Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to U.S. Coast Guard Construction in Florence, Oregon

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[RTID 0648-XE614]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to U.S. Coast Guard Construction in Florence, Oregon</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 United States Coast Guard (USCG) for authorization to take marine mammals incidental to the Station Siuslaw River construction project in Florence, Oregon. 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, as described in Request for Public Comments at the end of this notice. 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 20, 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.harlacher@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> 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 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> On October 26, 2023, NMFS received a request from the USCG for an IHA to take marine mammals incidental to pile driving activity associated with the Station Siuslaw River construction project in Florence, Oregon. Following NMFS' review of the application, we received a revised version of the application on April 18, 2024. After finalizing construction details, the USCG submitted revised versions on July 16, 2024 and October 16, 2024, followed by a final revised version on November 18, 2024, which was deemed adequate and complete on December 5, 2024. USCG's request is for take of harbor seal, California sea lion, Steller sea lion, and harbor porpoise by Level B harassment, and for harbor seal and harbor porpoise, Level A harassment. Neither USCG nor NMFS expect serious injury or mortality to result from this activity and, therefore, an IHA is appropriate. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Description of Proposed Activity</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Overview</HD> The USCG requested an IHA to correct shoreline erosion and replace the covered mooring and appurtenant structures at USCG Station Siuslaw River in Florence, Oregon (Figure 1). This two-phased project entails both onshore and in-water construction activities including site preparation, demolition, shoreline stabilization measures, pile removal and installation, and overwater construction. Phase 1 includes onshore infrastructure improvements, sitework and shoreline stabilization, and phase 2 includes overwater and in-water construction including all pile install and removal. The only part of the project that may result in Level A and Level B harassment, and further analyzed in this notice, are the in-water construction activities associated with vibratory and impact pile driving (Phase 2). The USCG proposes removal of 71 timber piles via vibratory driving and installation of 79 total piles via vibratory and impact driving with an estimated 48 total days of pile removal and install. USCG plans to install 16-inch (in) to 20-in steel pipe piles, and/or 14-in H-piles for their new infrastructure. Pile driving would only occur within the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) approved in-water work window; however the proposed IHA would have a 1-year period of effectiveness. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Dates and Duration</HD> The IHA would be valid from November 1, 2025 to October 31, 2026; however, pile driving would only occur on approximately 48 days during the ODFW in-water work window from November 1, 2025 to February 29, 2026. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Specific Geographic Region</HD> The project location is on the east river bank of the Siuslaw River, approximately 5 kilometers (km) northwest of the downtown waterfront of the City of Florence, Oregon (Figure 1). Vegetated dunes in the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area, protected by a series of four rock groin structures, are located on the opposite bank of the Station Siuslaw River. <GPH SPAN="3" DEEP="560"> <GID>EN21JA25.226</GID> </GPH> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Detailed Description of the Specified Activity</HD> Equipment and most materials needed to perform onshore infrastructure improvements, sitework, and shoreline stabilization would be from a barge or similar floating work platform which would also serve as the primary staging area. The overall project includes landslide improvements, waterside improvements, in-water construction, over-water construction, and upland construction. Phase 1, which would occur on approximately 48 days, includes only onshore infrastructure improvements, sitework, and shoreline stabilization. All of these activities would occur on land, and there are no haul-outs in the project's immediate vicinity; therefore we don't expect take incidental to these activities, and they are not discussed further. This IHA only covers in-water construction associated with pile installation and removal activities that could result in take of marine mammals. Piles would be removed and installed during the in-water work window from November 1, 2025 through February 28, 2026, using vibratory and impact hammers. USCG estimates up to three piles would be driven each 8 hour w ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 129k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━