SUPPORTING
STATEMENT FOR
PAPERWORK REDUCTION ACT SUBMISSION
Advance
Notification Form: Tourist and Other Non-Governmental Activities in
the Antarctic Treaty Area
OMB Number 1405-xxxx
DS-4131
“5. Each Contracting Party shall, at the time when the present Treaty enters into force for it, inform the other Contracting Parties, and thereafter shall give them notice in advance of:
a) all expeditions to and within Antarctica, on the part of its ships or nationals, and all expeditions to Antarctica organized in or proceeding from its territory.”
2. Information requested on the Advance Notification Form will be used by the Department of State to make a determination whether an intended tourist or other non-governmental activity is organized in or proceeding from its territory and, if so, to prepare a pre-season notification to other Parties to the Treaty containing specifics of each intended expedition. Upon determination that an activity falls under U.S. jurisdiction, U.S. expeditions must comply with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations requiring the preparation of an Environmental Impact Assessment reflecting U.S. obligations under the Treaty’s Protocol for Environmental Protection. The content of the proposed Advance Notification Form has been cleared with both EPA and the National Science Foundation.
3. The DS-4131, Advance Notification Form, will be submitted to the Department of State’s Office of Oceans Affairs in signed original format. Advance copies of the form are submitted by e-mail pending physical receipt of a signed original.
4. Information collected on the Advance Notification Form does not duplicate information otherwise collected by the U.S. Government. Information on the form supplements information separately provided by U.S. operators to the Environmental Protection Agency as part of a required Environmental Impact Assessment process.
5. No significant impact will be placed on small businesses outside of normal business practices.
6. Failure to collect information requested on the Advance Notification Form would prevent the United States from being able to comply with a Treaty obligation.
7. There are no special circumstances associated with this collection.
8. An Emergency Federal Register notice will be published to solicit public comment.
9. There are no payments or gift to respondents.
10. As per normal State Department policy, information collected is not disseminated to non-involved parties.
11. The Advance Notification Form does not collect any information of a sensitive nature.
12. We expect approximately 22 respondents per year to provide advance notification of a tourist or other non-governmental expedition to Antarctica organized in, or proceeding from, the United States. Notification would be made once per year, typically four to six months before travel. The form may address a number of intended activities ranging from an excursion by one private person to several voyages by each of several vessels, or aircraft, operated by a large commercial enterprise. We estimate that a single private operator may require as few as three hours to complete the form while a commercial operator, with complicated vessel subchartering issues, may require more than 50 hours to complete the form. On average, we believe that collecting information requested should take respondents about 10.5 hours. Using 22 respondents as a baseline, we project the total burden to be about 231 hours.
13. There is no additional cost to business beyond normal business practices.
14. There is no cost to the federal government for this collection.
15. Burden number changes are because this is a new collection.
16. Results of this collection of information are disseminated only to Parties to the Treaty and are not intended for publication.
17. OES will display the OMB expiration date.
18. There are no exceptions sought for this collection.
This collection does not employ statistical methods.
| File Type | application/msword |
| File Title | SUPPORTING STATEMENT FOR |
| Author | USDOS |
| Last Modified By | ADMWalkerJM |
| File Modified | 2008-04-09 |
| File Created | 2008-04-07 |