Maritime Administration October 17, 2007 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

By Federal Register notice of September 14, 2007 (72 FR 52607- 52611) the Maritime Administration (MARAD) and the U.S. Coast Guard (Coast Guard) announced the intent to prepare an environmental impact statement/environmental impact report (EIS/EIR) for the Woodside Natural Gas, Inc. OceanWay Secure Energy Deepwater LNG Port license application located in the Federal waters of the Santa Monica Basin, approximately 27 miles southwest of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). The EIS/EIR will be prepared with the City of Los Angeles (City) as a cooperating agency in the environmental review with the Coast Guard since the applicant has also filed an application for a lease/franchise of submerged City lands and an onshore pipeline franchise for the natural gas pipeline through the City. The EIS/EIR will meet the requirements of both the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Publication of that notice began a 30-day scoping process and requested public participation to assist in the identification and determination of the environmental issues to be addressed in the EIS/ EIR with a deadline for submitting comments of October 12, 2007. In addition to receiving comments at the public scoping meeting on September 26, 2007, instructions were provided for submitting comments to the Department of Transportation (DOT) Docket Management System and to the new Federal Docket Management System (FDMS). On September 27, 2007 the DOT Docket Management System began migration to be replaced by the Federal Docket Management System to be effective October 1, 2007. Because of planned outages in the migration, the comment period was extended to October 15, 2007, as announced at the public meeting. Because of additional system migration outages; the need for familiarization time with the FDMS; and interest generated by the project, by this notice, MARAD; the Coast Guard; and the City of Los Angeles have extended the scoping comment period to October 31, 2007.