John H. Chafee Coastal Barrier Resources System; Availability of Final Revised Maps for Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, and New York

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Fish and Wildlife Service</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FWS-HQ-ES-2023-0148; FF09E42000-FXES111609BFEDR-245]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>John H. Chafee Coastal Barrier Resources System; Availability of Final Revised Maps for Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, and New York</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> The Coastal Barrier Resources Act requires the Secretary of the Interior to review the maps of the John H. Chafee Coastal Barrier Resources System (CBRS) at least once every 5 years and make any minor and technical modifications to the boundaries of the CBRS to reflect changes in the size or location of any unit as a result of natural forces since the unit was last mapped. We, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, have conducted this review for CBRS units in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, and the Great Lakes region of New York. This notice announces the findings of our review and the availability of final revised maps for 89 CBRS units in these five States. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Changes to the CBRS depicted on the final revised maps, dated December 29, 2023, become effective on December 19, 2024. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> For information about how to get copies of the maps or where to go to view them, see Availability of Final Maps and Related Information, below. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Katie Niemi, Coastal Barriers Coordinator, via telephone at 703-358-2071 or email at <E T="03">CBRA@fws.gov.</E> 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">Background and Methodology</HD> Background information on the Coastal Barrier Resources Act (CBRA; 16 U.S.C. 3501 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) and the John H. Chafee Coastal Barrier Resources System (CBRS), as well as information on the 5-year review effort and the methodology we used to produce the revised maps, can be found in a notice we published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on November 22, 2022 (87 FR 71352). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Announced Map Modifications</HD> This notice announces modifications we made to the maps for several CBRS units in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, and the Great Lakes region of New York. Most of these modifications were made to reflect changes to the CBRS units as a result of natural forces ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> erosion and accretion). CBRA requires the Secretary of the Interior to review the maps of the CBRS at least once every 5 years and make, in consultation with the appropriate Federal, State, and local officials (stakeholders), such minor and technical modifications to the boundaries of the CBRS as are necessary solely to reflect changes that have occurred in the size or location of any unit as a result of natural forces (16 U.S.C. 3503(c)). Our review resulted in a set of 85 final revised maps, dated December 29, 2023, depicting a total of 89 CBRS units. This review included: <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• Six of the 137 total units located in Florida (depicted on 2 final maps)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• All 13 units located in Georgia (depicted on 16 final maps)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• Fifteen of the 21 total units located in Louisiana (depicted on 34 final maps)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• All 34 units located in Maine (depicted on 19 final maps)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• All 21 units located in the Great Lakes region of New York (depicted on 14 final maps)</FP> We made modifications to a total of 13 units (of the 89 total units reviewed) due to natural changes in their size or location since they were last mapped. We also revised two CBRS units to correct administrative errors made in the past on maps for Lee County, Florida. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Consultation With Federal, State, and Local Officials</HD> We fulfilled the requirement to consult with stakeholders by holding a 30-day comment period on the draft revised boundaries from November 3, 2023, through December 4, 2023 (88 FR 75621). We notified approximately 220 stakeholders concerning the availability of the draft revised boundaries, including: (1) the Chair and Ranking Member of the House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources, the Chair and Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and the members of the Senate and House of Representatives for the affected areas; (2) the governors of the affected areas; (3) State and local officials with floodplain management and/or land use responsibilities; and (4) Federal officials with knowledge of the coastal geomorphology within the project area. We reviewed and considered all comments prior to developing the final maps. Summaries of the two written comments we received, and our responses are provided below. We indicated in our response to comments those that were outside of the scope of the 5-year review. Interested parties may view the comments at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FWS-HQ-ES-2023-0148 or may contact the individual identified in <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> , above, to make arrangements to view copies of the comments. A. <E T="03">Comment from Buffalo District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps):</E> The Corps' Buffalo District commented on Unit NY-62, which is the only unit in the Great Lakes region of New York with a proposed change. They stated that the proposed change is not anticipated to result in any impact to navigation, and they had no other comments. <E T="03">Our Response:</E> We appreciate the assessment that the proposed change is not anticipated to result in any impact to navigation. B. <E T="03">Comment from Jacksonville District, Corps:</E> The Corps' Jacksonville District raised concerns, questions, and recommendations regarding the 5-year review process affecting the six Florida units included in this review. Additionally, the Jacksonville District raised some challenges Corps projects have faced where they assert CBRA is having unintended effects in areas adjacent to CBRS units. However, they did not request any specific boundary changes to the units that are the subject of this review. The issues raised are described below. 1. <E T="03">Comment:</E> The Jacksonville Corps expressed concern that this 5-year review project focused on units most likely to have changed due to significant recent storm events and asked how we select the units to assess in the 5-year review. The Corps asked when the remaining units in Florida will be reviewed, and recommended that additional Florida units be addressed before another 5 years pass. <E T="03">Our Response:</E> We generally prioritize our 5-year review for the CBRS maps based on (a) the age of the current effective maps, (b) the availability of recent high-resolution aerial photography (according to the anticipated U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agriculture Imagery Program acquisition schedule), and (c) where possible, avoiding overlaps of 5-year review projects in States where we also have pending comprehensive map-modernization projects. However, in this instance, we prioritized the review of Florida Units P19 and P19P in 2023 when we became aware of administrative errors affecting these units ( <E T="03">see</E> Summary of Modifications to the CBRS Maps below for additional information). We included four additional Florida units in this review because they are depicted on the same map panels as Units P19 and P19P. We have separate comprehensive remapping projects in process for 35 of the 137 total CBRS units in Florida, and these projects will address minor boundary modifications needed to account for natural changes in the units, as well as significant changes that require public review and adoption by Congress, such as additions and removals. We intend to conduct 5-year reviews by the end of FY 2027 for all the remaining CBRS units that do not have comprehensive remapping projects in process or planned for the near future (including most of the units in Florida). If the Corps believes specific areas need a 5-year review boundary modification to account for natural changes in the location of the feature that boundary is intended to follow, those may be emailed to us for our awareness at any time at <E T="03">cbra@fws.gov.</E> 2. <E T="03">Comment:</E> The Jacksonville Corps asked when the comprehensive remapping process would be initiated to address the misalignments in the CBRS boundaries attributed to imprecise information regarding parcel locations at the time the maps were produced ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> Units P19 and P19P and the boundaries of Cayo Costa State Park). They also asked how we will coordinate input from stakeholders such as the Corps and recommended that this remapping process occur in the near future. <E T="03">Our Response:</E> In the notice published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on November 3, 2023, we identified a need to address (through the comprehensive remapping process) significant misalignments in the locations of the Units P19 and P19P boundaries and the Cayo Costa State Park parcels they were intended to follow. This type of change is outside of the scope of the 5-year review mapping process, which allows only such minor and technical modifications to the boundaries of the units as are necessary solely to reflect changes that have occu ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 23k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━