August 8, 2007

Robert W. Varney
Regional Administrator
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
One Congress Street
Boston, MA 02114-2023

Dear Mr. Varney:

In my June 14, 2007 letter to you, I set out a schedule for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection's public hearings on the 8-Hour Ozone Standard Attainment Demonstration State Implementation Plan (SIP) and other ozone standard related SIPs and regulations.

With that letter, we submitted to you a draft of the Massachusetts Transport SIP and our revised 2002 Base Year Inventory.  Under separate cover to your staff, we provided a draft of our attainment modeling demonstration, which shows that Massachusetts will attain the ozone standard by 2009. 

We were pleased to promptly receive comments from your staff on these materials and we are addressing their comments as we finalize the documents. We were also pleased to see that on August 2, EPA proposed to approve the Massachusetts Clean Air Interstate Rule SIP, which we submitted to you on March 31, 2007, and which is the cornerstone of our Transport SIP and Attainment Demonstration SIP.

The schedule set forth in my June 14 letter called for public hearings on SIPs and related regulations to be held in August, October and December of this year. The hearing on the attainment demonstration SIP was scheduled for December, so our final attainment demonstration submittal would have been made in early 2008.

We have revisited this schedule based on a number of factors. Staff shortages and August vacation schedules made it difficult for us to conduct August hearings and for transportation agency staff to perform the required transportation conformity budget analyses.  

Moreover, as you are aware, on June 8, 2007, the Court that issued a December 2006 decision setting aside EPA's 8-hour implementation rule, clarified its decision to say that SIP deadlines remain in effect.  In a June14 EPA memo discussing the Court's clarification, EPA states that it will adhere to the June 15, 2007 SIP deadline. In light of the Court's clarification and EPA's follow-up memo, we prefer to advance the date of our attainment demonstration SIP hearing in order to avoid delaying its final submittal until 2008.

We now plan to hold public hearings on the 8-hour ozone standard SIPs and related regulations listed below in November and to submit the final SIP documents to your office by the end of December 2007.

November 2007 Public Hearings

-Ozone Attainment Demonstration SIP, which will include Reasonably Available Control Technology (RACT) SIP, Reasonable Further Progress (RFP) SIP and 2002 Base Year Inventory  
-Transport SIP
-Amendments to Solvent Degreasing Rule
-New Adhesives and Sealants Rule
-Amendments to Stage II Rule (to require pressure/vacuum vent caps on vapor balance systems)
-Inspection/Maintenance regulation revisions

Should you or your staff have any questions regarding this submittal, please contact Barbara Kwetz, Director of the Bureau of Waste Prevention's Planning and Evaluation Division, at 617-292-5882. 

Sincerely,

[SIGNATURE ON ORIGINAL]

Arleen O'Donnell
Acting Commissioner

Enclosures

cc: Dave Conroy, U.S. EPA, Region 1