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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 60 / Wednesday, March 31, 2021 / Rules and Regulations that provides further insight on the content of an approvable maintenance plan, explaining that a maintenance plan should address five elements: 1
An attainment emissions inventory; 2
a maintenance demonstration; 3 a commitment for continued air quality monitoring; 4 a process for verification of continued attainment; and 5 a contingency plan.2 WVDEPs December 10, 2019 SIP submittal fulfills West Virginias obligation to submit a second maintenance plan and addresses each of the five necessary elements.
As discussed in the June 29, 2020
NPRM, consistent with longstanding EPAs guidance,3 areas that meet certain criteria may be eligible to submit a limited maintenance plan LMP to satisfy one of the requirements of CAA
section 175A. Specifically, states may meet CAA section 175As requirements to provide for maintenance by demonstrating that the areas design values 4 are well below the NAAQS and that it has had historical stability attaining the NAAQS. EPA evaluated WVDEPs December 10, 2019 submittal for consistency with all applicable EPA
guidance and CAA requirements. EPA
found that the submittal met CAA
section 175A and all CAA requirements, and proposed approval of the LMP for the Wheeling, WV-OH Area comprising Marshall and Ohio Counties as a revision to the West Virginia SIP. The effect of this action makes certain commitments related to the maintenance of the 1997 ozone NAAQS
federally enforceable as part of the West Virginia SIP. Other specific requirements of WVDEPs December 10, 2019 submittal and the rationale for EPAs proposed action are explained in the NPRM and will not be restated here.

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III. EPAs Response to Comments Received EPA received four comments on the June 29, 2020 NPRM. All comments received are in the docket for this 2 Procedures for Processing Requests to Redesignate Areas to Attainment, Memorandum from John Calcagni, Director, Air Quality Management Division, September 4, 1992 Calcagni Memo.
3 See Limited Maintenance Plan Option for Nonclassifiable Ozone Nonattainment Areas from Sally L. Shaver, Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards OAQPS, dated November 16, 1994;
Limited Maintenance Plan Option for Nonclassifiable CO Nonattainment Areas from Joseph Paisie, OAQPS, dated October 6, 1995; and Limited Maintenance Plan Option for Moderate PM10 Nonattainment Areas from Lydia Wegman, OAQPS, dated August 9, 2001.
4 The ozone design value for a monitoring site is the 3-year average of the annual fourth-highest daily maximum 8-hour average ozone concentrations.
The design value for an ozone nonattainment area is the highest design value of any monitoring site in the area.

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rulemaking action. A summary of the comments and EPAs responses are provided herein.
Comment 1: The commenter alleges that the plan should not be approved due to the allowance of future expansion of Interstate 70 I-70 within Ohio County in West Virginia and Belmont County in Ohio from a West Virginia transportation conformity plan. The commenter takes issue that the transportation conformity plan will allow more vehicles to use the highway, hence increasing the vehicle miles traveled VMT and the mobile source emissions. The commenter claims that EPA should require WV to compensate for the increase in VMT
arising from the future expansion project and suggests that this could be evaluated by utilizing actual VMT data collected on I-70 in the motor vehicle emission simulator MOVES modeling and the modeling will show an increase in mobile source emissions in the area beyond that shown in WVs plan.
Response 1: EPA does not agree with the commenter that the plan should not be approved for the reasons given in the comment. The commenter did not identify a specific project that would expand the I-70 as it exists today. In an effort to identify the project that the commenter referred to, we reviewed West Virginias current statewide transportation improvement program STIP and the current long-range transportation plan for the West Virginia portion of the Wheeling metropolitan area which includes Marshall and Ohio Counties. We could not identify any I70 expansion projects in the STIP.5 We did identify several bridge rehabilitation projects on I-70, but these would not constitute highway expansion projects and would not result in increased vehicle miles traveled. We did identify one highway expansion project in the areas long-range transportation plan.6
That project would upgrade I-70 to six lanes from Elm Grove/Triadelphia interchange to Cabela Drive in Ohio County. Construction is not slated to begin until 2036. The opening date for the project is not stated in the longrange plan. Belomar, the metropolitan planning organization for the area, will have to consider the potential impacts of this project on air quality in the area when it makes transportation conformity determinations for the 1997
ozone NAAQS. However, with respect 5 https transportation.wv.gov/highways/
programming/STIP/Pages/default.aspx.
6 https www.belomar.org/wordpress/wpcontent/uploads/2016/07/bomts-lrp-2040-finaldocument.pdf.

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to the commenters request that compensating emissions reductions be obtained for any emissions increases that this project may eventually cause, there is no mechanism under the CAA
that requires such compensating emissions reductions as part of a maintenance plan. In order to approve the second maintenance plan for the area, the plan must demonstrate that the area will be able to remain in attainment of the 1997 ozone NAAQS through 2027. We have reviewed the second maintenance plan and for the reasons stated in this final rule and in the proposal, we have concluded that the second maintenance plan is approvable.
85 FR 38831 June 29, 2020.
Comment 2: The commenter claims that the second maintenance plan should be rejected because EPA has not evaluated the loss in emission reductions due to certain policy positions taken by the Trump administration related to . . . the CAFE 7 standards, biofuel blending requirements and removing States and Californias ability to set standards.
The commenter asserts that West Virginia failed to use reduced emission standards in the mobile source evaluation. The commenter contends that West Virginia uses assumptions that are against EPAs stated policy under the New Source Performance Standards NSPS and the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Pollutants NESHAP and therefore, the plan should be rejected. Further, the commenter takes issue that Recently EPA has announced protections under the mercury and air toxic standards MATS rule and the Boiler maximum achievable control technology MACT
rule, and due to the removal of these programs, EPA should require states to use those planning assumptions and account for any lost emissions reductions achieved by those programs.
Response 2: It is unclear from the comment how or why the commenter believes the particular policies cited are relevant to this action. For example, biofuel blending requirements are not relevant to ozone reductions, and neither West Virginia nor Ohio has adopted Californias light duty vehicle emission standards, and therefore, neither state is impacted by the withdrawal of Californias waiver for its zero emission vehicle sales mandate and its greenhouse gas emissions standards.8
The change to the National Highway 7 Corporate
Average Fuel Economy CAFE.
84 FR 51310, September 27, 2019. The Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient SAFE Vehicles Rule Part One: One National Program.
8 See
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