Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to U.S. Coast Guard Base Kodiak Homeporting Facility in Kodiak, Alaska

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[RTID 0648-XE174]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to U.S. Coast Guard Base Kodiak Homeporting Facility in Kodiak, 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 authorizations; request for comments on proposed authorization and possible renewal. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS has received a request from the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) for authorization to take marine mammals incidental to 2 years of construction activities associated with the Base Kodiak Homeporting Facility project in Womens Bay, Kodiak Alaska. Pursuant to the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), NMFS is requesting comments on its proposal to issue two consecutive 1-year incidental harassment authorizations (IHAs) 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 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 and should be submitted via email to <E T="03">ITP.Fleming@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> 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 cited 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 two consecutive IHAs) 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 IHAs 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 request for two consecutive IHAs. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of Request</HD> On April 8, 2024, NMFS received a request from the USCG for two consecutive IHAs to take marine mammals incidental to construction associated with the USCG's Base Kodiak Homeport Facility project in Womens Bay in Kodiak, Alaska. Following NMFS' review of the application and associated discussions, the USCG submitted a revised version on June 14, 2024, July 17, 2024, and November 28, 2024. The application was deemed adequate and complete on December 7, 2024. The USCG's request is for take of 12 species of marine mammals, by Level B harassment and, for Dall's porpoise, harbor porpoise, harbor seal, northern elephant seal, Steller sea lion, and northern fur seal, Level A harassment. Neither the USCG nor NMFS expect serious injury or mortality to result from this activity and, therefore, IHAs are appropriate. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Description of Proposed Activity</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Overview</HD> The USCG plans to upgrade waterfront facilities to construct a homeport facility for two Fast Response Cutters and two Offshore Patrol Cutters at Base Kodiak, in Womens Bay, Kodiak, Alaska. The facility will also provide berthing and supporting infrastructure for temporary homeporting (up to 5 years) and long-term major maintenance of an additional Fast Response Cutter to be homeported in Seward, Alaska. The activities that have the potential to take marine mammals by Level A and Level B harassment include removal and installation of timber, concrete, and steel piles by vibratory or impact pile driving and down the hole (DTH) drilling. A total of 340 in-water construction days are planned across 2 years. The first year of construction activities would begin May 19, 2025 and continue through May 18, 2026, and the second year of construction activities would begin May 19, 2026 and continue through May 18, 2027. The USCG has requested the issuance of two consecutive IHAs in association with the two project years. Given the similarities in activities between project years, NMFS is issuing a single <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notice to solicit public comments on the issuance of the two similar, but separate, IHAs. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Dates and Duration</HD> The USCG anticipates that the project will take place over 2 years. The Year 1 IHA would be effective from May 19, 2025 through May 18, 2026, and the Year 2 IHA would be effective from May 19, 2026 through May 18, 2027. The specified activities would occur any time during each project year, for 7-14 hours each day, depending on time of year, during daylight hours only. A total of 264 days of in-water work are planned in Year 1 and 76 construction days of in-water work are planned in year 2. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Specific Geographic Region</HD> Coast Guard Base Kodiak is located on Womens Bay, a largely enclosed arm of the larger Chiniak Bay on the northeast side of Kodiak Island, Alaska's largest island. Womens Bay is separated from the rest of Chiniak Bay by Nyman Peninsula providing a protected harbor for Coast Guard vessels. Womens Bay is approximately 3.5 miles (mi) (5.6 kilometers (km)) long and water depths range from 0 to 100 ft (31 meters (m)). Near the planned activities, Womens Bay is approximately 1,700 feet (ft) (519 m) wide and 30 ft (9 m) deep. The shores of Womens Bay are relatively undeveloped; only the most inner portion of Womens Bay, which includes Base Kodiak and several other industries, have significant existing shoreline development. The peninsula and the inner shore host several waterfront and industrial uses that support current mission-related USCG operations, including the operational fuel pier and Cargo Wharf. The Cargo Wharf provides berthing for Base Kodiak cutters and visiting vessels and is where project activities are planned. <GPH SPAN="3" DEEP="537"> <GID>EN14MR25.000</GID> </GPH> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Detailed Description of th ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 195k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━