Department of the Interior December 19, 2016 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

We (National Park Service, NPS) will ask the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to approve the information collection (IC) described below. As required by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 and as part of our continuing efforts to reduce paperwork and respondent burden, we invite the general public and other Federal agencies to take this opportunity to comment on this IC. This IC is scheduled to expire on July 31, 2017. We may not conduct or sponsor and a person is not required to respond to a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number.

Through this final rule the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is amending its regulations governing rights-of-way issued under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) and the Mineral Leasing Act (MLA). The principal purposes of these amendments are to facilitate responsible solar and wind energy development on BLM-managed public lands and to ensure that the American taxpayer receives fair market value for such development. This final rule includes provisions to promote the use of preferred areas for solar and wind energy development, called ``designated leasing areas'' (DLAs). It builds upon existing regulations and policies to expand BLM's ability to utilize competitive processes to offer authorizations for development inside or outside of DLAs. It also addresses the appropriate terms and conditions (including payment and bonding requirements) for solar and wind energy development rights-of-way issued under the regulations. Finally, the rule makes technical changes, corrections, and clarifications to the existing rights-of-way regulations. Some of these changes affect all rights-of-way, while some provisions affect only specific rights-of- way, such as those for transmission lines with a capacity of 100 kilovolts (kV) or more.