Florida-Indian River-Vero Beach to Fort Pierce Aquatic Preserve Vessel Sewage No-Discharge Zone; Tentative Affirmative Determination

<NOTICE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <DEPDOC>[FRL-12144-01-R4]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Florida—Indian River-Vero Beach to Fort Pierce Aquatic Preserve Vessel Sewage No-Discharge Zone; Tentative Affirmative Determination</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of tentative affirmative determination. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> Pursuant to the Clean Water Act, the State of Florida has determined that the protection and enhancement of the quality of the waters within the Indian River-Vero Beach to Fort Pierce Aquatic Preserve (“the Preserve”) requires greater environmental protection. As such, Florida has submitted an application to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Region 4, for a determination that adequate facilities for the safe and sanitary removal and treatment of sewage from all vessels are reasonably available, so that the State may completely prohibit the discharge from all vessels of any sewage, whether treated or not, into such waters. The proposed no-discharge zone encompasses the 9,500 acres of the Preserve located in the Indian River and St. Lucie counties. The Preserve extends 12 miles from the southern Vero Beach corporate limit south to the north U.S. Highway A1A bridge in Fort Pierce. Through this notice, EPA is soliciting public comment on the Agency's tentative affirmative determination that adequate facilities for the safe and sanitary removal and treatment of sewage from all vessels are reasonably available for the waters subject to the proposed no-discharge zone. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before September 5, 2024. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R04-OW-2024-0379, at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> EPA may publish any comment received to its public docket. Do not submit electronically any information you consider to be Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Multimedia submissions (audio, video, etc.) must be accompanied by a written comment. The written comment is considered the official comment and should include discussion of all points you wish to make. EPA will generally not consider comments or comment contents located outside of the primary submission ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> on the web, cloud, or other file sharing system). For additional submission methods, the full EPA public comment policy, information about CBI or multimedia submissions, and general guidance on making effective comments, please visit <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Jennifer Dimaio, Ocean, Wetlands, and Streams Protection Branch, Water Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 4, 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, Georgia 30303-8960; telephone number: (404) 562-9268; email address: <E T="03">dimaio.jennifer@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> Notice is hereby given that the State of Florida submitted an application on July 3, 2024, to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 4, for a determination under Clean Water Act section 312(f)(3) that adequate facilities for the safe and sanitary removal and treatment of sewage from all vessels are reasonably available for the Preserve. EPA's role under Clean Water Act section 312(f)(3) is to review State applications to determine whether adequate pumpout and treatment facilities are reasonably available. Applications submitted pursuant to section 312(f)(3), in accordance with 40 CFR 140.4, must include: (1) a certification that the protection and enhancement of the waters described in the petition require greater environmental protection than the applicable Federal standard; (2) a map showing the location of commercial and recreational pumpout facilities; (3) a description of the location of pumpout facilities within waters designated for no discharge; (4) the general schedule of operating hours of the pumpout facilities; (5) the draught requirements on vessels that may be excluded because of insufficient water depth adjacent to the facility; (6) information indicating that treatment of wastes from such pumpout facilities is in conformance with Federal law; and (7) information on vessel population and vessel usage of the subject waters. A copy of Florida's application, as well as a memorandum summarizing conversations between EPA and the State, are available in the docket. After consideration of all comments received, if EPA makes a final determination that adequate facilities for the safe and sanitary removal and treatment of sewage from all vessels are reasonably available for the Preserve, the State of Florida may completely prohibit the discharge from all vessels of any sewage, whether treated or not, into those waters through the designation of a no-discharge zone. Vessels with installed toilets are required to operate U.S. Coast Guard-approved marine sanitation devices (MSDs). MSDs are either flow-through systems—Type I or Type II MSDs—that treat sewage before discharging to surrounding waters or holding tanks—Type III MSDs—that retain sewage onboard. Upon designation of a vessel sewage no-discharge zone, vessels with flow-through systems that operate within the zone's boundaries would need to retrofit to holding tanks to prevent any overboard discharge. These vessels would then require access to pumpout facilities to empty their holding tanks. Alternatively, U.S. Coast Guard regulations at 33 CFR 159.7(b) specify four methods of securing a flow-through MSD to demonstrate compliance with a no-discharge zone. These methods include: (1) closing the seacock and removing the handle; (2) padlocking the seacock in the closed position; (3) using a non-releasable wire-tie to hold the seacock in the closed position; or (4) locking the door to the space enclosing the toilets with a padlock or door handle key lock. EPA must determine whether adequate facilities are reasonably available to those vessels that would require pump outs to support the designation of a no-discharge zone. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Application Information and Determination</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Proposed Waters and Certification of Need</HD> As described in its application, the State of Florida has determined that the protection and enhancement of the quality of the waters within the Preserve requires greater environmental protection than is afforded by the applicable Federal standard. The proposed no-discharge zone encompasses the entirety of the Preserve, as delineated in Chapter 258.39, Florida Statutes (F.S.), as described in the Official Records of Indian River County in Book 368, pages 9-12, and in the Official Records of Saint Lucie County in Book 187, pages 1083-1086. The proposed no-discharge zone includes a segment of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway between approximately mile 953.5 (North 27 degrees 37.6153 minutes, West 80 degrees 22.1865 minutes) and mile 964.8 (North 27 degrees 28.3272 minutes, West 80 degrees 19.4741 minutes). The 9,500-acre Preserve extends 12 miles from the southern Vero Beach corporate limit to the north U.S. Highway A1A bridge in Fort Pierce and includes Big Starvation Cove, Wildcat Cove, and Fort Pierce Cut. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection's Office of Resilience and Coastal Protection administers the Preserve as part of a network that protects the State's most popular and ecologically important waters. The Preserve lies within the Indian River Lagoon, one of the most biologically diverse estuaries in North America and is also designated as an Estuary of National Significance and an Outstanding Florida Water (Chapter 62-302, Florida Administrative Code (F.A.C.)). As referenced in the State of Florida's application, the East Coast Florida Regional Planning Council and Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council estimated the total annual value of the lagoon to be $7.6 billion in 2014. The waters in parts of the Preserve do not meet all applicable water quality standards and have been identified by the State of Florida as impaired by nutrients and fecal coliforms. A nutrient Total Maximum Daily Load for the Preserve was adopted by the State of Florida in March 2009 and is included in the State's 2021 <E T="03">Central Indian River Lagoon Basin Management Action Plan.</E> In 2021, the Florida Legislature passed Senate Bill 1086 creating Chapter 327.521, F.S., designating, upon approval from EPA, all waters within the boundaries of aquatic preserves identified in Chapter 258.39, F.S., as no-discharge zones. The State of Florida's application and this notice pertain only to the Preserve. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Adequacy and Availability of Pumpout Facilities</HD> EPA's analysis of the reasonable availability of adequate facilities considers the number of recreational and commercial vessels that use the proposed waters on both a regular and transient basis. To estimate the number of vessels operating in the proposed waters, the State of Florida used registration data from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles and determined that there are approximately 26,000 vessels registered in the Indian River and St. Lucie counties. There is high vessel usage both inside and outside of the Preserve without significant seasonal variation. About 25,000 of the vessels registered in the two counties are for recreational purposes. In consideration that the Preserve encompasses only 25 percent of the water area in the two counties, the State of Fl ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 26k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━