, and the HGB area initially classified as marginal as July 20, 2015
80 FR 12264, March 6, 2015. The HGB
area qualified for a 1-year extension of the attainment deadline and we revised the attainment deadline to July 20, 2016
81 FR 26697, May 4, 2016. The HGB
area did not meet the revised attainment deadline of July 20, 2016, and we reclassified the area to moderate 81 FR
90207, December 14, 2016. The DFW
and HGB areas did not meet the moderate area attainment deadline and were accordingly reclassified as serious 84 FR 44238, August 23, 2019.3
Section 182 of the CAA outlines SIP
requirements applicable to ozone nonattainment areas in each classification category. The serious area classification triggers additional requirements, including NNSR and enhanced vehicle I/M. See CAA section 182c and 40 CFR 51.350.
On May 13, 2020, the Texas Commission on Environment Quality TCEQ or State submitted to EPA a SIP
revision for each of the DFW and HGB
serious ozone nonattainment areas. In those SIP revisions, the State describes how the DFW and HGB areas meet the enhanced vehicle I/M program and NNSR requirements for serious ozone nonattainment areas using existing 2 The current NAAQS for ozone is an 8-hour standard of 0.070 ppm, finalized in 2015 October 26, 2015, 80 FR 65292. This action does not address the 2015 ozone NAAQS.
3 The attainment deadline for a serious area classification is 9 years after the initial designation as nonattainment, which in this case is July 20, 2021. See 40 CFR 51.1103 and 84 FR 44238.

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measures already approved into the SIP.
These two SIP revisions are available in the docket for this action, at www.regulations.gov, docket number EPAR06OAR20200343.
II. The TCEQ Submittals and EPAs Evaluation The two Texas SIP revisions include a statement certifying that the DFW and HGB areas meet the serious area requirements for enhanced I/M and nonattainment NSR for the 2008 eighthour ozone NAAQS. In addition, the SIP
revisions provide a brief history of the enhanced I/M and NNSR programs in the Texas SIP. The SIP revisions also state that, 1 the vehicle I/M program in the DFW and HGB ozone nonattainment areas meet the federal requirements for areas classified as serious or above; and 2 because the Texas SIP includes nonattainment NSR requirements, the requirements for nonattainment NSR are met for the DFW and HGB serious ozone nonattainment areas.
Enhanced Vehicle Inspection and Maintenance Section 182c3 of the CAA requires states with ozone nonattainment areas classified as serious or worse to implement an enhanced program to reduce hydrocarbon emissions and nitrogen oxides NOX 4 emissions from in-use motor vehicles registered in each urbanized area in the nonattainment area. The Federal rules addressing I/M
program requirements are provided at 40 CFR part 51, subpart S and further defined at 40 CFR 51.350
Applicability. Under these requirements, serious ozone nonattainment areas in urbanized areas with 1980 Census-defined urbanized populations of 200,000 or more are required to adopt enhanced I/M
programs 40 CFR 51.350a2 and 4.
The Texas SIP includes 30 TAC
Section 114.2 Inspection and Maintenance Definitions and 30 TAC
Section 114.50 Vehicle Emissions Inspection Requirements except for 30
TAC Section 114.50b2.5 Under these provisions Brazoria, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, and Montgomery counties in the HGB area are included 4 NO and Volatile Organic Compounds VOC
X are precursors to ozone formation.
5 We did not approve 30 TAC Section 114.50b2
as part of the Texas SIP as 1 it placed an additional reporting burden upon commanders at Federal facilities regarding affected Federal vehicles that is not imposed upon any other affected nonfederal vehicle; and 2 the additional reporting requirement is not an essential element for an approvable I/M program, since affected Federal vehicles are also subject to the same reporting requirements as other affected non-federal vehicles.
See 66 FR 57261, 57262 November 14, 2001.

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in the I/M program, and Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, Johnson, Kaufman, Parker, Rockwall, and Tarrant counties in the DFW area are included in the I/
M program. The program requires that gasoline powered light-duty vehicles, and light and heavy-duty trucks between two and twenty-four years old, that are registered or required to be registered in the I/M program area, including fleets, are subject to annual inspection and testing. These programs were adopted and approved as meeting the applicable requirements of the I/M
rules in response to the area designations under the one-hour ozone standard and later the 1997 8-hour standard. The size of the HGB
nonattainment area did not change with the implementation of the 2008 ozone standard. As a result, EPAs previous finding that the program covers the necessary vehicle population is still appropriate. See 70 FR 58119, 58132
October 5, 2005 and 71 FR 52670
September 6, 2006. Wise County was added to the DFW nonattainment area under the 2008 standard. Wise County, however, is not required to be included in the I/M program as the current I/M
program in the DFW area sufficiently covers a non-urbanized area population greater than the urbanized area in Wise County. To verify, we evaluate the extent of area coverage for I/M, as defined at 40 CFR 51.350b2:
Outside of ozone transport regions, programs shall nominally cover at least the entire urbanized area, based on the 1990 census.6 Exclusion of some urban population is allowed as long as an equal number of non-urban residents of the MSA containing the subject urbanized area are included to compensate for the exclusion. Based on the 1990 census, the urban population of the DFW area covered by the I/M program which consisted of 9
counties: Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, Johnson, Kaufman, Parker, Rockwall and Tarrant was 3,198,259 and the urban population of Wise County was 8,735. Thus, the population of the entire urbanized area was 3,206,994 3,198,259
+ 8,735. The urban and non-urban population of the 9-county DFW area was 3,885,415. By subtracting the population of the entire urbanized area 3,206,994 from the urban and nonurban populations of the 9-county DFW
I/M area 3,885,4153,206,994 =
678,421, more than an equal number of non-urban residents in the 9-county DFW area are included in the I/M
6 Texas is not included in the Ozone Transport Region OTR, which is defined at CAA section 184a.

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