Elizabeth Buentes, BLM field office manager, briefed the commission on recent changes to the agency's NEPA regulations and the practical effect on local public involvement.
Why it matters: under the new rules the BLM has adopted a range of categorical exclusions from other federal agencies, allowing more actions to be permitted without an environmental assessment or EIS. Buentes said draft environmental assessments would no longer be put out for public review, and for environmental impact statements the Notice of Intent (NOI) would remain the primary public input opportunity.
"One of the big changes is our public input periods," Buentes said. "For EAs, under these new regulations, we would no longer have draft EAs being put out for public review or even scoping of the projects. And for EISs, the only public input period would be the NOI, which is the scoping." She said coordination with state and local governments remains possible through the cooperating-agency process and encouraged local governments to request cooperating-agency status to receive documents concurrently with BLM review.
The commission discussed how the changes could affect local review and timing; Buentes said the department was issuing new templates and that BLM staff were learning how the revised process will work in practice.
No binding local action was taken; BLM staff said they will continue offering cooperating agency status on large projects and will bring more guidance as the department releases templates and answers to implementation questions.