Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to the City of Hoonah's Cargo Dock Project, Hoonah, Alaska

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[RTID 0648-XE481]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to the City of Hoonah's Cargo Dock Project, Hoonah, Alaska</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice; proposed incidental harassment authorization; request for comments on proposed authorization and possible renewal. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS has received a request from the City of Hoonah (Hoonah) for authorization to take marine mammals incidental to pile driving and removal activities associated with the Hoonah Cargo Dock project in Hoonah, Alaska. Pursuant to the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), NMFS is requesting comments on its proposal to issue an incidental harassment authorization (IHA) to incidentally take marine mammals during the specified activities. NMFS is also requesting comments on a possible one-time, 1-year renewal that could be issued under certain circumstances and if all requirements are met. NMFS will consider public comments prior to making any final decision on the issuance of the requested MMPA authorization and agency responses will be summarized in the final notice of our decision. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments and information must be received no later than February 6, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments should be addressed to Jolie Harrison, Chief, Permits and Conservation Division, Office of Protected Resources, National Marine Fisheries Service and should be submitted via email to <E T="03">ITP.wachtendonk@noaa.gov.</E> Electronic copies of the application and supporting documents, 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/national/marine-mammal-protection/incidental-take-authorizations-construction-activities.</E> In case of problems accessing these documents, please call the contact listed below. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> NMFS is not responsible for comments sent by any other method, to any other address or individual, or received after the end of the comment period. Comments, including all attachments, must not exceed a 25-megabyte file size. All comments received are a part of the public record and will generally be posted online at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/permit/incidental-take-authorizations-under-marine-mammal-protection-act</E> without change. All personal identifying information ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> name, address) voluntarily submitted by the commenter may be publicly accessible. Do not submit confidential business information or otherwise sensitive or protected information. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Rachel Wachtendonk, 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 proposed or, if the taking is limited to harassment, a notice of a proposed IHA is provided to the public for review. 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 the species or stocks for taking for certain subsistence uses (referred to in shorthand as “mitigation”); and requirements pertaining to the monitoring and reporting of the takings. The definitions of all applicable MMPA statutory terms used above are included in the relevant sections below and can be found in section 3 of the MMPA (16 U.S.C. 1362) and NMFS regulations at 50 CFR 216.103. <HD SOURCE="HD1">National Environmental Policy Act</HD> To comply with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA; 42 U.S.C. 4321 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) and NOAA Administrative Order (NAO) 216-6A, NMFS must review our proposed action ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> the issuance of an IHA) with respect to potential impacts on the human environment. This action is consistent with categories of activities identified in Categorical Exclusion B4 (IHAs with no anticipated serious injury or mortality) of the Companion Manual for NAO 216-6A, which do not individually or cumulatively have the potential for significant impacts on the quality of the human environment and for which we have not identified any extraordinary circumstances that would preclude this categorical exclusion. Accordingly, NMFS has preliminarily determined that the issuance of the proposed IHA qualifies to be categorically excluded from further NEPA review. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of Request</HD> May 10, 2024, NMFS received a request from Hoonah for an IHA to take marine mammals incidental to pile driving and removal activities associated with the Hoonah Cargo Dock project in Hoonah, Alaska. Following NMFS' review of the application, Hoonah submitted a revised versions on September 10, 2024 and October 15, 2024. The application was deemed adequate and complete on October 22, 2024. Hoonah's request is for take of 8 species of marine mammals by Level B harassment and, for a subset of these species, Level A harassment. Neither Hoonah nor NMFS expect serious injury or mortality to result from this activity and, therefore, an IHA is appropriate. NMFS previously issued an IHA to Hoonah for the Hoonah Cargo Dock project (86 FR 27410, May 20, 2021), and later changed the effective dates of the IHA in a re-issuance (87 FR 27571, May 9, 2022). However, due to COVID and inflation no work under the IHA was conducted. Since then, Hoonah has made several changes to their project plan and, therefore, a new IHA is appropriate. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Description of Proposed Activity</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Overview</HD> Hoonah is proposing to install a cargo dock at the Hoonah Marine Industrial Center (HMIC) in Hoonah, Alaska (figure 1). The purpose of this project is to install a dock that will enable barges to land, unload, and load during all tidal conditions and seasons. The project is needed to allow for the safe, reliable, and economical transport of freight to and from Hoonah, which is only accessible by air and sea. The construction of the sheet pile cargo dock, barge ramp, and breasting dolphins will require impact and vibratory pile installation and down-the-hole (DTH) drilling (referred to as tension anchoring). Sounds resulting from pile driving, pile removal, and tension anchoring 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. Underwater sound would be constrained to Port Fredrick and would be truncated by land masses in the inlet. Construction activities would start in September 2025 and last 5 months. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Dates and Duration</HD> The proposed IHA would be effective from September 1, 2025 through August 31, 2026. Vibratory and impact pile driving and tension anchoring are expected to start in September 2025 and take 107 days over a span of 5 months. All pile driving and removal would be completed during daylight hours. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Specific Geographic Region</HD> The project would take place at the HMIC in Hoonah, Alaska, which is located within Port Fredrick on Icy Strait. The proposed dock would be constructed at an existing barge ramp, adjacent to the Hoonah ferry terminal and tank farm. <GPH SPAN="3" DEEP="279"> <GID>EN07JA25.050</GID> </GPH> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Detailed Description of the Specified Activity</HD> The construction of the sheet pile cargo dock, barge ramp, and breasting dolphins will include the installation of 542 (330 linear feet (ft), or 100.6 linear meters (m)) steel sheet piles, 5 steel wye piles, 1 steel X pile, 3 20-inch (in), or 0.51-m steel fender piles, 2 16-in (0.41 m) fender piles, 7 H-piles, 4 36-in (0.91 m) steel pipe piles, and 6 36-in (0.91 m) steel batter piles. The installation and removal of 50 temporary 24-in (0.61 m) steel pipe piles will be completed to support the permanent pile installation. Piles will be installed with vibratory and impact hammers, and temporary piles will be removed with a vibratory hammer. 8-to-10-in (0.20 to 0.25 m) steel pipe casings will be placed in each steel pipe/batter piles as tension anchors and set with tension anchoring. Table 1 provides a summary of the pile driving activities. <GPOTABLE COLS="6" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s25,r75,8,r25,7,5"> <TTITLE>Table 1—Number and Type of Piles To Be Installed and Removed</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Activity</CHED> <CHED H="1">Pile type and size</CHED> <CHED H="1">Number of piles</CHED> <CHED H="1">Method</CHED> <CHED H="1">Piles per day</CHED> <CHED H="1">Total days</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Installation</ENT> <ENT>24-in temporary steel pipe pile</ENT> <ENT>50</ENT> <ENT>Vibrat ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 141k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━