[Federal Register Volume 75, Number 14 (Friday, January 22, 2010)]
[Notices]
[Pages 3706-3709]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2010-1201]
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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
RIN 0648-XT64
Intent to Prepare a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement
on the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council's Restoration Efforts
AGENCY: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), U.S.
Department of Commerce.
ACTION: Notice of intent to prepare a supplemental environmental impact
statement; request for comments.
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SUMMARY: NOAA, as a member of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee
Council (Council), announces the intent of the Council to prepare a
supplement to the existing environmental impact statement (EIS) on the
Council's restoration efforts, in accordance with the National
Environmental Policy Act of 1969, (NEPA). This supplemental EIS (SEIS)
is necessary to respond to significant new circumstances bearing on the
Council's restoration efforts as assessed in the original EIS.
Specifically, as the restoration funds remaining from the Exxon Valdez
settlement diminish, the Council seeks a more discrete and efficient
funding mechanism by which to direct the remaining funds. The SEIS
would assess the environmental impacts of the Council's proposal to
narrow and refine the scope of the Council's restoration efforts to
five defined restoration categories: herring; lingering oil; long-term
monitoring of marine conditions; harbor protection and marine
restoration; and habitat acquisition and protection. Cooperating
agencies are the Alaska Departments of Law, Environmental Conservation,
and Fish and Game, and the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of
Agriculture, Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of the Interior.
DATES: Written comments on the intent to prepare and the scope of a
SEIS will be accepted on or before April 1, 2010. A draft SEIS will be
released for public comment by spring 2010. Specific dates and times
for future events will be publicized on the EVOSTC website, http://www.evostc.state.ak.us, when scheduled.
ADDRESSES: Written comments on suggested alternatives and potential
impacts should be sent to Laurel Jennings, Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
Trustee Council, 441 West 5th Avenue, Suite 500, Anchorage, AK 99501.
Emailed comments will be received at [email protected].
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Laurel Jennings (888.654.EVOS).
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
Background
In 1992, the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council was formed by
six trustees, three State of Alaska trustees and three federal
trustees, to oversee restoration of the natural resources and ecosystem
damaged by the 1989 oil spill. The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee
Council was funded by settlement of civil claims brought against Exxon
Companies by the State of Alaska and the United States. The Council
initiated an extensive public process to begin the work of restoration
using these joint trust funds and, in 1994, adopted a Restoration Plan
to guide restoration through research and monitoring, habitat
protection and general restoration. The Restoration Plan also
established a Restoration Reserve recognizing that recovery from the
spill would not occur for decades.
As part of this effort, the Council also adopted an official list
of resources and services injured by the spill. When the 1994 Plan was
drafted, the distinction between the effects of the spill and those of
other natural or human-caused stressors on injured resources or
services was not clearly understood. Through the hundreds of studies
conducted over the last twenty years, the Council has come to recognize
that ecosystem restoration is not easily addressed. The interactions
between a changing environment and the injured resources and services
are only beginning to be understood, and, as time passes, the ability
to distinguish the effects of the oil from other factors affecting fish
and wildlife populations becomes more difficult. These complexities and
the difficulties in measuring the continuing impacts from the spill
result in some inherent
[[Page 3707]]
uncertainty in defining the status of a resource or service through a
specific list.
The 1994 Plan also outlined an ecosystem approach to restoration, a
more integrated view that has become increasingly recognized as
essential. Even before the Plan was final, the Council began efforts to
better understand the marine ecosystem. This approach has provided and
continues to provide an abundance of information on fish, marine birds,
and mammals.
Meetings Times and Dates
Preliminary public scoping meetings are scheduled as follows;
updates or changes to the meeting times or dates, due to weather or
other factors, can be found at http://www.evostc.state.ak.us:
1. February 16, 2010 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the Alaska Islands
and Oceans Visitor Center, 95 Sterling Highway, Homer, AK 99603.
2. February 17, 2010 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at Dena[acute]ina
Civic & Convention Center, 600 West Seventh Avenue, Anchorage, AK
99501.
3. February 18, 2010 from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at the Cordova Public
Library, 622 First Street, Cordova, AK 99574.
4. March 16, 2010 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the K.M. Rae Building,
125 Third Avenue, Seward, AK 99664.
5. March 17, 2010 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the Valdez City
Council Chambers, 206 Pioneer Drive, Valdez, AK 99686.
6. March 18, 2010 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the Kodiak Refuge
Visitor Center, 402 Center Street, Kodiak AK 99615.
Proposed Action
Of the approximately $780 million of joint trust funds initially
funding the Council, over $180 million has been used for research,
monitoring and general restoration and over $375 million has funded
habitat protection. Council annual program development, implementation
and administration have cost over $45 million dollars. Approximately
$76 million remains available for research, monitoring and general
restoration and $24 million remains available for habitat acquisition
and protection. Recognizing that funding for future restoration is
limited and that it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish
between spill impacts and other effects in measuring recovery, the
Council is considering an organized and strategic transition to a
modest program which would focus the remaining funds on a few specific
programs and habitat protection.
Long-term management of species and resources initially injured by
the spill lies with the agencies and entities that have the mandate and
resources to pursue these long-term goals. To support natural
restoration and to enable management consistent with this long-term
restoration, the Council has increasingly directed funds toward
research that provides information that is critical to monitor and
support the healthy functioning of the spill ecosystem.
Building on its past efforts, the Council has identified five areas
of focus for its remaining work: (1) herring; (2) lingering oil; (3)
long-term monitoring of marine conditions; (4) harbor protection and
marine restoration; and (5) habitat acquisition and protection. The
following paragraphs elaborate on the details of each of these proposed
areas of focus.
1. Herring
The Council has classified the Prince William Sound (PWS)
population of Pacific herring (Clupea pallasi) as a resource that has
not recovered from the effects of the 1989 oil spill. The PWS herring
population was increasing prior to 1989 with record harvests reported
just before the spill. The 1989 year class was one of the smallest
cohorts of spawning adults recorded and by 1993 the fishery had
collapsed with only 25% of the expected adults returning to spawn. The
PWS fishery was closed from 1993 to 1996, but reopened in 1997 and
1998, based on an increasing population. Numbers again declined in
1999, and the fishery remains closed today. The 1993 collapse can be
explained by several competing hypothesis; however, data uncertainty
makes it unlikely that the reasons will be known.
The Council recognizes the uncertainty with regard to the role of
the 1989 spill and the current depressed state of the PWS herring
population. However, herring are considered a keystone species in the
marine ecosystem and play a vital role in the food chain of many
injured species. Thus, rebuilding the herring population has the
potential to support the restoration of these injured species. In
addition, supporting a healthy herring population may compensate for
some of the losses in fishing opportunities that resulted from the
spill and its damage to salmon and species other than herring. In April
2006, prompted by public comments about the continuing impacts to
communities and commercial fishermen from herring losses, the Council
convened scientists and researchers, commercial and subsistence
fishermen, and natural resource managers for a herring workshop. One of
the most important outcomes of the workshop was the consensus that a
long-term strategic herring restoration program was needed if viable
herring recovery activities were to be implemented. From 2006 to 2008,
Council representatives met with natural resource managers, commercial
fishers, scientists, the Public Advisory Committee (PAC) and Alaska
Native residents of spill-area communities to gain sufficient input to
draft a cost-efficient, scientifically credible, and coordinated
program. This effort produced the first draft of the Integrated Herring
Restoration Program (IHRP) in December 2008.
The goal of the IHRP is to determine what, if anything, can be done
to successfully restore PWS herring; to determine what steps can be
taken to examine the reasons for the continued decline of herring in
the Sound; to identify and evaluate potential recovery options; and to
recommend a course of action for restoration. The document is currently
being reviewed and updated with new information and will serve as a
general road map for the Council's herring-related funding decisions.
The Council has proposed to fund $20 million for research in this area
over a twenty-year period.
2. Lingering Oil
One of the most surprising revelations from two decades of research
and restoration efforts since the 1989 spill is the persistence of
subsurface oil in a relatively un-weathered state. This oil, estimated
to be around 97.2 metric tons (or 23,000 gallons), is contained in
discontinuous patches across beaches that were initially impacted by
the spill. The patches cannot be visually identified on the beach
surface, but their presence may be a source for continued exposure to
oil of sea otters and birds that seek food in sediments where the oil
persists and remains a concern and a perception of contamination by
subsistence users. The survey work completed to date indicates that the
oil is decreasing at a rate of zero to four percent per year, with only
a five percent chance that the rate is as high as four percent. As a
result, it may persist for decades.
Passive and subsistence uses were significantly impacted by the
spill and this has affected the overall health of the communities in
Prince William Sound. The lingering oil has also impacted the public's
perception of the spill area as the pristine environment that was
present before the spill occurred. This perception has continued to
preclude full recovery for some passive and subsistence uses. It may
require
[[Page 3708]]
additional resources to evaluate, monitor, and redress the impact of
lingering oil on these uses in the spill-area. An important function of
this information gathering would be to pass this information back to
the communities and the general public.
In an effort to address the issue of lingering oil, the governments
developed a restoration plan under the terms of the Reopener provision
in the Consent Decree with Exxon (http://www.evostc.state.ak.us/facts/reopener.cfm). Efforts to date include the development of a spatial
probability model to identify beach segments with a high likelihood of
persistent oil, and investigations of the reasons for the persistence
of oil as a means to consider options that may accelerate the oil
degradation. Under the lingering oil initiative, the Council envisions
completion of the studies underway to reach a decision point on further
efforts for active remediation. Upon receiving additional lingering oil
information from these current lingering oil studies and the resolution
of the Reopener, the Council will evaluate the need for restoration of
related services and thus no prospective funding amount has been
proposed.
3. Long-term Monitoring of Marine Conditions
In the twenty years since the Exxon Valdez oil spill, it has become
apparent that the ocean ecosystem can undergo profound changes and such
changes likely preclude a return to pre-spill conditions. The 1994
Restoration Plan (Plan) recognized that recovery from the spill would
likely take decades. A Restoration Reserve was created from the Plan in
part to provide for long-term observation of injured resources and
services and provide for appropriate restoration actions into the
future. To further this effort, in 1999 the Council also supported the
development of a long-term research and monitoring program.
Long-term monitoring has two components: monitoring the recovery of
resources from the initial injury and monitoring how factors other than
oil may inhibit full recovery or adversely impact recovered resources.
This second type of monitoring collects data on environmental factors
that drive ecosystem-level changes. The information that is produced
from such monitoring may be used to manage individual injured species
and resources. However, such data is increasingly valuable in
illuminating the larger ecosystem shifts that impact and influence a
broad variety of species and resources injured by the spill.
By monitoring these changes, agencies and interested parties may be
able to adjust their own activities and management strategies to adapt
to what may lie ahead and to further support injured resources in these
quickly-shifting marine ecosystems. The Council has a history of
supporting oceanographic monitoring by helping to establish and fund
long-term data collections. In this initiative, the Council envisions
seeking partnerships with scientific entities or consortiums able to
maintain those collections and that can demonstrate an ability to
leverage this support and develop science-based products to inform the
public of changes in the environment and the impacts of these changes
on injured resources and services. The Council proposes to fund this
effort with approximately $25 million, to be spent over a twenty-year
period.
4. Harbor Protection and Marine Restoration
a. Storm Water, Wastewater, and Harbor Projects
Many coastal communities in the spill area have a limited ability
to collect and properly dispose of waste, such as oily bilge water,
used engine oil, paints, solvents, and lead-acid batteries. Improper
disposal of these wastes in landfills adversely affects the quality of
nearby marine waters through runoff and leaching. In some cases, these
wastes are discharged directly into marine waters. Chronic marine
pollution stresses fish and wildlife resources, possibly delaying
recovery of resources injured by the oil spill. For example, with
regard to the worldwide mortality of seabirds, the effects of chronic
marine pollution are believed to be at least as important as those of
large-scale spills.
The Council has approved the funding of several projects to prepare
waste management plans and has contributed to their implementation.
These projects resulted in the acquisition of waste oil management
equipment and the construction of environmental operating stations for
the drop-off of used oil, household hazardous waste and recyclable
solid waste in Cordova, Valdez, Chenega Bay, Tatitlek and Whittier,
Kodiak and lower Cook Inlet. The Council seeks to further reduce
pollution in the marine environment to contribute to the recovery of
injured natural resources or services and is considering funding this
effort with $10 million.
b. Marine Debris Removal
Marine debris is an issue in the marine and near-shore environment
in Alaska, where it is likely that thousands of tons of marine debris
exist within three nautical miles of the Alaska coastline. Marine fish
and wildlife become entangled in and ingest debris from foreign and
domestic sources that may be a day or decades old and that range from
small plastic items to very large fishing nets. Approximately 175
metric tons of debris was collected from Alaska coasts by citizen
cleanup projects in 2007. Marine debris removal projects can result in
an immediate improvement to the coastal habitat.
Coastal communities are effective in marine debris cleanups due to
their intimate knowledge of the locations of debris accumulation. In
addition, when communities participate in marine debris cleanups, they
often alter the common practices that led to marine debris as their
awareness of the effects of the debris on their coastline and the
fisheries upon which they depend increases. Marine debris removal
reduces marine pollution affecting injured resources and services and
thus further supports natural restoration. The Council proposes to fund
marine debris removal with approximately $3 million.
c. Response, Damage Assessment and Restoration Implications
Damage to natural resources occurs not only with an initial oil
spill, but additional damage can also be caused by spill response
efforts. Damage assessment from the 1989 spill has yielded information
that can assist in mitigating damage from spill response activities in
future spills. Skilled damage assessment also quantifies the extent of
injury and allows for the accurate monitoring and measurement of
restoration after a spill. Organizing, preserving, and passing on such
information will help responders and those conducting future damage
assessments. These efforts ensure that restoration efforts are truly
effective. Outreach efforts could include a conference or series of
papers sharing information to be used by future responders, including
natural resource assessment, the long-term costs of high-pressure
washing, use of dispersants in the near-shore, sub-arctic environment,
and the effects of potential burning scenarios. The Council proposes to
fund this effort with $1 million.
5. Habitat Acquisition and Protection
The protection of habitat is an important component of the Exxon
Valdez oil spill restoration program. The
[[Page 3709]]
acquisition of private lands or partial interests in private lands
promotes the natural recovery of spill-injured resources and associated
services by removing the threat posed by additional development
impacts. The program is implemented by state and federal resource
agencies, often in partnership with non-governmental organizations. The
habitat program has protected approximately 650,000 acres of valuable
habitat through a variety of purchases of various property rights,
ranging from fee simple acquisition to conservation and timber
easements. The goals of the habitat protection program remain viable.
Resource and land management agencies, such as the Alaska Department of
Natural Resources, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service, National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service,
continue to receive parcel nominations for Council consideration.
Approximately $24 million remains within the habitat subaccount for
future habitat protection efforts. The Council is considering
alternatives for allocation of these funds. For example, half of the
funds remaining may be allocated to the purchase of large parcels
within a period of two to three years, and the remaining half to a
program spanning a 12-year period focused on the protection of small
parcels less than 1,000 acres or $1 million in price. The Council
proposes to utilize the approximately $24 million remaining to continue
the habitat program. A variety of administrative options, funding
allocations, time frames, and management strategies will be considered.
Public Involvement
Scoping is an early and open process for determining the scope of
issues to be addressed in a SEIS and for identifying if there are
significant environmental effects or issues related to the proposed
action. A principal objective of the scoping and public involvement
process is to identify a range of reasonable alternatives that will
delineate critical issues and provide a clear basis for distinguishing
among those alternatives and selecting a preferred alternative. Through
this Notice, the Council notifies the public that a NEPA analysis and
decision-making process has been initiated so that interested or
affected people may participate and contribute to the final decision.
Through this scoping process, the Council is seeking input and
feedback on the areas, issues and projects proposed above, as well as
possible alternatives to these proposals. The Council seeks public
involvement in the development of the SEIS and encourages members of
the public to submit comments in writing at the address shown above
(see ADDRESSES). Written comments should be as specific as possible to
be the most helpful. Written comments received during the scoping
process, including the names and addresses of those submitting them,
will be considered part of the public record on this proposal and will
be available for public inspection.
The Council also invites the public to participate in the scoping
meetings shown above (see DATES). When the lead federal agency
considers a change to a proposed action analyzed in an environmental
impact statement (EIS), or new information relevant to the action
becomes available, the federal agency must determine whether a
supplement to the EIS (also referred to as a ``supplemental EIS'') or a
new EIS is appropriate. In this instance, NOAA, as the lead agency, has
determined that a SEIS is appropriate and will be prepared under the
authority and in accordance with the requirements of NEPA, Council on
Environmental Quality Regulations (40 CFR parts 1500-1508), other
applicable federal laws and regulations, and NOAA's established
policies and procedures for compliance with those regulations. A SEIS
must consider all reasonable alternatives, including the preferred
action and the no action alternative. Even the most straightforward
actions may have alternatives, often considered and rejected in early
stages of project development that should be discussed. Opportunities
for public comment are provided through public review and comment on
documents contained in the Administrative Record as well as on the
Public Review Document, Draft and Final Environmental Impact Statement
when prepared.
In compliance with 15 CFR 990.45, the Council will prepare an
Administrative Record (Record). The Record will include documents that
the Council relied upon during the development of the SEIS. After
preparation, the Record will be on file at the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
Trustee Council office in Anchorage, AK and duplicate copies will be
maintained at the following website: http://www.evostc.state.ak.us.
Dated: January 15, 2010.
Samuel D. Rauch III,
Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs, National Marine
Fisheries Service.
[FR Doc. 2010-1201 Filed 1-21-10; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3510-12-S