In order to “provide adequate opportunity for public meetings in impacted Arctic communities, given recent COVID–19 impacts to travel,” the Coast Guard today announced that it is reopening the comment period through Sept. 30, 2021 on its preparation of an Alaskan Arctic Coast Port Access Route Study to evaluate the need for establishing vessel routing measures. The comment period recently expired on June 30, following previous extensions announced on Sept. 4, 2019 and Jan. 13, 2020.
Through the study, the Coast Guard says it will enhance navigational safety by analyzing current vessel patterns, predicting future vessel needs, and balancing the needs of all waterway users by developing and recommending vessel routing measures for the Arctic Coast.
The Coast Guard is particularly interested in identifying specific locations, times, or instances where future vessel activity could increase significantly in density or cause specific undesirable consequences, with specific areas of concern including times and/or locations where vessel operations could cause significant consequences to species of concern, subsistence activities, marine mammal migration routes, or other equities, areas of known biological importance and whether they are important year-round or only at specific times, and offshore areas identified or expected to have high potential for oil and natural gas, renewable energy, or seabed resource development.
