Regulated Navigation Area; Port of Miami, Miami, FL

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY <SUBAGY>Coast Guard</SUBAGY> <CFR>33 CFR Part 165</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket Number USCG-2024-0205]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1625-AA11</RIN> <SUBJECT>Regulated Navigation Area; Port of Miami, Miami, FL</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Coast Guard, DHS. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Coast Guard is proposing to establish a regulated navigation area for certain waters surrounding the Port of Miami. This action is necessary to provide for the safety of life and promote national security by enhancing the protection of increased high-risk vessel traffic and reducing the navigational hazards of the mariners who operate throughout the port. This rulemaking would establish a slow speed zone throughout Fisherman's Channel and the Main Ship Channel for vessels less than 50 meters in length. We invite your comments on this proposed rulemaking. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments and related material must be received by the Coast Guard on or before September 27, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments identified by docket number USCG-2024-0205 using the Federal Decision-Making Portal at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> See the “Public Participation and Request for Comments” portion of the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section for further instructions on submitting comments. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> If you have questions about this proposed rulemaking, call or email LT Stephanie Miranda, District 7 Dpw, U.S. Coast Guard; telephone (571) 610-4432, email <E T="03">Stephanie.LP.Miranda@uscg.mil.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Table of Abbreviations</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">CFR Code of Federal Regulations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">COTP Captain of the Port</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">DHS Department of Homeland Security</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">FR Federal Register</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">LNG Liquified Natural Gas</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">NAVCEN Coast Guard Navigation Center</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">NPRM Notice of proposed rulemaking</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">PAWSA Port and Waterways Safety Assessment</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">RNA Regulated Navigation Area</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">§ Section </FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">U.S.C. United States Code</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background, Purpose, and Legal Basis</HD> The Captain of the Port (COTP) Miami has determined that there has been an increase in navigational risk associated to the Port of Miami as the port continues to expand and vessel traffic increase. On May 10th and 11th of 2023, Coast Guard Navigation Center (NAVCEN) and Sector Miami held a Ports and Waterways Safety Assessment (PAWSA) with key stakeholders of the Port of Miami. As a result, the workshop identified hazards associated to the port with the largest concern for navigational safety being the high speed of vessels and wake created by increased vessel traffic. Over the last few years, a growing number of near misses prompts concern for the safety of life as vessel traffic volume and vessel speeds have increased. On June 25, 2023, around 3:30 a.m. a recreational vessel, traveling at a high rate of speed through the Main ship channel, collided with a crossing vehicle ferry, killing one and seriously injuring a second. The incident not only resulted in the loss of life but in the disruption of 30,000 cruise ship passengers and critical cargo movements in the Port of Miami for over 12 hours. Additionally, on February 12, 2024 a recreational vessel collied with an inspected charter vessel in a critical point of Fisherman's Channel. This incident resulted in 13 injuries with one person in critical condition. This regulated navigation area will reduce the navigational risk associated with one of the world's largest ports, reduce the loss of life, and mitigate the chance of disruption to port operations. In addition, the Port of Miami is expanding its cruise ship terminals and will soon be the largest cruise ship port in the World, moving tens of thousands of passengers every day. With this, the Port of Miami also experienced an increase in Liquified National Gas (LNG) powered cruise ships and cargo vessels resulting in an increase of hazardous bunkering operations within the port. The existing national security risk associated with the Port of Miami is already high and this expansion only increased that risk. The establishment of an RNA reducing the speed of vessels will aid law enforcement officials in monitoring vessel traffic, as vessels not complying with slow speed zones will quickly draw attention, giving law enforcement officials more time to assess the situation and take appropriate action to protect vessels within the port and port facilities. This rulemaking would establish a slow speed restriction on vessels less than 50 meters within the Port of Miami. The purpose of this rulemaking is protecting the public, port, law enforcement officials and the waterways of the United States from potential subversive acts and navigational hazards associated with the high vessel traffic volume experienced within the Port of Miami. The Coast Guard is proposing this rulemaking under authority in 46 U.S.C. 70034. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Discussion of Proposed Rule</HD> The Coast Guard's is proposing to establish a permanent regulated navigation area that would require vessels 50 meters or less to transit the regulated area at a slow speed that creates minimum wake to reduce damage and the navigational hazards associated with the Port of Miami shipping channels around Dodge Island. This regulated navigation area covers the waters of Fisherman's Channel, the Main ship channel, and Moley channel surrounding Dodge Island and Biscayne Bay Causeway Island. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Regulatory Analyses</HD> We developed this proposed rule after considering numerous statutes and Executive orders related to rulemaking. Below we summarize our analyses based on a number of these statutes and Executive orders, and we discuss First Amendment rights of protestors. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Regulatory Planning and Review</HD> Executive Orders 12866 and 13563 direct agencies to assess the costs and benefits of available regulatory alternatives and, if regulation is necessary, to select regulatory approaches that maximize net benefits. This NPRM has not been designated a “significant regulatory action,” under section 3(f) of Executive Order 12866, as amended by Executive Order 14094 (Modernizing Regulatory Review). Accordingly, the NPRM has not been reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). This regulatory action determination is based on the size and location of the regulated navigation area. The regulated navigation area will only affect vessels entering and passing within the Main ship channel, Fisherman's channel and Meloy channel. Vessels may continue to operate within the regulated navigation area with the only restriction being the requirement to operate at slow speeds and not create an excessive wake. Moreover, upon activating the regulated navigation area, the Coast Guard will notify the local maritime community through various means including, Local Notice to Mariners and Broadcast Notice to Mariners issued on VHF-FM marine radio channel 16. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Impact on Small Entities</HD> The Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1980, 5 U.S.C. 601-612, as amended, requires Federal agencies to consider the potential impact of regulations on small entities during rulemaking. The term “small entities” comprises small businesses, not-for-profit organizations that are independently owned and operated and are not dominant in their fields, and governmental jurisdictions with populations of less than 50,000. The Coast Guard certifies under 5 U.S.C. 605(b) that this proposed rule would not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities. While some owners or operators of vessels intending to transit the regulated navigation area may be small entities, for the reasons stated in section IV. A above, this proposed rule would not have a significant economic impact on any vessel owner or operator. If you think that your business, organization, or governmental jurisdiction qualifies as a small entity and that this proposed rule would have a significant economic impact on it, please submit a comment (see <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> ) explaining why you think it qualifies and how and to what degree this rulemaking would economically affect it. Under section 213(a) of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996 (Pub. L. 104-121), we want to assist small entities in understanding this proposed rule. If the proposed rule would affect your small business, organization, or governmental jurisdiction and you have questions concerning its provisions or options for compliance, please call or email the person listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. The Coast Guard will not retaliate against small entities that question or complain about this proposed rule or any policy or action of the Coast Guard. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Collection of Information</HD> This proposed rule would not call for a new collection of information under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. 3501-3520). <HD SOURCE="HD2">D. Federalism and Indian Tribal Governments</HD> A rule has implications for federalism under Executive Order 13132 (Federalism), if it has a substantial direct effect on the States, on the relationship between the National Government and the States, or on the distribution of power and responsibilities among the various levels of government. We have analyzed this proposed rule under that Order and have determined that ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━