Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to Eareckson Air Station Fuel Pier Repair in Alcan Harbor on Shemya Island, Alaska

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[RTID 0648-XE472]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to Eareckson Air Station Fuel Pier Repair in Alcan Harbor on Shemya Island, 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 issuance of an incidental harassment authorization; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS has received a request from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) on behalf of the United States Air Force Pacific Air Forces Regional Support Center (USAF) for an incidental harassment authorization (IHA) that is nearly identical to an IHA previously issued to USAF authorizing the take of marine mammals, by Level A and Level B harassment, incidental to the Eareckson Air Station (EAS) Fuel Pier Repair project in Alcan Harbor on Shemya Island, Alaska. Pursuant to the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), NMFS is requesting comments on its proposal to issue an IHA to incidentally take marine mammals during the Eareckson Fuel Pier Repair project. NMFS is also requesting comments on a possible 1-year renewal IHA 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 authorizations and agency responses will be summarized in the final notice of our decision. The IHA would be valid for one year from the effective date. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments and information must be received no later than April 14, 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. Written comments should be submitted via email to <E T="03">ITP.Fleming@noaa.gov.</E> Electronic copies of the original application 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. <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> Kate Fleming, 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. We will review all comments submitted in response to this notice prior to concluding our NEPA process or making a final decision on the IHA request. <HD SOURCE="HD1">History of Request</HD> On May 15, 2023, NMFS received an application from USACE on behalf of USAF for an IHA to take marine mammals incidental to construction associated with the EAS Fuel Pier repair in Alcan Harbor on Shemya Island, Alaska. NMFS published a notice of a proposed IHA and request for comments in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on October 10, 2023 (88 FR 74451). On March 5, 2024, NMFS issued an IHA that was effective from April 1, 2024 through March 31, 2025 (89 FR 17423, March 11, 2024). In-water work associated with the project was expected to be completed between April and October 2024. On September 23, 2024, USAF informed NMFS that work on the project had experienced significant delays due to piling production delays and weather and would not be completed during the 2024 IHA time period USAF completed a portion of the construction work that was covered by the 2024 IHA and submitted a monitoring report demonstrating that the required mitigation and monitoring requirements were satisfied, no impacts of a scale or nature not previously analyzed or authorized occurred as a result of the activities conducted, and the IHA holder did not exceed the authorized levels of take under that IHA. On September 23, 2024, NMFS received a letter from USAF requesting renewal of the 2024 IHA (2024 request) to conduct nearly identical construction activities that were previously analyzed under the 2024 IHA. On May 3, 2024, NMFS published (89 FR 36762) and solicited public comment on its draft updated Technical Guidance for Assessing the Effects of Anthropogenic Sound on Marine Mammal Hearing Underwater and In-Air Criteria for Onset of Auditory Injury and Temporary Threshold Shifts (Version 3.0) (2024 Technical Guidance), which includes updated thresholds and weighting functions to inform auditory injury (AUD INJ) estimates. The public comment period ended on June 17th, 2024, and the 2024 Technical Guidance was finalized on October 24, 2024. While USAF's planned activity would ordinarily qualify for a renewal of the IHA, NMFS determined that a renewal of the 2024 IHA is not appropriate in this case because application of the updated Guidance indicates that substantial modification of the prescribed shutdown zones and updates to authorized take numbers for certain species is appropriate. On December 16, 2024, USAF revised their request to indicate that all work completed during the 2024 season would need to be redone, due to shifting sediments and improperly functioning piles. As such, the same work analyzed under the 2024 IHA is planned for the current IHA, across the same number of construction days. This includes the (1) installation of 208 42-inch round steel interlocking pipe piles (2) the installation of 60 30-inch steel template piles and, (3) the removal of 64 30-inch steel template piles, which includes the removal of 4 additional piles that were installed under the 2024 IHA. Additionally, USAF also requested to reduce the size of the shutdown zones established for low-frequency cetaceans due to practicability concerns associated with excessive fog. Under this proposed IHA, USAF would conduct pile driving activities between the in water work window dates of April 2025 through October 2025. The proposed activities are nearly identical to those analyzed under the 2024 IHA, but the mitigation zones and number of authorized takes have been adjusted to account for the isopleths calculated using the 2024 Technical Guidance and the request to adjust the shutdown zone for low frequency cetaceans. The USAF request was d ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 74k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━