Floating Cabins

TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY <CFR>18 CFR Part 1304</CFR> <RIN>RIN 3316-AA25</RIN> <SUBJECT>Floating Cabins</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Tennessee Valley Authority. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is proposing to amend its regulations that govern floating cabins located on the Tennessee River System. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before September 30, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments, identified by RIN 3316-AA25, by any of the following methods: <E T="03">Mail/Hand Delivery:</E> David B. Harrell, Program Manager, Floating Cabins, Tennessee Valley Authority, 400 West Summit Hill Drive, WT 11A-K, Knoxville, TN 37902. <E T="03">Email:</E> <E T="03">fc@tva.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> David B. Harrell, 865-632-1327, <E T="03">dbharrell@tva.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Legal Authority</HD> These proposed amendments are promulgated under the authority of the TVA Act, as amended, 16 U.S.C. 831 <E T="03">et seq.</E> and OMB Circular No. A-25. Under Section 26a of the TVA Act, no obstructions affecting navigation, flood control, or public lands or reservations shall be constructed, operated, or maintained across, along, or in the Tennessee River System without TVA's approval. TVA has long considered nonnavigable structures such as floating cabins to be obstructions that require its approval. In addition, Section 9b of the TVA Act (16 U.S.C. 831h-3) provides that TVA may require floating cabins to be maintained by the owner to reasonable health, safety, and environmental standards. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background and Proposed Amendments</HD> TVA is a multi-purpose federal agency that has been charged by Congress with promoting the wise use and conservation of the resources of the Tennessee Valley region, including the Tennessee River System. In carrying out this mission, TVA operates a system of dams and reservoirs on the Tennessee River and its tributaries for the purposes of navigation, flood control, and power production. Consistent with those purposes, TVA uses the system to improve water quality and water supply and to provide a wide range of public benefits including recreation. To promote the unified development and regulation of the Tennessee River System, Congress directed TVA to approve obstructions across, along, or in the river system under Section 26a of the TVA Act. “Obstruction” is a broad term that includes, by way of example, boat docks, piers, boathouses, buoys, floats, boat launching ramps, fills, water intakes, devices for discharging effluents, bridges, aerial cables, culverts, pipelines, fish attractors, shoreline stabilization projects, channel excavations, and floating cabins. TVA also owns, as agent for the United States, much of the shoreland and inundated land along and under its reservoir system. The proposed amendments would modify health, safety, and environmental standards for floating cabins, including standards for electrical safety. The proposed amendments also address TVA's management and administration of the floating cabins program, including clarification around the allowable size of the structures. The proposed amendments would extend the deadline to allow floating cabin owners until October 1, 2029, to comply with the rules and apply for a Section 26a permit. TVA also proposes to make other minor changes to its Section 26a regulations for clarity and consistency. Since 1971, TVA has used its Section 26a authority to prohibit the mooring on the Tennessee River System of new floating cabins (formerly nonnavigable houseboats) that are designed and used primarily for habitation and not for water transportation. In particular, TVA amended its regulations in 1971 to prohibit the mooring or anchoring of new nonnavigable houseboats except for those in existence before November 21, 1971. Since 1971, TVA has made minor changes to its regulations affecting nonnavigable houseboats, including in 1978 when TVA prohibited mooring of nonnavigable houseboats on the Tennessee River System except for those in existence on or before February 15, 1978. Effective October 1, 2018, TVA updated its regulations to change the terminology to floating cabins (rather than nonnavigable houseboats) and prohibit new floating cabins that did not exist on the Tennessee River System on or before December 16, 2016. Despite over 40 years of regulation related to floating cabins, the number of floating cabins on the Tennessee River System continued to increase. In determining what action to take with respect to floating cabins, TVA prepared an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act. This EIS assessed the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of different policies to address the proliferation of floating cabins on the Tennessee River System. TVA released a draft of this EIS for public comment in June 2015 and held four public meetings and a webinar to provide information about its analyses and to facilitate public involvement. The final EIS and associated documents can be found at <E T="03">https://www.tva.com/floatingcabins.</E> After considering the comments received during the EIS process and the analyses of impacts, TVA identified as its preferred policy one that establishes standards to ensure safer mooring, electrical connections, and protection of water quality. Under the preferred policy, the mooring of new floating cabins would be prohibited on the Tennessee River System. The preferred policy would have required all existing floating cabins, including nonnavigable houseboats, to be removed from the Tennessee River System by January 1, 2036, and be subject to a regulatory program in the interim. On May 5, 2016, the TVA Board of Directors adopted the preferred policy, except the Board extended the removal date to May 5, 2046. On December 16, 2016, Congress enacted the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act of 2016 (WIIN Act). Section 5003 related to floating cabins and amended the TVA Act to include Section 9b (16 U.S.C. 831h-3). This new section of the TVA Act provides that TVA may approve and allow the use of floating cabins on waters under the jurisdiction of TVA as of December 16, 2016, if the floating cabin is maintained to reasonable health, safety, and environmental standards as required by the TVA Board of Directors and if the owner pays a compliance fee if assessed by TVA. The WIIN Act stipulates that TVA may not require the removal of a floating cabin that was located on the Tennessee River System as of December 16, 2016: (1) for a period of 15 years if it was granted a permit by TVA before enactment, or (2) for a period of 5 years if it was not granted a permit by TVA before enactment. It further stipulates that TVA may establish regulations to prevent the construction of new floating cabins. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Floating Cabins Amendments to TVA's Section 26a Regulations</HD> TVA published “Phase I” rule amendments for floating cabins that became effective on October 1, 2018. These amendments clarified the types of structures that TVA will regulate as a floating cabin and prohibited new floating cabins from mooring on the Tennessee River System after December 16, 2016. TVA estimates that approximately 2,200 floating cabins were moored on the Tennessee River System on December 16, 2016. TVA published “Phase II” rule amendments for floating cabins that became effective on October 12, 2021. These amendments included health, safety, environmental, and permitting standards that apply to all floating cabins and a deadline by which floating cabin owners were to apply to TVA for a Section 26a permit. A diverse stakeholder group composed of 18 members advised TVA on the development and drafting of these standards. Owners of floating cabins were given until October 1, 2024, to comply with the standards in TVA's regulations and submit a complete permit application that certifies compliance and includes the payment of a Section 26a permit application fee. The permit application submission date of October 1, 2024, gave owners approximately three years from the effective date of the new standards to bring structures into compliance. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Permitting Program</HD> TVA's permitting requirements for floating cabins apply to all existing floating cabins, including those formerly referred to as nonnavigable houseboats originally permitted on or before February 15, 1978. All floating cabins and attached structures will require a new permit. TVA has encouraged floating cabin owners to bring floating cabins into compliance and then apply for a permit without delay; however, various factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain and labor resource shortages, and state wastewater certification decisions caused delays for floating cabin owners to achieve compliance. The proposed amendment extends the deadline for owners to comply with all standards and submit a Section 26a permit application that certifies compliance no later than October 1, 2029. TVA may deny an initial application for floating cabins if it is submitted past the deadline of October 1, 2029. Upon submission of the application, owners of floating cabins may remain in place until TVA acts on the application. If TVA approves the application, TVA will issue a Section 26a permit to the owner. If TVA denies the application, the owner must remove the structure in accordance with Section 9b of the TVA Act and 18 CFR 1304.406. The proposal also clarifies language on rebuilding floating cabins. Any alterations to the dimensions or approved plans for an existing floating cabin (monolithic ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 24k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━