Delay in Publishing Final Determination

for Retiring U.S. Survey Foot

To allow additional time to analyze public comments, the planned date for issuing the final determination on deprecating the U.S. Survey Foot has been extended by 90 days, from June 30, 2020, to September 28, 2020. The original October 17, 2019, Federal Register Notice on this action includes a link to the public comments received.   The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Office of Weights and Measures and NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey (NGS) have co-issued a Federal Register Notice (FRN) announcing this extension.

This Extension is Independent of NSRS Modernization

Although retiring the Survey Foot is associated with modernizing the National Spatial Reference System (NSRS), the planned date of December 31, 2022, for this change remains the same, and is independent from the NSRS modernization implementation timeline. That date for deprecation applies only to the modernized NSRS; it will not effect users of the existing State Plane Coordinate Systems or any other components of the current NSRS. For additional information, see the New Datum FAQs.

Learn More

• Read the story "A Tale of Two Feet" from the National Ocean Service.
• Watch a short video on this topic, titled "Two Right Feet? U.S. Survey Feet vs. International Survey Feet."
• View our recorded public webinars titled, "Fate of the U.S. Survey Foot after 2022: A Conversation with NGS" and "Putting the Best “Foot” Forward: Ending the Era of the U.S. Survey Foot."

NOAA's National Geodetic Survey 

geodesy.noaa.gov