Safety Zone; Heavy Weather and Natural or Other Disasters in San Juan Captain of the Port Zone, Sector San Juan

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY <SUBAGY>Coast Guard</SUBAGY> <CFR>33 CFR Part 165</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket Number USCG-2023-0269]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1625-AA00</RIN> <SUBJECT>Safety Zone; Heavy Weather and Natural or Other Disasters in San Juan Captain of the Port Zone, Sector San Juan</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Coast Guard, DHS. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Coast Guard is establishing a safety zone to be enforced in the event of hurricanes, tropical storms, and other disasters in the San Juan Captain of the Port (COTP) Zone. This action is necessary to ensure the safety of the waters of the San Juan COTP zone. This regulation establishes actions to be completed by parties operating on and around the navigable waterways of the San Juan COTP zone. This may include the owners and operators, and those in management and control positions of regulated facilities, waterfront facilities, and vessels, prior to landfall of hurricanes, tropical storms, and other disasters threatening the San Juan COTP Zone. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective May 6, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> To view documents mentioned in this preamble as being available in the docket, go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> type USCG-2023-0269 in the search box and click “Search.” Next, in the Document Type column, select “Supporting & Related Material.” <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> If you have questions about this rule, call or email Lieutenant Commander (LCDR) Carlos M. Ortega-Pérez, the Waterways Management Division Chief, Sector San Juan Prevention Department, U.S. Coast Guard; telephone 787-729-2380, email <E T="03">Carlos.M.Ortega-Perez@uscg.mil</E> . </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Table of Abbreviations</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">COTP Captain of the Port</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">CFR Code of Federal Regulations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">CWA Clean Water Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">DHS Department of Homeland Security</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">FR Federal Register</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">MTSA Maritime Transportation Security Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">NPRM Notice of proposed rulemaking</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">OPA90 The Oil Pollution Act of 1990</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">PWSA Ports and Waterways Safety Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">§ Section </FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">U.S.C. United States Code</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background Information and Regulatory History</HD> During the hurricane season Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands face different security and life-threatening challenges that directly affect the safety and continuity of operations of the Sector's waterways and port facilities. To ensure the safety of the port and life on navigable waters of the United States this regulation restricts movement of vessels and barges over 500 gross tons (GT) in the event of heavy weather conditions or any natural or other disasters anticipated to affect the San Juan Captain of the Port (COTP) zone. The COTP has determined that reduced or restricted visibility and gale force winds which may occur during heavy weather periods and other disasters affecting Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, constitutes a safety concern for the navigable waters and waterfront facilities within the San Juan COTP zone. In response, on June 13, 2023, the Coast Guard published a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) titled, “Safety Zone: Heavy Weather and Natural or Other Disasters in San Juan Captain of the Port Zone, San Juan, PR.”  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> There we stated why we issued the NPRM and invited comments on our proposed regulatory action related to this heavy weather or other disasters. During the comment period that ended June 29, 2023, we received no comments. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  88 FR 38413. </FTNT> While there were no comments, a similar NPRM was published for the Key West COTP zone which garnered two public comments. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> The Coast Guard made changes to the regulatory text in the final rule for the Key West COTP zone  <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> for clarity in response to the comments received. In this final rule, the Coast Guard made similar changes in the regulatory text for consistency with the Key West COTP zone. See 33 CFR 165.707. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  88 FR 27421. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  See Final rule titled, “Safety Zone; Atlantic Ocean, Key West, FL” (88 FR 76133). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Legal Authority and Need for Rule</HD> The Coast Guard is issuing this rule under authority in 46 U.S.C. 70034. The purpose of this rule is to protect the general maritime public, to include vessel owners, vessel operators, and those in management and control positions related to facilities and waterways regulated by the Coast Guard, along with those in management and control positions related to any land or shore area immediately adjacent to those waterways in the San Juan COTP zone, in the event of a hurricane, tropical storm, and other natural disasters. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Discussion of Comments, Changes, and the Rule</HD> As a general matter, this rule is intended to inform the general maritime public, to include vessel owners and operators, regulated facilities, and waterfront facilities of the Coast Guard's expectations in the event of a hurricane, tropical storm, or other disaster, thereby expediting the enforcement of the safety zone, and providing more advanced notice of the Coast Guard's expectations in the event of a hurricane, tropical storm, or other natural disaster. This rule is also intended to provide vessel owners and operators, along with the owners and operators of regulated facilities and waterfront facilities with a deeper understanding of how the Coast Guard intends to handle extreme weather-related events so they can plan accordingly. As noted in the previous section, we received no comments on our NPRM published June 13, 2023. However, due to the thorough review done during the similar NPRM published for the Sector Key West COTP zone, we have determined that there are several changes in the final rule's regulatory text for 33 CFR 165.791 as follows. To clarify some potential confusion, the Coast Guard is adding two definitions for “regulated facilities,” and “waterfront facilities,” in paragraph(a). The Coast Guard has the authority to regulate facilities and land structure or shore area immediately adjacent to navigable waters under certain, specific statutory and regulatory frameworks. We are adding a definition for “regulated facilities” to clarify the regulated facilities covered by this rule are those regulated under the Ports and Waterways Safety Act, <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> Maritime Transportation and Security Act (MTSA), <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> Clean Water Act, <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> and the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> These statutes give the Coast Guard the authority and jurisdiction to take certain actions on certain regulated facilities that have a maritime nexus. We are adding a definition for “waterfront facilities” which will include any land structure or shore area immediately adjacent to the navigable waters of the San Juan COTP zone. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  46 U.S.C. 70001 <E T="03">et seq.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  46 U.S.C. 70101 <E T="03">et seq.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  33 U.S.C. 1251 <E T="03">et seq.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  33 U.S.C. 2701 <E T="03">et seq.</E> </FTNT> When the safety zone is subject to enforcement it will be determinate of conditions set forth in paragraphs (c)(1) through (c)(5). In paragraphs (c)(1), we are deleting “port facilities” and adding in its place, “regulated facilities and waterfront facilities” for consistency as definitions for these terms have been added in paragraphs (b)(6) and (b)(7). In the event Port Condition WHISKEY is set, all vessels, regulated facilities, and waterfront facilities within the San Juan COTP zone would have to comply with the applicable regulations in paragraph (c)(1). Additionally, in paragraph (c)(1), we removed the sentence, “Vessels wishing to remain in port are required to submit an application to the COTP prior to setting Port Condition X-Ray.” In its place, we are adding the sentence, “Oceangoing vessels greater than 500 gross tons (GT) intending to remain in the port during Port Condition Whiskey must contact the San Juan COTP prior to the setting of port condition X-Ray.” We are taking this action to prevent vessel owners and operators from having to generate additional documentation. In paragraphs (c)(2), we are deleting “port facilities” and adding in its place, “regulated facilities and waterfront facilities” for consistency as definitions for these terms have been added in paragraphs (a)(7) and (a)(8). In the event Port Condition X-RAY is set, all vessels, regulated facilities, and waterfront facilities within the San Juan COTP zone would have to comply with the applicable regulations in paragraph (c)(2). Additionally, in paragraph (c)(2), we are deleting the sentence, “The COTP may require additional precautions to ensure the safety of the ports and waterways” because it is overly vague and may cause undue confusion for owners and operators of vessels and regulated facilities. In paragraph (c)(3), we clarified we are only limiting cargo operations at “regulated facilities.” We also removed some the language that went into specifics of cargo operations. Removing the language made the regulatory text more succinct, as the initial language contained unnecessary redundancies. We also clarified that only facilities regulated under the MTSA will be required to operate in accordance with their security pla ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 24k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━