Coast Guard Mission

Introduction The Revenue Cutter Service, a precursor of the modern United States Coast Guard was created by congress on August 4th, 1790. The Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton requested the creation of the armed seagoing service as a means to collect tariff revenue on both imports and exports. From humble beginnings, only ten small cutters were originally authorized, the Coast Guard has grown by incorporating numerous federal agencies with a varying mission sets. Today, the Coast Guard has eleven statutory missions: Ports, waterways, and coastal security, drug interdiction, aids to navigation, search and rescue, living marine resources, marine safety, defense readiness, migrant interdiction, marine environmental protection, ice
As described by the Council on Environmental Quality, “NEPA requires Federal agencies to consider environmental effects that include, among others, impacts on social, cultural, and economic resources, as well as natural resources.” Each action taken by the Coast Guard must be analyzed, including the completion of each of the eleven statutory missions. The Aids to Navigation (ATON) mission is often overlooked but it is the second most costly mission area, representing approximately 16% of the Coast Guard budget in 2012. The Coast Guard maintains over 34,000 aids that mark approximately 25,000 miles of waterways across the country. Each of these aids requires periodic maintenance and each maintenance activity is a federal action that must be evaluated under NEPA. The majority of ATON actions are covered under a Categorical Exclusion, but fundamental problems with the Coast Guard NEPA policy has lead to complications in the Coast Guard’s Seventh
Fixed aids are anchored to the bottom using either wooden piles or steel beams. The structures can be as simple as a wooden pile driven into the bottom with a red or green numbered dayboard attached to it. They can be as complicated as a multi-pile steel structure with a platform and a large light. Floating aids are anchored to the bottom using large concrete blocks, or sinkers, which can weigh up to 12,000 lbs. The buoy varies in size but can be upwards of 26ft tall with a diameter of 8ft. The buoy is connected to the sinker with chain, the length of which is determined by water depth and current. A buoy diagram from the Coast Guard Aids to Navigation Technical Manual can be seen