NOAA loses veto over undersea cables in marine sanctuaries
H.R. 261 — Undersea Cable Protection Act of 2025 · Filed by Buddy Carter (R-GA) · 7 cosponsors · Introduced Jan 9, 2025 · Passed chamber
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What it does
This bill amends the National Marine Sanctuaries Act to prevent the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from requiring its own permits or blocking undersea fiber optic cable projects that have already been authorized by another federal or state agency. If a cable project has a license, lease, or permit from any federal or state agency, NOAA cannot impose additional requirements or deny it a sanctuary permit. The bill preserves existing interagency coordination requirements but strips NOAA of independent sanctuary-protection authority over cables.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative effect is to remove environmental review authority from NOAA and streamline permitting for undersea cable installation. While framed as a technical amendment, it functionally deregulates a major infrastructure activity within protected marine areas by subordinating sanctuary law to prior federal/state permits.
What the text implies
- NOAA loses ability to condition cable permits on mitigation measures specific to sanctuary ecosystems (e.g., cable burial depth, timing restrictions to avoid spawning seasons, monitoring requirements). Prior federal/state permits may not address sanctuary-specific harms.
- Cables authorized by state agencies (e.g., state energy commissions) now bypass NOAA review entirely, even if the state permit did not consider marine sanctuary impacts.
The full analysis lists 4 implications of this text.
Who stands to gain
undersea cable operators and telecommunications companies; submarine cable infrastructure developers; data center and cloud service providers dependent on international connectivity