Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to the Skagway Ore Terminal Redevelopment Project

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[RTID 0648-XE465]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to the Skagway Ore Terminal Redevelopment Project</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice; issuance of renewal incidental harassment authorization. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In accordance with the regulations implementing the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), as amended, notification is hereby given that NMFS has issued a renewal incidental harassment authorization (IHA) to Municipality of Skagway (MOS) to incidentally harass marine mammals incidental to the terminal redevelopment project in Skagway, Alaska. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This renewal IHA is valid from the date of issuance through September 30, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Electronic copies of the original application, Renewal request, and supporting documents (including NMFS <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notices of the original proposed and final authorizations, and the previous IHA), as well as a list of the references cited in this document, may be obtained online at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/permit/incidental-take-authorizations-under-marine-mammal-protection-act.</E> In case of problems accessing these documents, please call the contact listed below. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Jenna Harlacher, Office of Protected Resources, NMFS, (301) 427-8401. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The MMPA prohibits the “take” of marine mammals, with certain exceptions. Sections 101(a)(5)(A) and (D) of the MMPA (16 U.S.C. 1361 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) direct the Secretary of Commerce (as delegated to NMFS) to allow, upon request, the incidental, but not intentional, taking of small numbers of marine mammals by U.S. citizens who engage in a specified activity (other than commercial fishing) within a specified geographical region if certain findings are made and either regulations are promulgated or, if the taking is limited to harassment, an IHA is issued. Authorization for incidental takings shall be granted if NMFS finds that the taking will have a negligible impact on the species or stock(s) and will not have an unmitigable adverse impact on the availability of the species or stock(s) for taking for subsistence uses (where relevant). Further, NMFS must prescribe the permissible methods of taking and other “means of effecting the least practicable adverse impact” on the affected species or stocks and their habitat, paying particular attention to rookeries, mating grounds, and areas of similar significance, and on the availability of such species or stocks for taking for certain subsistence uses (referred to here as “mitigation measures”). NMFS must also prescribe requirements pertaining to monitoring and reporting of such takings. The definition of key terms such as “take,” “harassment,” and “negligible impact” can be found in the MMPA and NMFS's implementing regulations (see 16 U.S.C. 1362; 50 CFR 216.103). NMFS' regulations implementing the MMPA at 50 CFR 216.107(e) indicate that IHAs may be renewed for additional periods of time not to exceed 1 year for each reauthorization. In the notice of proposed IHA for the initial IHA, NMFS described the circumstances under which we would consider issuing a renewal for this activity, and requested public comment on a potential renewal under those circumstances. Specifically, on a case-by-case basis, NMFS may issue a one-time 1-year renewal IHA following notice to the public providing an additional 15 days for public comments when (1) up to another year of identical, or nearly identical, activities as described in the Detailed Description of Specified Activities section of the initial IHA issuance notice is planned or (2) the activities as described in the Description of the Specified Activities and Anticipated Impacts section of the initial IHA issuance notice would not be completed by the time the initial IHA expires and a renewal would allow for completion of the activities beyond that described in the <E T="02">DATES</E> section of the notice of issuance of the initial IHA, provided all of the following conditions are met: 1. A request for renewal is received no later than 60 days prior to the needed renewal IHA effective date (recognizing that the renewal IHA expiration date cannot extend beyond 1 year from expiration of the initial IHA). 2. The request for renewal must include the following: • An explanation that the activities to be conducted under the requested renewal IHA are identical to the activities analyzed under the initial IHA, are a subset of the activities, or include changes so minor ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> reduction in pile size) that the changes do not affect the previous analyses, mitigation and monitoring requirements, or take estimates (with the exception of reducing the type or amount of take). • A preliminary monitoring report showing the results of the required monitoring to date and an explanation showing that the monitoring results do not indicate impacts of a scale or nature not previously analyzed or authorized. 3. Upon review of the request for renewal, the status of the affected species or stocks, and any other pertinent information, NMFS determines that there are no more than minor changes in the activities, the mitigation and monitoring measures will remain the same and appropriate, and the findings in the initial IHA remain valid. An additional public comment period of 15 days (for a total of 45 days), with direct notice by email, phone, or postal service to commenters on the initial IHA, is provided to allow for any additional comments on the proposed renewal. A description of the renewal process may be found on our website at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/marine-mammal-protection/incidental-harassment-authorization-renewals.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">History of Request</HD> On August 29, 2023, NMFS issued an IHA to MOS to take marine mammals incidental to the terminal redevelopment project in Skagway, Alaska (88 FR 60652, September 5, 2023), effective from October 1, 2023, through September 30, 2024. On February 5, 2024, NMFS received a request from MOS to modify the 2023 IHA; adding 2 takes by Level A harassment and 45 takes by Level B harassment for northern fur seal, and to adjust take requests based on average species densities throughout the year due to work occurring in all seasons and, consequently, increasing authorized take by Level B harassment to 270 for Steller sea lion. On May 3, 2024, NMFS issued MOS a modification of the initial 2023 IHA (89 FR 36765). On July 22, 2024, NMFS received an application for the renewal of the initial IHA (as modified). After discussions with MOS about the work to be conducted under the renewal IHA, we received a revised renewal request on September 30, 2024. As described in the application for renewal IHA, the activities for which incidental take is requested consist of a subset of the activities that were covered by the initial authorization but which were not completed prior to its expiration. As required, the applicant also provided a final monitoring report, available online at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/incidental-take-authorization-municipality-skagways-skagway-ore-terminal-redevelopment.</E> The report confirms that the applicant has implemented the required mitigation and monitoring, and which also shows that no impacts of a scale or nature not previously analyzed or authorized have occurred as a result of the activities conducted. The notice of the proposed renewal IHA was published on October 22, 2024 (89 FR 84333). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Description of the Specified Activities and Anticipated Impacts</HD> MOS planned to redevelop the Skagway Ore Terminal in Skagway, Alaska, with 196 days of pile installation and removal. This project involved installation and removal of 36 temporary steel pile guides, removal of 692 piles, and installation of 244 permanent steel piles. Two different installation methods were used: vibratory pile driving and impact pile driving. Due to unexpected delays, MOS did not complete the construction during the initial 1-year period, completing removal of 385 piles and installation of 101 piles. This renewal is to cover a subset of the activities covered in the initial IHA that was not completed during the effective IHA period and which is planned to occur during the effective period of the renewal IHA. Specifically, MOS plans to install two maximum-diameter 24-in piles and remove ten timber piles, which are necessary to stabilize a single existing fender. The remainder of the initially planned work would not be conducted under this renewal IHA. The likely or possible impacts of the MOS's activity on marine mammals is unchanged from the impacts described in the initial IHA. Potential non-acoustic stressors could result from the physical presence of the equipment, vessels, and personnel; however, any impacts to marine mammals are expected to primarily be acoustic in nature. Sounds resulting from pile installation, removal, and drilling may result in the incidental take of marine mammals by Level A and Level B harassment in the form of auditory injury or behavioral harassment. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Detailed Description of the Activity</HD> A detailed description of the construction activities for which take is authorized here may be found in the notices of the proposed and final IHAs for the initial authorization (88 FR 23 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 27k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━