Do EAC areas need a maintenance plan for the 8-hour ozone standard?
RESPONSE: The EAC protocol requires the area to do a maintenance analysis to address growth in emissions at least 5 years beyond 12/31/07, to ensure that the area will continue to attain the 8-hour standard. The protocol describes several methods that can be used to make a demonstration of future attainment, including an annual review of growth to ensure control measures and growth assumptions are adequate. If the annual review of growth shows that the control measures are not adquate to address growth in emissions, additional measures will be added to the plan. The plan must also detail a continuing planning process that includes modeling updates and modeling assumption verification (particularly growth assumptions) to evaluate, for example, air quality impacts from potential new source growth and from future transportation patterns. For additional information, see section E of the Protocol.
