Virginia-Waters of the Northern Neck Peninsula Vessel Sewage No-Discharge Zone; Tentative Affirmative Determination

<NOTICE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <DEPDOC>[EPA-R03-OW-2025-2004; FRL-12999-01-R3]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Virginia—Waters of the Northern Neck Peninsula Vessel Sewage No-Discharge Zone; Tentative Affirmative Determination</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of tentative determination. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> Pursuant to the Clean Water Act, the Commonwealth of Virginia has determined that the protection and enhancement of the quality of the waters of the Northern Neck peninsula require greater environmental protection. As such, Virginia has submitted an application to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA or Agency), Region 3, for a determination that adequate facilities for the safe and sanitary removal and treatment of sewage from all vessels are reasonably available, so that Virginia may completely prohibit the discharge from all vessels of any sewage, whether treated or not, into such waters. The proposed no-discharge zone includes waters in the counties of Richmond, Lancaster, Northumberland, and Westmoreland. Through this notice, the EPA is soliciting public comment on the Agency's tentative determination that adequate facilities for the safe and sanitary removal and treatment of sewage from all vessels are reasonably available for the waters subject to the proposed no-discharge zone. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before January 7, 2026. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R03-OW-2025-2004, at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> The EPA may publish any comment received to its public docket. Do not submit electronically any information you consider to be Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Multimedia submissions (audio, video, etc.) must be accompanied by a written comment. The written comment is considered the official comment and should include discussion of all points you wish to make. The EPA will generally not consider comments or comment contents located outside of the primary submission ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> on the web, cloud, or other file sharing system). For additional submission methods, the full EPA public comment policy, information about CBI or multimedia submissions, and general guidance on making effective comments, please visit <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets/</E> commenting-epa-dockets. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Byron Riggins, Wetlands Branch, Water Division (3WD10), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 3, Four Penn Center, 1600 John F Kennedy Blvd, Philadelphia, PA 19103-2852; telephone number: (215) 814-5146; email address: <E T="03">riggins.byron@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> Notice is hereby given that the Commonwealth of Virginia has submitted an application to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 3, for a determination under Clean Water Act section 312(f)(3) that adequate facilities for the safe and sanitary removal and treatment of sewage from all vessels are reasonably available for the waters within the Northern Neck peninsula, including waters in Richmond, Lancaster, Northumberland, and Westmoreland Counties (hereafter, “the Northern Neck”). The EPA's role under Clean Water Act section 312(f)(3) is to review state applications to determine whether adequate pump-out and treatment facilities are reasonably available. Applications submitted pursuant to section 312(f)(3) must include specific information, as outlined in EPA's implementing regulations found at 40 CFR 140.4(a), related to the need for a complete prohibition of vessel sewage discharges, the location and operational details of available pump-out facilities, and the vessel population and usage of the proposed waters. Virginia's application is available electronically in Docket ID No. EPA-R03-OW-2025-2004 through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> After consideration of all comments received, if the EPA makes a final determination that adequate facilities for the safe and sanitary removal and treatment of sewage from all vessels are reasonably available for the Northern Neck, Virginia may completely prohibit the discharge from all vessels of any sewage, whether treated or not, into those waters through designation of a vessel sewage no-discharge zone. Vessels with installed toilets are required to operate U.S. Coast Guard-approved marine sanitation devices (MSDs). MSDs are either flow-through systems—Type I or Type II MSDs—that treat sewage before discharging to surrounding waters or holding tanks—Type III MSDs—that retain sewage onboard. Upon designation of a vessel sewage no-discharge zone, vessels with flow-through systems that operate within the zone's boundaries would need to retrofit to holding tanks to prevent any overboard discharge. These vessels' holding tanks would then need to be pumped out at available facilities. In lieu of retrofitting, vessel operators may instead comply with U.S. Coast Guard regulations found at 33 CFR 159.7(b) that specify the acceptable methods of securing a flow-through MSD to demonstrate compliance with a no-discharge zone. The EPA must determine whether adequate facilities are reasonably available to those vessels that would require access to pump-out facilities to support the designation of a no-discharge zone. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Application Information</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Proposed Waters and Certification of Need</HD> As described in its application, the Commonwealth of Virginia has determined that the protection and enhancement of the quality of the waters of the Northern Neck require greater environmental protection than is afforded by the applicable Federal standard. The proposed no-discharge zone encompasses various waterbodies in the rural watersheds of Virginia's Coastal Plain, specifically on the Northern Neck peninsula, in the counties of Richmond, Lancaster, Northumberland, and Westmoreland. All subject waters are tidal and drain directly into the Chesapeake Bay or indirectly via the Rappahannock or Potomac Rivers. The following waterbodies are included in the proposed no-discharge zone: Rosier Creek, Mattox Creek and Monroe Bay, Nomini Creek and Currioman Bay, Lower Machodoc Creek, Ragged Point, Gardner Creek, Jackson Creek, Bonum Creek, Yeocomico River, Judith Sound, Coan River and the Glebe, Cod Creek, Little Wicomico River, Great Wicomico River and Ingram Bay, Cloverdale Creek, Dividing Creek, Indian Creek, Dymer Creek, Tabbs Creek, Antipoison Creek, Windmill Point Resort, Little Oyster and Windmill Point Creek, Mosquito Creek, Carter Creek, Corrotoman River, Greenvale Creek, Deep Creek, Mulberry Creek, Lancaster Creek (including Morattico Creek), and Farnham Creek. Additional details on the geographic extent of the proposed waters, including maps and the geographic coordinates of the water bodies' boundaries, are provided in Virginia's application, which is available in the docket. The waters of the Northern Neck have extensive shellfish harvest and aquaculture acreage, including five of the top 20 aquaculture sites in Virginia. Additionally, these waters are important for recreational activities like boating, fishing, and swimming. However, many of these waters are poorly flushed and lack environmentally important submerged aquatic vegetation. The shellfish growing areas have also been compromised by bacterial impairment, resulting in non-attainment of water quality standards. More specifically, each of the waterbodies included in the proposed no-discharge zone contain areas with current or recent shellfish harvest closures or restrictions. In its application, Virginia indicates that the designation of a no-discharge zone would complement other water quality improvement programs underway in Virginia, such as the establishment of best management practices and Total Maximum Daily Loads, by addressing pollutant loadings from vessels. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Adequacy and Availability of Pump-out Facilities</HD> The EPA's analysis of the reasonable availability of adequate facilities considers the number of recreational and commercial vessels that use the proposed waters on both a regular and transient basis. To estimate the number of vessels operating in the proposed waters, Virginia queried datasets maintained by the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR) and the United States Coast Guard (USCG) and determined that there are approximately 11,000 vessels that may be using the proposed waters. Because duplicates are expected across the two datasets, this is likely an overestimate of the vessel population. About 9,658 of these vessels are used for recreational purposes. This vessel count is limited to those vessels that are 16 feet in length or greater under the assumption that smaller vessels would not have an installed toilet onboard. Recreational vessel traffic is seasonal, largely occurring between April and November, with little traffic during the winter season. Using a similar approach to the one described in the state of Maryland's application to the EPA to designate certain waters in Anne Arundel County as a no-discharge zone, Virginia also estimated that there are about 892 transient vessels. Virginia reasons that vessel traffic patterns may be similar since they are neighboring states on the Chesapeake Bay but notes that the Northern Neck likely experiences significantly less transient traffic as it is a less developed area. Like the resident recreational vessel traffic, transie ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 30k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━