Voglio sapere a riguardo di…

khammond on DSKJM1Z7X2PROD with RULES2

Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 145 / Monday, August 2, 2021 / Rules and Regulations present value and annualized impacts;
and 6 Aggregate the costs at the particular area level. Impacts are reported at the particular area level;
particular areas for the analysis are the same as the six specific areas.
The first step in the analysis was to identify the baseline level of protection already afforded Southern Resident killer whales in the additional areas being proposed as critical habitat. The baseline for this analysis is the existing state of regulation prior to the revision of critical habitat, including the listing of the species under the ESA and protections under ESA sections 7, 9, and 10; ESA protections for listed salmon given that salmon are included as part of the prey essential feature of critical habitat for the whales; protections due to other co-occurring ESA listings and critical habitat designations, such as those for the Southern DPS of North American green sturgeon 50 CFR
226.219 and leatherback sea turtles 50
CFR 226.207; and other Federal, state and local laws and guidelines, such as the MMPA, Clean Water Act, and state environmental quality laws IEc 2021.
In step 2, the NMFS West Coast Regions record of section 7
consultations and NMFS experience and professional judgment in conducting section 7 consultations were used to identify Federal activities that occur within the areas being considered for Southern Resident killer whale critical habitat and that may affect the critical habitat features. Activities occurring adjacent to or upstream of those areas that may affect the water quality and prey availability essential features within the critical habitat areas were also identified. These activities included salmon fisheries and other fisheries that have incidental bycatch of salmon, salmon hatcheries, offshore aquaculture/mariculture, alternative energy development, oil spills and response, military activities, vessel traffic, dredging and dredge material disposal, oil and gas exploration and production, geologic surveys including seismic surveys, activities contributing to point-source water pollution, power plant operations, liquefied natural gas terminals, and desalinization plants.
The FEA IEc 2021 assumes that future occurrences of these activities within or affecting critical habitat for the whales will result in consultation. The identification of these activities and the associated threats are further discussed in the Final Biological Report NMFS
2021a and the FEA IEc 2021.
In steps 3 and 4, the incremental administrative costs of including analysis of Southern Resident killer
VerDate Sep<11>2014

18:36 Jul 30, 2021

Jkt 253001

whale coastal critical habitat in future section 7 consultations were estimated.
The occurrence of the projects and activities identified in step 2 and the estimated number and type of consultations were projected over space and time using the best available information on planned projects, permitting schedules, or average annual level of activities from NMFS
consultation history for 20062016 and other information sources e.g., USACE
permit and project data, and interviews with Federal action agencies. The administrative costs of a given consultation vary depending on the type i.e., informal, formal, programmatic and specifics of the project, and it may not be possible to predict the level of effort required for each future consultation. The analysis accordingly employed estimated average incremental administrative costs per consultation, which were based on the expected amount of time spent considering adverse modification as part of future section 7 consultations.
As described in Chapter 2 of the FEA
IEc 2021, there are no particular projects or activities for which NMFS
considers it likely that section 7
consultation on coastal critical habitat for the killer whales would result in different conservation efforts than section 7 consultation without coastal critical habitat. This analysis refers to conservation efforts as a generic term for recommendations NMFS may make to modify projects or activities for the benefit of Southern Resident killer whales and/or their habitat, required actions to minimize impacts, or other efforts that action agencies or other entities may otherwise undertake to avoid adverse effects of projects or activities on Southern Resident killer whales and/or their habitat.
We regularly consult on the types of activities relevant to this analysis to consider the potential for jeopardy to the listed killer whales, their listed prey, and other listed species with overlapping ranges, as well as to consider the potential for adverse modification to the critical habitat of other listed species, and we include conservation efforts accordingly. This includes considerations of critical habitat for other listed species which have similar essential features as Southern Resident killer whale critical habitat. For example, the Southern DPS
of North American green sturgeon, for which the essential features within nearshore coastal marine critical habitat include, among others, a migratory corridor within marine habitat and water quality with acceptably low levels of contaminants. We anticipate that it is
PO 00000

Frm 00019

Fmt 4701

Sfmt 4700

41685

most likely that these baseline conservation efforts would involve measures that would avoid adverse modification of Southern Resident killer whale critical habitat because they directly or indirectly address impacts to the essential features of the whales critical habitat water quality, prey, and passage.
In steps 5 and 6, well-accepted discounting methods were used to calculate the present value cost in each year of the analysis, summed over time to calculate the total present value and annualized impact, and then aggregated at the particular area level. As noted above, for the economic analysis, particular areas were defined to be equivalent to the six specific areas occupied by Southern Resident killer whales off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California. However, due to the difficulty in determining precise locations of future consultations occurring in Areas 1 and 2 off the coast of Washington because assignment of the consultation to Area 1 or 2 would require specific information about the activity such as its latitude/longitude or depth, the FEA IEc 2021 presents economic impacts collectively for these two areas.
Additionally, administrative costs of consultations on upstream activities were not assigned to a particular critical habitat area as there is no information available to inform the connection between the particular locations of upstream activities with the downstream effects on particular critical habitat areas. Accordingly, the incremental economic impacts associated with consultations on upstream activities do not reflect the economic impact of designating any given area, but rather the expanded critical habitat as a whole.
The FEA IEc 2021 estimates the total present value of the quantified incremental impacts to be approximately $710,000 over the next 10 years, assuming a 7 percent discount rate. Total annualized impacts are estimated to be $80,000. The increase in costs between the DEA IEc 2019 that accompanied the proposed rule and the FEA IEc 2021 that supports this final rule reflects updates to the timeframe of the analysis and the dollar year, as opposed to changes in the costs of consultations. The evaluation of costs associated with each particular area is complicated by the fact that many activities and consultations span more than one area, and because costs to Areas 1 and 2 could not be estimated separately. However, annualized impacts from projects occurring in only one area or two in the case of Areas 1

E:FRFM02AUR2.SGM

02AUR2