Superferry Never Got Required NOAA Permit

According to NOAA & State officials, HSF incidental take permit was NEVER filed. They submitted a short 'submittal' which was deemed inadequate as a proper 'application'. A denial letter was never sent to HSF, instead a phone call was placed to them informing them their 'submittal' was woefully insufficient, and would not qualify as a proper "application". They were told the 'real' application would resemble something similar to a mini-EIS and would involve real analysis, not a simple statement "we plan to have no impact" -- they needed to prove/support such a claim.

To date, HSF has never submitted such an application. One government official (involved in reviewing the application) told me yesterday that this is a case of the "intent of the law verses the spirit of the law". NOAA believes the intent of the law was for HSF to have lodged a proper application prior to operation, however, the spirit of the law (i.e. The law's vagueness) allowed for simple 'application' but did not deem that such application ever had to be complete or accepted by NOAA prior to onset of operations. The individual stated, "clearly the law should have been more specific."

When asked if the ITP application process has been terminated, "In all likelihood yes, since they (HSF) have withdrawn from the Hawaii market. However, since they never really submitted a proper application, the process never officially began".