This notice announces the Department of the Interior's (Department) proposal to revise the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) implementing procedures for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) at Chapter 11 of Part 516 of the Departmental Manual (DM) with a proposed new categorical exclusion (CX).

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires Federal agencies to consider the potential environmental consequences of their decisions before deciding whether and how to proceed. The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) encourages Federal agencies to use categorical exclusions (CXs) to protect the environment more efficiently by reducing the resources spent analyzing proposals which generally do not have potentially significant environmental impacts, thereby allowing those resources to be focused on proposals that may have significant environmental impacts. The appropriate use of CXs allow NEPA compliance, in the absence of extraordinary circumstances that merit further consideration, to be concluded without preparing either an environmental assessment (EA) or an environmental impact statement (EIS) (40 CFR 1500.4(p) and 40 CFR 1508.4).

The Department's revised NEPA procedures were published in the Federal Register on October 15, 2008 (73 FR 61292), and are codified at 43 CFR part 46. Additional Department-wide NEPA policy may be found in the DM, in chapters 1 through 4 of part 516. The procedures for the Department's bureaus are published as chapters 7 through 15 of this DM part 516. Chapter 11 of 516 DM covers the BLM's procedures. The BLM's current procedures can be found at: https://elips.doi.gov/​ELIPS/​DocView.aspx?​id=​1721. These procedures address policy as well as procedure in order to assure compliance with the spirit and intent of NEPA.