As a courtesy to our audience, Maritime Commons will provide a daily compilation of nationally-relevant Federal Register Notices. To provide comments for the public record, follow the Federal Register link for each individual notice. Please note, the Coast Guard cannot respond to comments on these notices outside of the Federal Register.

The updated draft PREP Guidelines are available for public comment. The Coast Guard published a notice to the Federal Register on behalf of the National Scheduling Coordination Committee which is comprised of representatives from the Coast Guard; Environmental Protection Agency; Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration; and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.

The National Preparedness for Response Exercise Program, or NPREP, was developed to establish a workable exercise program that meets the intent of section 4202(a) of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, or OPA 90. NPREP was developed to provide a mechanism for compliance with the exercise requirements, while being economically feasible for the government and the oil industry to adopt and sustain.

Completion of the exercises described in the NPREP Guidelines is one option for maintaining compliance with OPA 90-mandated federal oil pollution response exercise requirements. Significant changes to this revision of the NPREP guidelines include the implementation of the new nontank vessel response plan and salvage and marine firefighting exercise requirements for Coast Guard regulated vessels in accordance with recent changes to Chapter 33 of the Code of Federal Regulations part 155.

Comments must reach the Coast Guard on or before April 28, 2015.

View the Federal Register notice for full details.

This blog is not a replacement or substitute for the formal posting of regulations and updates or existing processes for receiving formal feedback of the same. Links provided on this blog will direct the reader to official source documents, such as the Federal Register, Homeport and the Code of Federal Regulations. These documents remain the official source for regulatory information published by the Coast Guard.