Authority: Title 29.1, Chapter 1, Code of Virginia.
A. The department shall recover the cost of reproduction, plus a reasonable fee per record, from persons or organizations requesting copies of computerized lists of licenses issued by the department.
B. The department shall not further consolidate its regional offices, field offices, or close any of these offices in presently-served localities or enter into any lease for any new regional office without notification of the Chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, Chesapeake, and Natural Resources and the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Conservation, and Natural Resources. The department shall not undertake any future reorganization of any division, reporting structures, regional or field offices, or any function it may perform without notifying the Chairmen of the House Committee on Agriculture, Chesapeake, and Natural Resources, the House Committee on Appropriations, the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Conservation, and Natural Resources, and the Senate Committee on Finance.
C. Funds previously appropriated to the Lake Anna Advisory Committee for hydrilla control and removal may be used at the discretion of the Lake Anna Advisory Committee upon issues related to maintaining the health, safety, and welfare of Lake Anna.
D.1. Subject to review and approval by the Secretary of Natural Resources, the Director of the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries may issue to the Department of Transportation an interim permit to relocate the nest and eggs of any state listed threatened bird species from critical areas of the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel Expansion Project’s South Island associated with the ingress and egress to the island; the delivery, assembly, and immediate operations of the tunnel boring machine; or other project critical locations as mutually agreed to by the Commissioner of Highways and the Director, which, if not relocated, would effectively require all substantial construction activities to cease.
2. Prior to the issuance of an interim permit as described in section 1, (i) the Director must determine that the Department of Transportation and its design-build contractor have taken all reasonable steps to prevent birds from nesting on the South Island, in accordance with the Colonial Nesting Bird Management Plan dated March 27, 2020, (ii) the Commissioner of Highways must determine that substantial construction activities will have to cease if the nest and eggs are not relocated, and (iii) the Director shall require as a condition of the interim permit that the nest and any eggs will be relocated under the supervision of the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries to a location acceptable to the Director that is as close as possible to the original nesting location while allowing construction activities to continue.
3. Within 30 days of the adoption by the Board of Game and Inland Fisheries of any regulation governing the take of migratory birds or threatened and endangered species, the Department of Transportation shall apply for a permit covering such take for the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel expansion project.
4. Any agency that exercises the authority granted in paragraph D.1, or that issues any permit that has an adverse impact on fish and wildlife or their habitat, may require compensatory mitigation for such adverse impact as a condition of issuing the permit.
a. For the purposes of this section, "compensatory mitigation" means addressing the direct and indirect adverse impacts to fish and wildlife and their habitats that may be caused by a construction project by avoiding and minimizing impacts to the extent practicable and then compensating for the remaining impacts.
b. Proposed compensatory mitigation agreements between an agency and a permittee shall be subject to the approval of the Secretary of Natural Resources, and may include environmental restoration projects, purchase of mitigation bank credits, or in-lieu payments to existing state funds related to conservation of fish and wildlife and their habitat.