EPA's Vessel General Permit and Small Vessel General

added to other past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future actions regardless of what agency
(Federal or non-federal) or person undertakes such other actions” (40 CFR 1508.7).
The effects analyses of biological opinions considered the “impacts” on listed species and
designated critical habitat that result from the incremental impact of an action by identifying
natural and anthropogenic stressors that affect endangered and threatened species throughout
their range (the Status of the Species) and within an Action Area (the Environmental Baseline,
which articulate the pre-existing impacts of activities that occur in an Action Area, including the
past, contemporaneous, and future impacts of those activities). We assess the effects of a
proposed action by adding their direct and indirect effects to the impacts of the activities we
identify in an Environmental Baseline (50 CFR 402.02), in light of the impacts of the status of
the listed species and designated critical habitat throughout their range; as a result, the results of
our effects analyses are equivalent to those contained in the “cumulative impact” sections of
NEPA documents.
This usage of “cumulative impacts” is distinct from the term “cumulative effect.” Section 7
regulations defines cumulative effects as “those effects of future State or private activities, not
involving Federal activities, that are reasonably certain to occur within the action area of the
Federal action subject to consultation” (50 CFR 402.02).
As we discussed previously, cumulative impacts includes (1) time-crowded perturbations or
perturbations that are so close in time that the effects of one perturbation do not dissipate before
a subsequent perturbation occurs; (2) space-crowded perturbations or perturbations that are so
close in space that their effects overlap; (3) interactions or perturbations that have qualitatively
and quantitatively different consequences for the ecosystems, ecological communities,
populations, or individuals exposed to them because of synergism (when stressors produce
fundamentally different effects in combination than they do individually), additivity,
magnification (when a combination of stressors have effects that are more than additive), or
antagonism (when two or more stressors have less effect in combination than they do
individually); and (4) nibbling or incremental and decremental effects are often, but not always,
involved in each of the preceding three categories (NRC 1986).
Action Area
The Action Area for this consultation consists of all waters of the U.S. in the United States, its
territories, and its possessions (which includes American Samoa, Baker Island, Guam, Howland
Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Midway Atoll, Navassa Island, the Commonwealth of the
Northern Mariana Islands, Palmyra Atoll, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Wake Island)
where discharges incidental to the normal operation of all non-recreational and non-military
vessels are to be authorized by the EPA’s VGPs. Waters of the U.S. extend to the outer reach of
the three mile territorial sea, defined in section 502(8) of the CWA as the belt of the seas
measured from the line of ordinary low water along that portion of the coast which is in direct
contact with the open sea and the line marking the seaward limit of inland waters, and extending
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