Engineers Corps January 2010 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

In accordance with the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE) Wilmington District, Wilmington Regulatory Field Office announces the availability of a Regulatory Program Final EIS for the North Topsail Beach Shoreline Protection Project. The applicant, The Town of North Topsail Beach, is requesting Department of the Army authorization, pursuant to Section 404 of the Clean Water Act and Section 10 of the Rivers and Harbor Act, to protect residential homes and town infrastructures by nourishing approximately 11.1 miles of beachfront via repositioning the New River Inlet channel, implementing an inlet management plan to control the positioning of the new inlet channel, and utilizing an offshore borrow area. The new channel will be centrally located and the proposal will be to maintain that position, which essentially will be located perpendicular to the adjacent shorelines of North Topsail Beach and Onslow Beach. The proposed sources of the material for the beach nourishment will come from the repositioning of the inlet and an identified offshore borrow area. The projected amount of material needed to initially nourish the oceanfront shoreline is approximately 3.11 million cubic yards. The placement of beach fill along the Town's shoreline would result in the initial widening of the beach by 50 to 100 feet. The widened beach would be maintained through a program of periodic beach nourishment events with the material extracted from the maintenance of the newly relocated channel. All work will be accomplished using a hydraulic cutterhead dredge. The proposed project construction will be conducted in a five phase approach to correspond with the Town's anticipated annual generation of funds.

The action being taken is the preparation of a joint environmental impact statement/environmental impact report (EIS/EIR) for the Lower San Joaquin River Feasibility Study (LSJRFS). The EIS/EIR will be prepared in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) will serve as lead agency for compliance with NEPA, and the San Joaquin Area Flood Control Agency (SJAFCA) will serve as lead agency for compliance with CEQA. The LSJRFS will evaluate alternatives, including a locally preferred plan, for providing flood damage reduction and ecosystem restoration along the lower (northern) portion of the San Joaquin River system in the Central Valley of California. The approximate area of the proposed action and analysis is identified in Figure 1.

The comment period for the Final Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed construction of the Western Wake Regional Wastewater Management Facilities, in Wake and Chatham Counties, NC published in the Federal Register on Friday, December 18, 2009 (74 FR 67180), required comments be submitted 33 days (January 19, 2010) following publication in the Federal Register. The comment period has been extended to 54 days (February 9, 2010). This is because the initial Web version of the Final Environmental Impact Statement had problems with the Web links. The web version was corrected on December 28, 2009.