Opportunity to Comment on 50 CFR 85 Proposed Rule
Clean Vessel Act Grant Program
Dear SOBA Colleagues,
Welcome to an opportunity for review and comment on the draft proposed rule for the Clean Vessel Act Grant Program (CVA). This opportunity is open through October 31, 2023. Resources include the DRAFT Proposed rule; a Summary document that shows the history, approach, and future expected timeline for the regulatory process; and instructions for how to review, provide comments, and participate in the CVA Teams space. We have also included the DRAFT Preamble to the rule as a resource.
All these documents and folders for uploading your comments is on the CVA Regulation Update Teams space. Invites for the Open Forums will be made via this Team, so if you are not already a member (if you participated in the 2022 Open Forums, you are a member), please contact
Caswell_Browder@fws.gov (Rocky) to be added.
We are hosting 2 Open Forums mid-review for attendees to discuss any questions or topics on their minds after they have given the draft an initial review. The hope is that these Open Forums can help inform your final comments. The Open Forums are scheduled for October 11 and October 18, 2023, both from 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM (ET).
We have created a brief form for submitting questions or topics you wish to engage with on the Open Forums. It isn’t mandatory but will help us to better prepare for Open Forums that serve your needs. The form is at:
CVA Open Forum Team The Summary document further indicates that this is the only planned pre-Federal Register Review and Comment Period, so please engage! Another opportunity will be available during the public comment period once the Proposed rule is published in the Federal Register, and we will alert everyone to that opportunity as well.
Please remember this is not the final Proposed rule and we did already provide updates to the document to reflect some comments received last week from Regional Coordinators that took a sneak peek. As the administrative experts, please advise us if you identify any approaches in the rule that you feel would have an administrative benefit or an administrative challenge. Please comment as thoroughly as possible so that we understand the specific benefit or concern – which will help us to address the CVA community when publishing the Proposed rule.