Notice of Availability; Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for a Potential Land Exchange Involving Izembek National Wildlife Refuge Lands; Public Meetings

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Fish and Wildlife Service</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FWS-R7-NWRS-2023-0072; FF07R00000-245-FXRS12610700000]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Notice of Availability; Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for a Potential Land Exchange Involving Izembek National Wildlife Refuge Lands; Public Meetings</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Fish and Wildlife Service, Interior. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of availability. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, as amended, and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, as amended, along with other laws as applicable, we, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), announce the availability of a draft supplemental environmental impact statement (draft supplemental EIS) to consider the effects of a potential land exchange of certain lands owned by the King Cove Corporation with certain lands owned by the U.S. Government and located within the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge and Izembek Wilderness Area. If a land exchange is approved, King Cove Corporation would use the acquired land for a road corridor for noncommercial use. We invite comment on the draft supplemental EIS from the public and local, State, Tribal, and Federal agencies. We will separately be announcing public meetings. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Submitting Comments:</E> We must receive your written comments on or before December 30, 2024. Comments submitted online at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/</E> must be received by 11:59 p.m. eastern time on December 30, 2024. <E T="03">Public Meetings:</E> Meeting locations, dates, and times will be announced at <E T="03">https://www.fws.gov/project/potential-land-exchange-road-between-king-cove-and-cold-bay.</E> </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <E T="03">Obtaining Documents:</E> The draft supplemental EIS, as well as any comments and other materials that we receive, will be available for public inspection online in Docket No. FWS-R7-NWRS-2023-0072 at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> In addition, to inform public comment, we are also making FWS's 2013 EIS and record of decision (ROD) documents available for review at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> in Docket No. FWS-R7-NWRS-2023-0072. However, we are not taking public comments on those documents at this time. <E T="03">Submitting Public Comments:</E> You may submit comments by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Online: https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the instructions for submitting comments on Docket No. FWS-R7-NWRS-2023-0072. • <E T="03">U.S. Mail:</E> Public Comments Processing, Attn: Docket No. FWS-R7-NWRS-2023-0072; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, MS: PRB/3W; 5275 Leesburg Pike; Falls Church, VA 22041-3803. • <E T="03">Public Meetings and any Subsistence Hearings:</E> Comments will also be accepted at the in-person and virtual public meetings/hearings. Meeting locations, dates, and times will be announced at <E T="03">https://www.fws.gov/project/potential-land-exchange-road-between-king-cove-and-cold-bay.</E> We will post all written comments on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> This generally means that we will post any personal information you provide us (see Public Review Process for more information). <E T="03">Reasonable Accommodations for Meetings:</E> Persons needing reasonable accommodations to attend and participate in the public meetings should contact Bobbie Jo Skibo as soon as possible (see <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> ). To allow sufficient time to process requests, please make contact no later than 1 week before the desired public meeting. Information and documents are available in alternative formats upon request. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Bobbie Jo Skibo, Project Leader, by telephone at 907-441-1539; by email at <E T="03">bobbiejo_skibo@fws.gov;</E> or by U.S. mail at U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Alaska Region, National Wildlife Refuge System, 1011 East Tudor Road, Anchorage, AK 99503. Contact Bobbie Jo Skibo to have your name added to our mailing list. Individuals in the United States who are deaf, deafblind, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability may dial 711 (TTY, TDD, or TeleBraille) to access telecommunications relay services. Individuals outside the United States should use the relay services offered within their country to make international calls to the point-of-contact in the United States. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Introduction</HD> In accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, as amended (NEPA; 42 U.S.C. 4321 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ), and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, as amended (ANILCA; Pub. L. 96-487, sec. 1302(h), Dec. 2, 1980; 16 U.S.C. 3192(h)), along with other laws as applicable, we, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), announce the availability of a draft supplemental environmental impact statement (draft supplemental EIS) to consider the effects of a potential land exchange of certain lands owned by the King Cove Corporation with certain lands that are owned by the U.S. Government and located within the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge and Izembek Wilderness Area. If a land exchange is approved, King Cove would use the acquired land for a road corridor for noncommercial health, safety, and subsistence uses. The draft supplemental EIS updates information used in FWS's 2013 analysis on the impacts of a then-proposed land exchange and proposed road corridor and the viability of alternatives to provide safe and reliable transportation between the City of King Cove, Alaska, and the airport at Cold Bay, Alaska, and also includes a new land exchange and road corridor alternative. We invite comments on the draft supplemental EIS from the public and local, State, Tribal, and Federal agencies. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Potentially Affected Land Areas</HD> The Izembek National Wildlife Refuge (417,533 acres (ac)) and the North Creek (8,452 ac) and Pavlof (1,447,264 ac) units of the Alaska Peninsula National Wildlife Refuge are located at the westernmost tip of the Alaska Peninsula. To the north of the Izembek Refuge is the Bering Sea; to the south is the Pacific Ocean. The Izembek Wilderness covers much of the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge and includes pristine streams, extensive wetlands, steep mountains, tundra, and sand dunes, and provides high scenic, wildlife, and scientific values, as well as opportunities for solitude and recreation. The Izembek National Wildlife Refuge includes the traditional homelands of the Unangax people. The King Cove Corporation is an Alaska Native Village Corporation established under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA; 43 U.S.C. 1601 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ). Under the authority of ANCSA, Congress granted to King Cove Corporation land entitlements within and adjacent to Izembek Refuge. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Previous Actions</HD> In the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 (Pub. L. 111-11, title VI, subtitle E (herein referred to as the 2009 Act)), Congress directed FWS to prepare an EIS under NEPA and its implementing regulations (40 CFR parts 1500-1508) to evaluate the impacts of a proposed land exchange with the State of Alaska and the King Cove Corporation for the purpose of constructing a single-lane gravel road between the communities of King Cove and Cold Bay, Alaska. The 2009 Act required that the road “shall be used primarily for health and safety purposes (including access to and from the Cold Bay Airport) and only for noncommercial purposes,” with limited exceptions. The land exchange contemplated by the 2009 Act would have involved the conveyance of approximately 206 ac within the Izembek Wilderness portion of Izembek National Wildlife Refuge for the road corridor and approximately 1,600 ac of Federal land within the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge on Sitkinak Island. In exchange, FWS would have received approximately 43,093 ac of land owned by the State of Alaska and approximately 13,300 ac of land owned by the King Cove Corporation. These lands are located around Cold Bay and are adjacent to the North Creek Unit of the Alaska Peninsula National Wildlife Refuge. In accordance with section 6402(b)(2)(B) of the 2009 Act, an EIS completed in 2013 (2013 EIS; February 6, 2013, 78 FR 8577) analyzed the proposed land exchange and the potential construction and operation of a road between the communities of King Cove and Cold Bay, Alaska, and, among other alternatives, evaluated a specific road corridor through the Izembek Refuge that was identified in consultation with the State of Alaska, the City of King Cove, and the Agdaagux Tribe of King Cove. In accordance with the 2009 Act, subsequent to the preparation of the 2013 EIS and in conjunction with the 2013 record of decision (2013 ROD; February 20, 2014, 79 FR 9759), Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell decided not to enter a land exchange after determining that the proposed land exchange (including the construction of the proposed road) was not in the public interest. On July 3, 2019, Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt signed a memorandum titled “Findings and Conclusions Concerning a Proposed Land Exchange Between the Secretary of the Interior and King Cove Corporation for Lands Within Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska” (2019 Secretarial Memorandum). That memorandum laid the foundation for the concurrent approval of a land exchange agreement (2019 Exchange Agreement) between the Department of the Interior (Department) and King Cove Corporation. The 2019 Secretarial Memorandum stated that the purpose ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 16k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━