With a new proposal, the EPA is seeking to introduce regulatory reforms intended to smooth over conflicts that have developed in the Agency’s relationship with states submitting state implementation plans (SIPs) to improve visibility in federal Class I areas as specified by Section 169A of the Clean Air Act (CAA). Most of the conflicts between the EPA and the states are associated with SIPs states have submitted during the first period of state implementation of EPA’s 1999 regional haze rule. Discussions regarding those disagreements are ongoing and would not be affected by the proposal, which would take effect for the second and subsequent implementation periods.
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Under EPA’s rule, states were required to submit their first SIPs no later than December 17, 2007. Very few states did so. This triggered an obligation for the EPA to promulgate federal implementation plans (FIPs), which would stay in effect until states submitted plans that the EPA approved. Ultimately, most states did submit their SIPs to improve visibility. That’s where the disagreements began, since the EPA disapproved many of those SIPs or important parts of them. The disagreements involve key elements of the rule, such as what constitutes reasonable progress toward achieving the goal of natural visibility and the best available retrofit technology (BART) that must be used at existing sources of air pollution.