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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 25 / Tuesday, February 9, 2021 / Rules and Regulations
section to schedule your inspection. The Regional Offices official hours of business are Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., excluding legal holidays and facility closures due to COVID19.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Eric Rackauskas, Air Quality Branch, U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, EPA
New England Regional Office, 5 Post Office SquareSuite 100, Mail code 052, Boston, MA 021093912, tel.
6179181628, email rackauskas.eric@
epa.gov.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
Throughout this document whenever we, us, or our is used, we mean EPA.
FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT

Table of Contents
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I. Background and Purpose II. Response to Comments III. Final Action IV. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews
I. Background and Purpose On March 13, 2020, EPA published a notice of proposed rulemaking NPRM
85 FR 14605 proposing to approve and a direct final rule DFR 85 FR 14578
approving a SIP submission from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to address the infrastructure requirements of the Clean Air Act for the 2015 ozone NAAQS. When EPA promulgates a new or revised NAAQS, each state must submit a SIP submission, known as an infrastructure SIP, in order to ensure that the states SIP provides for implementation, maintenance, and enforcement of the new or revised NAAQS. The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection MassDEP
submitted the infrastructure SIP
submission to EPA as a formal SIP
submission on September 27, 2018. In the DFR, EPA stated that, if it received an adverse comment on the direct final proposal by April 13, 2020, then the agency would withdraw that direct final and issue a final rule based on the NPRM. EPA received one adverse comment prior to the close of the comment period. Therefore, EPA
withdrew the DFR on May 12, 2020 85
FR 27927. This action is a final rule based on the NPRM.
A detailed discussion of the Massachusetts September 27, 2018, infrastructure SIP submission, and EPAs rationale for proposing approval of the SIP submission appear in the DFR
and we will not restate that here, except to the extent relevant to our response to the public comment on the proposal.
EPA also received two requests to extend the public comment period for the NPRM until after the COVID19
pandemic is over. EPA is denying these
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extension requests, and the reasons for this denial can be found in the docket for this rulemaking.
II. Response to Comment EPA received one adverse comment on the March 13, 2020, notice of proposed rulemaking.
Comment: EPA is also approving the states SIP as having adequate resources, how was EPA able to identify whether the state had adequate resources before the COVID19 outbreak and how can the outbreak not affect the states ability to continue having adequate resources?
And how is EPA sure the state has adequate enforcement abilities to carry out its mission to protect environmental and human health after Trumps EPA
issued a BLANKET waiver to all environmental rules EPA cant possibly think a state is able to enforce the states rules in addition to EPAs rules that Trump has declined to persecute sic. EPA cant approve the states ability to have adequate resources or adequate funding or adequate enforcement if EPAs review is predicated on the belief of pre-COVID
19 conditions will continue now.
Response: The comment provides little detail, but it appears to raise three general issues. First, it asks how EPA
was able to identify whether the state had adequate resources before the COVID19 pandemic. Second, it questions any conclusion that Massachusetts has adequate resources and adequate enforcement abilities in light of the pandemic. And third, it asks how EPA can be sure that Massachusetts has adequate enforcement abilities in light of what the comment refers to as an EPA-issued BLANKET waiver to all environmental rules. On the third issue, the comment does not specifically identify an EPA waiver, but EPA
assumes the commenter refers to EPAs March 26, 2020, memorandum entitled COVID19 Implications for EPAs Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Program hereinafter, March 2020
memorandum or EPA Enforcement Memo. The comment does not identify a particular section or sections of the Clean Air Act that it believes Massachusetts failed to satisfy but it is reasonable to assume that the commenter is referring to the requirements of sections 110a2C
pertaining to enforcement and section 110a2E pertaining to state resources.
As an initial matter, the purpose of an infrastructure SIP submission is to demonstrate that the states SIP contains the basic program elements needed to implement, maintain, and enforce the particular NAAQS at issue, in this case,
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the 2015 ozone NAAQS. If the current SIP fails to satisfy these basic program elements then the state should revise the existing SIP so that EPA may evaluate these elements and approve them into the SIP, as appropriate. A SIP
is generally comprised of state regulations, statutes and other documents used by the state that the EPA has approved as meeting applicable CAA requirements. In the context of acting on infrastructure SIP
submissions, EPA evaluates the states SIP submission to determine whether the submission meets the applicable statutory requirements of CAA sections 110a1 and 110a2 and the appropriate regulatory requirements.
EPA is not evaluating the states implementation of its SIP in this action.
See Montana Envtl. Info. Ctr. v. Thomas, 902 F.3d 971 9th Cir. 2018. EPA has other authority to address issues concerning a states implementation of the rules, regulations, consent orders, etc. that comprise its SIP.
EPA disagrees that it should disapprove the infrastructure SIP
submission for the enforcement subelement of CAA section110a2C, the adequate resources requirement in CAA section 110a2Ei, or both.
Section 110a2Ei of the Act requires each SIP to provide necessary assurances that the State . . . will have adequate personnel, funding, and authority under State . . . law to carry out such implementation plan. Thus, under this section, EPA evaluates a states infrastructure SIP submission for evidence that the state has provided necessary assurances that it has adequate resources to carry out the SIP.
Element E does not require the EPA to conduct an audit of state resources or personnel. Nevertheless, upon receiving this comment, EPA requested supplemental information from MassDEP to provide more detail about Department staff and resources. In this supplemental document, MassDEP
states, MassDEP resources to implement the SIP include staff and managers in the Bureau of Air and Waste BAW, including the Division of Air and Climate Programs in MassDEPs Boston office approximately 29 staff, the Air Assessment Branch based in MassDEPs Wall Experiment Station laboratory in Lawrence approximately 23 staff, and the permitting and compliance and enforcement C&E
units in each of the four MassDEP
regional offices approximately 55
staff. MassDEP further notes that these numbers do not include additional staff in the separate legal, research, and information technology units that also
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