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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 108 / Tuesday, June 8, 2021 / Notices issued or, if the taking is limited to harassment, a notice of a proposed incidental take authorization may be 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 stocks and will not have an unmitigable adverse impact on the availability of the species or stocks 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 such species or stocks for taking for certain subsistence uses referred to here as mitigation.
Monitoring and reporting of such takings are also required. The meaning of key terms such as take, harassment, and negligible impact can be found in section 3 of the MMPA
16 U.S.C. 1362 and the agencys regulations at 50 CFR 216.103.
Summary of Request On October 22, 2020, NMFS received a request from the Navy for an IHA to take marine mammals incidental to modification and expansion of DD1 at PNSY in Kittery, Maine. The Navy submitted revised versions of the application on December 30, 2020, and January 19 and February 11, 2021. The application was deemed adequate and complete on February 19, 2021. The Navys request is for take of a small number of harbor porpoises, harbor seals, gray seals, harp seals, and hooded seals by Level B harassment and Level A harassment for a subset of these
species. Neither the Navy nor NMFS
expects serious injury or mortality to result from this activity; therefore, an IHA is appropriate.
NMFS previously issued three IHAs to the Navy for waterfront improvement work, in 2016 81 FR 85525; November 28, 2016, 2018 83 FR 3318; January 24, 2018, 2019 84 FR 24476, May 28, 2019, and a renewal of the 2019 IHA
86 FR 14598; March 17, 2021. As required, the applicant provided monitoring reports available at: https
www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/
marine-mammal-protection/incidentaltake-authorizations-constructionactivities which confirm that the applicant has implemented the required mitigation and monitoring, and which also shows that no impacts of a scale or nature not previously analyzed or authorized have occurred as a result of the activities conducted. This IHA
covers the second year of a larger fiveyear project, for which the Navy also intends to request take authorization for subsequent dock modification and expansion at the PNSY.
Description of the Specified Activity As part of its overall objective to modernize and maximize dry dock capabilities for performing current and future missions efficiently and with maximum flexibility, the Navy plans to modify and expand DD1 at the PNSY by constructing two new dry docking positions capable of servicing Virginia class submarines within the super flood basin of the dry dock. The in-water portion of the dock modification and expansion, which will occur within and at the boundaries of the super flood basin, includes: Construction of the west closure wall, construction of entrance structure closure walls, and
bedrock excavation. Construction activities include in-water impact pile driving, vibratory pile driving and removal, rock drilling, and underwater blasting. Underwater sounds produced by these activities may result in Level B
harassment and Level A harassment of marine mammal species.
In-water construction activities are expected to occur between June 2021
and June 2022, with an estimated total of 29 days for pile driving and pile removal, 130 days for drilling of blast charge holes, and 130 days of blasting for bedrock excavation, for a total of 289
construction days. Some of these activities will occur on the same day, resulting in 159 total construction days over 12 months. However, as a conservative measure, construction days are accounted for as consecutive rather than concurrent activities in take estimates see Estimated Take section.
All in-water construction work will be limited to daylight hours, with the exception of pre-dawn beginning no earlier than 3:00 a.m. drilling of blast charge holes; drilling will not occur from sunset to pre-dawn. The daily construction timeframe for blasting will begin no sooner than 30 minutes after sunrise to allow for initial marine mammal monitoring to take place and will end at least 60 minutes before sunset to allow for post-activity monitoring.
A summary of in-water pile driving activity is provided in Table 1. In addition, a total of 1,580, 4.5-inch blast charge holes will be drilled at a rate of 12 holes per day over 130 days. The Navy anticipates one to two blast events per day, with a maximum of 6 blast events per week; a total of 150 blast events will occur over 130 days.

TABLE 1SUMMARY OF IN-WATER PILE DRIVING ACTIVITIES
Pile purpose
Pile type
West closure wall template

Steel pipe

West closure wall construction
Entrance structure temporary guide dolphin removal.
Entrance structure closure wall construction.

Pile size inch
Pile drive method
Total piles
Piles/day
Work days
30

Vibratory

Flat-webbed steel sheet.

18

Vibratory

13 installed
13 removed
160

3
3 12

5
5 13

Steel pipe

30

Impact.
Vibratory

12

8

2

Steel sheet

28

Vibratory

44

12

4

242

29

Impact.
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Total

Construction activities will occur at the PNSY in Kittery, Maine. Please see Figures 11 to 16 in the Navys IHA
application for detailed maps of the
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project area and super flood basin. A
detailed description of the planned modification and expansion of DD1 is provided in the Federal Register notice
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for the proposed IHA 86 FR 18244;
April 8, 2021. Since that time, no changes have been made to the planned activities. Therefore, a detailed
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