ILLINOIS POLLUTION CONTROL BOARD

October 11, 1990

IN THE MATTER OF:

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RACT DEFICIENCIES

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R89-16

AMENDMENTS TO 35 ILL.

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ADM. CODE PARTS 211 AND 215

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ORDER OF THE BOARD (by R.C. Flemal):

This matter comes before the Board on the Illinois

Environmental Protection Agency’s (“Agency”) motion for

corrective rulemaking filed September 6, 1990. The Agency

asserts that certain portions of the rulemaking are deficient in

that they are not federally approvable. The Agency requests that

the Board, upon its own initiative, correct these alleged

deficiencies by instituting a regular rulemaking proceeding. The

Illinois Environmental Regulatory Group filed its Response and

Objection to the Agency’s motion on September 20, 1990.

Most of the issues put forth in this motion for corrective

rulemaking have been considered at length by this Board during

the course of the RACT proceedings and indeed, many were

addressed in our denial of the Agency’s Motion for

Reconsideration on July 3, 1990. The reasons given for our

denial then apply equally well now. The Board also points out

that the time for reconsideration of this matter ran out long

ago. In the meantime, the United States Environmental Protection

Agency (USEPA) promulgated Federal revisions to the VOC RACT

rules for the Chicago area and took final rulemaking action on

revisions to the Illinois Ozone State Implementation Plan (SIP),

notice of which was published in the Federal Register on June 29,

1990. (55 Fed. Reg. 26814 (1990)). This rulemaking has now been

appealed to the United States District Court of Appeals for the

Seventh Circuit by numerous parties in a consolidated proceeding.

Moreover, the USEPA, in its letter of August 17, 1990 to the

Agency’s Manager of the Division of Air Pollution Control, stated

that a detailed review of the SIP Revision (R89—16) was in

progress. Upon completion of the review, the USEPA proposed to

disapprove the rules outlined by the Agency in the current

motion, “as well as any other rules found not approvable later.”

(See Attachment 4 to Agency Motion for Reconsideration) (emphasis

added). At this time it is not known whether additional

provisions will be disapproved.

The Board agrees that it is desirable to have federally

approvable regulations in place at the state level. These

regulations must, however, comport with State law as well. The

Board cannot know, however, what the final resolution of the VOC

RACT appeals, and hence the Federal revisions to the SIP, will

be. No briefs have been filed by appellants; the administrative

record was due to be filed with the court on October 9, 1990.

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Because these pending appeals may alter what is considered

federally approvable, and because the USEPA, by its own

admission, has not completed its review of our SIP Revision,

judicial and administrative economy would not be served by

proceeding with a State rulemaking at this time. Therefore, the

Agency’s request that the Board institute a rulemaking on its own

initiative is denied.

As a final note, the Board continues to agree that a

clerical error between the definition of “VONC” and “VOC” has

taken place. As we stated in our Order of July 3, 1990, this

unfortunate error will be corrected in the appropriate rulemaking

docket at the earliest possible convenience. Due to the above,

the Agency’s motion is denied in part and granted in part.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

I, Dorothy N. Gunn, Clerk of the Illinois Pollution Control

Board, hereby certify that the bo Order was adopted on the

//~Z~ day of

____________________________,

1990 by a vote

of

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Dorothy M. c3x~n, Clerk

Illinois Po~ution Control Board

115—352