Issuance of a General Permit for Ocean Disposal of Marine Mammal and Sea Turtle Carcasses

<NOTICE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OW-2023-0329; FRL-10681-01-OW]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Issuance of a General Permit for Ocean Disposal of Marine Mammal and Sea Turtle Carcasses</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of availability of proposed general permit. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to re-issue a general permit under the Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act (MPRSA) to authorize the transport of marine mammal and sea turtle carcasses from the United States and disposal of marine mammal and sea turtle carcasses in ocean waters. Permit authorization is available for any officer, employee, agent, department, agency, or instrumentality of Tribal, Federal, state, or local unit of government, as well as any Marine Life Health and Stranding Response Program (MLHSRP) Stranding Agreement Holder, and any Alaska Native, who already may take a marine mammal or sea turtle under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and/or Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). In 2017, the EPA issued a general permit for the ocean disposal of marine mammal carcasses to streamline MPRSA authorization and reduce burdens associated with case-by-case permitting. Permit re-issuance is necessary because the most recent permit expired on January 4, 2024. The EPA is not proposing substantive changes to the content of the recently expired general permit. The EPA invites public comment on all aspects of this proposed general permit. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments on this proposed general permit will be accepted until December 9, 2024. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OW-2023-0329, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov</E> /(our preferred method). Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Docket Center, Office of Water Docket, Mail Code 28221T, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20460. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery or Courier:</E> EPA Docket Center, WJC West Building, Room 3334, 1301 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20004. The Docket Center's hours of operations are 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Monday-Friday (except Federal Holidays). <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions received must include the Docket ID No. for this proposed general permit. Comments received may be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/,</E> including any personal information provided. For detailed instructions on sending comments, see the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Cheryl Zulick, Freshwater and Marine Regulatory Branch; Oceans, Wetlands, and Communities Division, Mail Code 4504T, Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20460; telephone (202) 566-0583; email address: <E T="03">zulick.cheryl@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Written Comments</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OW-2023-0329, at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from the docket. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may publish any comment received to its public docket. Do not submit to EPA's docket at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> any information you consider to be Confidential Business Information (CBI), Proprietary Business Information (PBI), 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. The 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). Please visit <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets</E> for additional submission methods; the full EPA public comment policy; information about CBI, PBI, or multimedia submissions; and general guidance on making effective comments. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. General Information</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Does this action apply to me?</HD> The authorization proposed in this general permit is available for any officer, employee, agent, department, agency, or instrumentality of Tribal, Federal, state or local unit of government, as well as any Marine Life Health and Stranding Response Program (MLHSRP), including any Stranding Agreement Holder, and any Alaska Native, who already may take a marine mammal under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) or Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), to transport from the United States and dispose of a marine mammal or sea turtle carcass in ocean waters. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Does this action require the disposal of marine mammal or sea turtle carcasses in ocean waters?</HD> The proposed general permit does not require ocean disposal of marine mammal or sea turtle carcasses; it merely authorizes ocean disposal when there is a need for such disposals. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Why does the EPA permit ocean disposal of marine mammal and sea turtle carcasses?</HD> Unless expressly excluded from the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act (MPRSA), the transportation and disposition of any material in ocean waters, including marine mammal and sea turtle carcasses, requires a permit under the MPRSA. <HD SOURCE="HD2">D. Why does this action require reporting?</HD> Given the natural occurrence of marine mammal and sea turtle carcasses in the marine environment, the disposal of marine mammal or sea turtle carcasses into the ocean is not anticipated to have any adverse effect on human health, fisheries resources, or marine ecosystems. Under the MPRSA regulations (40 CFR 224.1 through 224.2), each person dumping materials under a general permit must maintain records of the physical and chemical characteristics of the material dumped, the times and locations of the dumping, and any other information required as a condition of the permit. Those records must be reported to the EPA as required under the general permit. Additionally, to meet the United States' international treaty obligation for reporting under the London Convention, the EPA reports information about disposals under this general permit, and all other activities authorized by the MPRSA, annually to the International Maritime Organization. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Federal Law and International Conventions</HD> Unless expressly excluded from the MPRSA, the transportation for the purpose of dumping and dumping of any material in ocean waters requires authorization under the MPRSA. The MPRSA uses the term “dumping,” and that term is defined broadly to encompass the disposition of material both for the purpose of disposal, including the disposal of marine mammal or sea turtle carcasses at sea, and for purposes other than disposal. In the United States, the MPRSA implements the requirements of the London Convention, the international treaty that protects the marine environment from the dumping of wastes and other matter into the ocean. Contracting Parties to the London Convention agreed to control dumping by implementing regulatory programs to assess the need for, and the potential impact of, dumping. The London Convention requires that Contracting Parties issue a permit for the dumping of wastes and other matter at sea and report, annually, on all permits issued and monitoring activities undertaken. Under the MPRSA, the EPA establishes general terms of authorization for the ocean disposal of marine mammal and sea turtle carcasses, but other Federal laws are implicated. The Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), which is relevant for the purposes of this permit, as explained later, regulates “marine mammals” meaning any mammal that is morphologically adapted to the marine environment (including sea otters and members of the orders Sirenia, Pinnipedia, and Cetacea) or primarily inhabits the marine environment ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> polar bears). The Marine Turtle Conservation Act defines a sea turtle using the term “marine turtle”, which means any member of the family Cheloniidae or Dermochelyidae. Other than for Alaska Natives with disposal needs when engaged in subsistence uses recognized by the MMPA, the EPA does not anticipate that ocean disposal will be necessary for marine mammal or sea turtle carcasses except in unusual circumstances, such as but not limited to, beached and floating marine mammal or sea turtle carcasses and mass strandings of marine mammals or sea turtles resulting in mortalities. In those unusual circumstances, ocean disposal may be necessary to protect human health, for example, when other disposal options are not available. Before 2017, the EPA permitted the ocean disposal of cetacean (whales and related species) and pinniped (seals and related species) carcasses on a case-by-case basis, with emergency permits. The EPA issued a general permit for the ocean disposal of marine mammal carcasses, which became effective in January 2017, to streamline MPRSA authorization and reduce burdens associated with case-by-case permitting. That general permit provided authorization from January 5, 2017, through January 4, 2024. Under the MPRSA, general permits may be issued for a period no longer than seven years. By issuing the proposed general permit, the general permit's authorization to transport marine mammal and sea turtle carcasses for the purpose of disposal and to dispose mari ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 61k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━