Supporting Statement January 2014

SUPPORTING STATEMENT

OMB APPROVAL NO. 0710-0007

A. JUSTIFICATION

1. Need for the Information Collection

The authority for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to collect terminal-and-transfer facility information is found in The Rivers and Harbors Act of July 18, 1918, Section 7; the Merchant Marine Act of June 5, 1920, Section 8; and the Transportation Act of February 28, 1920, Section 500. These directives require:

*The Chief of Engineers to indicate in his annual report, the character of the terminals-and-transfer facilities existing on every harbor or waterway under maintenance or improvement by the United States.

*To study the infrastructure supporting such port facilities.

*Include the anchorages of the Great Lakes to the areas of investigation.

2. Use of the Information

The data are used by the Corps of Engineers, in conjunction with other navigation information of waterway freight and passenger traffic, to evaluate the impact of redefining “the justified level of service” of the channel maintenance program. The data support navigation performance measures used in the performance based budget process. These data are also essential to the Waterborne Commerce Statistics Center in exercising their enforcement and quality control responsibilities in the collection of data from vessel reporting companies. Port facility information is an integral part of the economic and environmental study plans for the determination and justification of channel deepening projects. Emergency preparedness is enhanced with the information on deployment and waterway transfer facilities in the event of floods, hurricanes, or other natural disasters. Military interests of the Army, Navy, and Coast Guard are met with information on intermodal connections, terminal transfer and storage facilities and loading equipment capabilities in the event of rapid military deployment, or National emergencies. Regional and port planning decisions are supported by information on existing facilities and capabilities in the local and regional area. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has used the port facility data in rapidly identifying effected businesses in need of assistance during the flooding events. Districts routinely use the information to update their charts and project maps with waterway facilities in their districts. The Army’s Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command (SDDC) uses the information as a baseline for updating their “Ports for National Defense” mission. In addition to government and wartime agencies, there is considerable demand for regional or selected information by research, legal, economic, and transportation interests. Third-party vendors rely on some or all of the information in the enhancement and availability of their value-added products.

3. Use of Information Technology

Pre-filled forms, containing the existing information, are submitted to the respondent for revision and verification and are collected by the field engineer during the site visit. This process will be augmented or replaced by Internet technology as the database is migrated to web-compatible software and facility operators become conversant with the Web tools, however this will not decrease the burden on the respondent. Aerial photography, charts, maps, and geographic information system (GIS) software is used to determine distances and areas, and eliminates the respondent burden of providing detailed plans or survey measurements.

4. Non-Duplication

These data are collected by the Institute for Water Resources, Navigation Data Center (NDC) and is the only central source of nationwide information of this type. Close coordination between the NDC divisions of Waterborne Commerce, and Navigation and Systems enables the one-time collection of certain data elements to be shared, thus eliminating duplication of effort and burden to the respondent.

5. Burden on Small Business

No significant impact on small entities. All respondents are provided the same assistance in responding to the information requests.

6. Less Frequent Collection

The data are used in the planning, decision, and budgeting process. Lack of data would delay the process or compromise the accuracy of the decision. Lack of data would also necessitate the increased time and cost to the project if these data were gathered from the field or other sources. This information is supplied at no cost to the Corps of Engineers. If the data were collected less frequently, the age of the data would render it less useful and increase the need for agencies to conduct their own facility inventories, thus increasing the burden on the public.

7. Paperwork Reduction Act Guidelines

Data collection procedures fall with the guidelines of 5 CFR 1320.6.

8. Consultation and Public Comment

The 60-day Federal Register notice published at 78 FR 69838. No comments were received.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers works closely with the Water Transportation Industry and jointly sponsors or participates in numerous conferences, meetings, and workshops. Conferences of the Transportation Research Board, the American Association of Port Authorities, The American Society of Civil Engineers, and the International Navigation Association (formerly the Permanent International Association of Navigation Congress) specialty conferences on Ports; the National Waterways Conference, Gulf Intracoastal Canal Association Conference, and Inland Waterways Conference have been attended by Navigation Data Center (NDC) personnel. Displays and interactive computer sessions on NDC data and products are available and comments and suggestions are encouraged regarding the collection program and the availability of the information. All reports contain a paragraph soliciting user comments. Comments can also be received via the NDC homepage. NDC staff is always available to assist the respondent by phone or in person during the site visit.

A Federal/Industry Logistics Standardization group was established to explicitly address the waterway facilities that are important to the Federal government and industry and to develop a definitive list of these facilities with precise locations, characteristics and points of contact. The group consists of representatives of the waterways industry, Internal Revenue Service, Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Coast Guard, and the Corps Navigation Data Center and Waterborne Commerce Statistics Center. All of these representatives are committed to developing a unique identifier for each dock facility. The Federal government and industry will use these guaranteed unique identifiers (GUIDs) to communicate among each other. The Corps is responsible for publishing and maintaining the definitive list for all Federal agencies and the private sector to use. This list of facilities will not only facilitate the communication between government agencies themselves, and between the government agencies and private industry, but also among private industry themselves. Private industry is most excited by this joint venture because they are constantly trying to communicate with each other and with their customers and everyone uses different codes and names for the same facilities making communication between their computers and databases next to impossible. The reporting burden between industry and these government agencies will be reduced as will the reporting burden of industry trying to communicate with each other. The IWR forms 1-9 are the primary source of information for maintaining this list of dock facilities.

9. Gifts or Payments

No payments or gifts of any kind are provided to the respondents.

10. Confidentiality

There is no state of confidentiality on the forms. All information is voluntarily submitted.

11. Sensitive Questions

The forms do not contain sensitive questions nor are they designed to record information about individuals; OMB circular A-108 does not apply.

12. Respondent Burden and its Labor Costs

The estimated, total-information-collection burden on the public is 313 hours annually (See Figure 1).

Each year, 10.7% or 982 of the approximately 9,176 waterway facilities are surveyed. In nine years, 100% of the population is surveyed.

Estimated annual cost to respondents –

Using the hourly-based rate, excluding locality rate equivalent of a GS-13/1 Engineer to complete the forms –

$33.84/hr x 1.25 overhead = $42.30 x 313 hours = $13,240 annualized cost

13. Respondent Costs Other than Burden Costs

The data collection program does not have these types of costs associated with the requirement.

14. Cost to the Federal Government

Estimated Federal Coasts. The estimated federal cost for collecting and processing the information contained on WRSC Forms 1-9 is $65,700 per report. An average of six reports is completed annually making the estimated annual cost for six reports $394,200.

15. Reasons for Change in Burden

No program changes or adjustments have been made.

16. Publication of Results

The collection, tabulation, and publication process for 56 reports in the Port Series is similar for each port area. Facility information contained in the database is forwarded to the facility engineer or manager about 30 days before a site visit is planned. Respondents are requested to update the information and provide a point-of-contact for the Corps field engineer’s site visit. The site visit includes the collection of the information followed by a site visit to verify the data and photograph the facility. The information is entered into the database. The database is reviewed and finalized and individual summaries of each facility is published on the NDC website. When updated facility information for a port area is available, notices are distributed to customers via email. The process from organizing and planning a field survey of a large port area to the publication of the final facility summaries on the web takes approximately 12 months.

Special requests for facility information and custom reports are handled on an ad hoc basis. In addition to the individual summaries available on the NDC website, NDC provides this and other water navigation information on an annually updated CD, which is offered at no cost.

17. Non-Display of OMB Expiration Date

No approval is sought to suppress the display of the expiration data on the forms.

18. Exceptions to “Certification for Paperwork Reduction Submissions”

This data collection program complies with the certification statement and has no exceptions.

B. Collection of Information Employing Statistical methods.

This data collection does not employ statistical methods.

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