Safety Zone; Cable Laying Corridor, Atlantic Ocean, Virginia Beach, Virginia

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY <SUBAGY>Coast Guard</SUBAGY> <CFR>33 CFR Part 165</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket Number USCG-2024-1093]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1625-AA00</RIN> <SUBJECT>Safety Zone; Cable Laying Corridor, Atlantic Ocean, Virginia Beach, Virginia</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Coast Guard, DHS. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Temporary final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Coast Guard is establishing a temporary, moving safety zone to surround nearshore operations conducted by a cable laying barge. This action is necessary to provide for the safety of life on these navigable waters near Virginia Beach, Virginia. Cable lay and burial operations will create navigational hazards moving along a corridor from shore extending seaward 12 NM. This rulemaking will prohibit persons and vessels from entering the safety zone unless authorized by the Captain of the Port, Sector Virginia or a designated representative. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective without actual notice from April 21, 2025 through March 1, 2026. For the purposes of enforcement, actual notice will be used from March 2, 2025, until April 21, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> To view documents mentioned in this preamble as being available in the docket, go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> type USCG-2024-1093 in the search box and click “Search.” Next, in the Document Type column, select “Supporting & Related Material.” <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> If you have questions about this rulemaking, call or email LCDR Justin Strassfield, Sector Virginia, Waterways Management Division, U.S. Coast Guard, Telephone: (571) 608-2969; or <E T="03">virginiawaterways@uscg.mil</E> . </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Table of Abbreviations</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">BOEM Bureau of Ocean Energy Management</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">CLB Cable Lay/Layer Barge</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">CFR Code of Federal Regulations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">COTP Captain of the Port</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">DHS Department of Homeland Security</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">FR Federal Register</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">NEPA National Environmental Policy Act of 1969</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">NM Nautical Miles</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">ROD Record of Decision</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">§ Section </FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">U.S.C. United States Code</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background Information and Regulatory History</HD> On January 28, 2024, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) approved the Construction and Operations Plan for the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind—Commercial (CVOW-C) Project. As explained in the Record of Decision (ROD)  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> for the project, the action consists of the construction, operation, maintenance, and eventual decommissioning of a wind energy facility consisting of up to 202 wind turbine generators and three offshore substations in Lease Area OCS-A 0483 <E T="03">and associated export cables located offshore Virginia.</E> In December 2023, Dominion Energy notified the Coast Guard that it would begin construction of the generators and substations, and the Coast Guard issued a temporary final rule establishing a safety zone around the construction areas on March 26, 2024 (89 FR 20851). On December 3, 2024, Dominion Energy notified the Coast Guard that it planned to begin the cable laying portion of the project in January 2025 and Dominion Energy requested that the Coast Guard establish a moving safety zone to limit access to areas surrounding the cable laying operations, to be conducted by the CLB (cable layer barge) ULISSE. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  BOEM announced the availability of the ROD at 88 FR 75624 (Nov. 3, 2023). The ROD is available online, at <E T="03">https://www.boem.gov/sites/default/files/documents/renewable-energy/state-activities/CVOW-C-ROD.pdf</E> . </FTNT> To address stability requirements for the cable laying and burial process, the CLB uses multipoint anchorage configurations which are highly dynamic and which create large, unseen hazards to navigation. To mitigate these hazards, someone familiar with the CLB's current anchoring positions must determine if there are safe transit corridors within 1000 yards of the CLB to allow a vessel to transit, or if a transiting vessel must avoid the full 1000 yards radius of the safety zone. The Sector Virginia Captain of the Port (COTP) therefore determined that the hazards associated with anchorage arrangements warranted action by the Coast Guard, and the Coast Guard published a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) titled “Safety Zone; Cable Laying Corridor, Atlantic Ocean, Virginia Beach, Virginia” on Jan 15, 2025 (90 FR 3729). During the comment period that ended Jan 29, 2025, we received one submission. Under 5 U.S.C. 553(d)(3), the Coast Guard finds that good cause exists for making this rule effective less than 30 days after publication in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . Delaying the effective date of this rule would be impracticable because action is needed to protect personnel, and vessels in the navigable waters within the moving safety zone while cable laying operations conducted by the CLB ULISSE are underway. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Legal Authority and Need for Rule</HD> The Coast Guard is issuing this rule under the authority in 46 U.S.C. 70034. As explained in section II, above, the anchorage configurations used to support the cable laying and burial operations are highly dynamic and create large, unseen hazards to navigation. A safety zone is needed to allow a designated representative, in communication with the anchor-handling vessels, to determine if safe transit corridors exist, whether to allow transit through the safety zone, and to communicate these hazards and possible safe transit corridors, thereby allowing the Coast Guard to minimize the burden on non-project vessels seeking to transit safely through or around the safety zone. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Discussion of Comments, Changes, and the Rule</HD> As noted above, we received one submission. The commenter raised both environmental concerns associated with the underlying cable laying action and concerns associated with the potential effect of the proposed safety zone on navigation and commercial fishing. He requested a reduction both in the size of the safety zone and in its duration. He also requested that there be an environmental assessment or environmental impact statement, in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA). The establishment of the safety zone, however, is independent of authorization to conduct the underlying cable laying operations, and the environmental issues the commenter raises are therefore outside the scope of this rulemaking. The commenter may wish to direct his environmental concerns to BOEM, which, as noted in a footnote in the background section. We will, however, address the commenter's recommendations relating to the impact of the safety zone on navigation and on commercial fishing operations. To address his commercial fishing and navigation concerns, the commenter recommended that the Coast Guard: • Reduce the safety zone to 500 yards, which, the commenter says, would still provide a buffer around the cable-laying barge while mitigating undue restrictions on fishing vessels; • Designate safe (static) transit corridors through the affected area, allowing vessels to navigate safely without needing COTP permission for every transit; • Implement time-of-year restrictions that avoid peak spawning and migration periods for blue crabs and finfish species. The commenter may wish to direct his environmental concerns to BOEM, which, as noted in a footnote in the background section, evaluated the environmental effects of the CVOW-C project in a ROD announced November 3, 2023. The Coast Guard weighed designation of the safety zone and possible alternatives, including reducing the size of the zone, or not designating any safety zone at all, against the Coast Guard's interest in mitigating navigational risk associated with the hazards created by the required anchoring arrangements. We have explained above, the reason the Coast Guard concluded there is a need to have a safety zone, and the reason we cannot designate a static safety zone which would not require vessels to obtain permission for every transit. Here, we explain why reducing the size of the safety zone was not considered a workable solution. The anchor lines required for proper operation of the CLB ULISSE can at times extend up to 3280 feet from the barge. In addition, the barge will continue to operate 24 hours a day in sea States that might present visibility challenges for mariners attempting to recognize the location of these lines and to assess the draft allowances the lines would allow for vessels to safely cross over them, if that is even possible, given the tension on the line and the depth of the water. While reducing the size of the safety zone is not a viable alternative, we note that the area within which the safety zone will move is limited. The operational boundaries described in this rule, which extend up to 12 miles from shore, identify a corridor within which the CLB ULLISE is expected to place anchors, and at no time will operations impact more than 20% of the waters in the corridor. As this rule describes mitigations to the risks identified by anchors, the size of the moving zone being reduced to significantly smaller than the size of the possible anchorage arrangement, was not considered a workable alternative. Implementing time of year restrictions on the cable laying operations is beyond the scope of the Coast Guard's authorities. As we explain above, the Coast Guard is not the agency charged with ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 22k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━