This section of the FEDERAL REGISTER

contains documents other than rules or

proposed rules that are applicable to the

public. Notices of hearings and investigations,

committee meetings, agency decisions and

rulings, delegations of authority, filing of

petitions and applications and agency

statements of organization and functions are

examples of documents appearing in this

section.

Notices Federal Register

65493 

Vol. 76, No. 204 

Friday, October 21, 2011 

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 

Commodity Credit Corporation 

Draft Environmental Assessment; 

Giant Miscanthus in REPREVE 

Renewables, LLC Project Areas Under 

the Biomass Crop Assistance Program 

AGENCY: Commodity Credit Corporation, 

USDA. 

ACTION: Notice of availability and 

request for comments. 

SUMMARY: This notice announces the 

availability of a Draft Environmental 

Assessment (EA) for the proposed 

establishment and production of giant 

miscanthus (Miscanthus X giganteus) as 

a dedicated energy crop to be grown in 

the REPREVE Renewables, LLC (project 

sponsor) proposed project areas in 

Georgia, North Carolina and South 

Carolina as part of the Biomass Crop 

Assistance Program (BCAP). This notice 

provides a means for the public to voice 

any concerns they may have about the 

proposed BCAP project areas. 

DATES: We will consider comments that 

we receive by November 21, 2011. 

Comments submitted after this date will 

be considered to the extent possible. 

ADDRESSES: We invite you to submit 

comments on this Draft EA. In your 

comment, include the volume, date, and 

page number of this issue of the Federal 

Register. You may submit comments by 

any of the following methods: 

• Federal eRulemaking Portal: Go to 

http://www.regulations.gov. Follow the 

online instructions for submitting 

comments. 

• E-Mail: 

SEGiantMiscanthusEAComments@

intenvsol.com. 

• Fax: (972) 562–7673 ATTN: SE 

Giant Miscanthus EA Comments. 

• Mail: SE Giant Miscanthus EA 

Comments, Integrated Environmental 

Solutions, LLC, 2150 S Central Expy, 

Ste 110, McKinney, TX 75070. 

• Hand Delivery or Courier: Deliver 

comments to the above address. 

Comments may be inspected in the 

Office of the Director, CEPD, FSA, 

USDA, Room 4709 South Building, 

Washington, DC, between 8 a.m. and 

4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, 

except holidays. A copy of this notice is 

available through the FSA home page at 

http://www.fsa.usda.gov/. 

You may request copies of the draft 

EA for Giant Miscanthus by writing to: 

SE Giant Miscanthus EA Draft Request, 

Integrated Environmental Solutions, 

LLC, 2150 S Central Expy, Ste 110, 

McKinney, TX 75070. 

The draft EA can be viewed online at 

http://www.fsa.usda.gov/FSA/webapp?

area=home&subject=ecrc&topic=nepcd. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: 

Matthew Ponish, National 

Environmental Compliance Manager, 

USDA/FSA/CEPD/Stop 0513, 1400 

Independence Ave., SW., Washington, 

DC 20250–0513, phone: (202) 720–6853, 

e-mail: Matthew.Ponish@wdc.usda.gov. 

Persons with disabilities who require 

alternative means for communication 

(Braille, large print, audio tape, etc.) 

should contact the USDA Target Center 

at (202) 720–2600 (voice and TDD). 

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The 

United States Department of Agriculture 

(USDA) Commodity Credit Corporation 

(CCC) implements the Biomass Crop 

Assistance Program (BCAP). BCAP is 

authorized by Title IX of the Food, 

Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 

(the 2008 Farm Bill, Pub. L. 110–246). 

BCAP is administered by the Deputy 

Administrator for Farm Programs of the 

Farm Service Agency (FSA) on behalf of 

the CCC with the support of other 

Federal and local agencies and is 

intended to assist agricultural and forest 

land owners and operators with the 

establishment and production of eligible 

crops including woody biomass in 

selected project areas for conversion to 

bioenergy, and the collection, harvest, 

storage, and transportation of eligible 

material to designated biomass 

conversion facilities for use as heat, 

power, biobased products, or advanced 

biofuels. 

REPREVE Renewables, LLC has 

submitted a proposal to FSA to establish 

BCAP project areas in Georgia, North 

Carolina and South Carolina as part of 

BCAP. The proposal is to establish and 

produce giant miscanthus as a dedicated 

energy crop. The draft EA analyzes the 

environmental impacts of growing giant 

miscanthus in those areas. FSA will 

review comments submitted on the draft 

EA in response to this notice and use 

the additional input in developing the 

final EA and decision document about 

whether to approve the project or not. 

This notice announces the availability 

of the draft EA and the opening of the 

comment period; it does not discuss the 

contents of the draft EA. 

The EA announced in this notice is 

being prepared in accordance with the 

National Environmental Policy Act 

(NEPA, Pub. L. 91–190, 42 U.S.C. 4321– 

4347); implementing regulations 

adopted by the Council on 

Environmental Quality (CEQ) (40 CFR 

1500–1508); and FSA implementing 

regulations for NEPA compliance (7 

CFR 799). According to CEQ guidance, 

an EA is a ‘‘concise document for which 

a Federal agency is responsible that 

serves to (1) briefly provide sufficient 

evidence and analysis for determining 

whether to prepare an EIS or a finding 

of no significant impact (FONSI).’’ Since 

this document falls under the guidance 

of the BCAP Final PEIS, which was a 

broad national-level program document, 

CEQ guidance allows for ‘‘tiering.’’ CEQ 

guidance defines tiering as, ‘‘the 

coverage of general matters in broader 

EIS with subsequent narrower 

statements or environmental analyses 

incorporating by reference the general 

discussions and concentrating solely on 

the issues specific to the statement 

subsequently prepared.’’ 

On October 27, 2010, CCC published 

the Record of Decision (ROD) for the 

BCAP final PEIS (75 FR 65995–66007) 

and BCAP final rule (76 FR 66202– 

66243) in the Federal Register. As part 

of the mitigation measures detailed in 

the ROD, each project proposal is 

subject to NEPA analysis prior to 

approval of the project area proposal. 

The initial environmental evaluation of 

a project area proposal is developed 

through the completion of Forms BCAP 

19, BCAP–20, BCAP–21, and BCAP–22 

and supporting information. 

After this initial evaluation FSA can 

conclude either that: 

(1) No additional environmental 

analyses are applicable due to no 

potential for the proposed BCAP activity 

to significantly impact the environment, 

or 


sroberts on DSK5SPTVN1PROD with NOTICES
65494 Federal Register / Vol. 76, No. 204 / Friday, October 21, 2011 / Notices 

(2) Additional environmental analyses 

in the form of an EA or EIS are 

necessary, depending upon the potential 

level of significance. 

Due to inconclusive results in the 

initial environmental evaluation, FSA is 

required to do an EA to make a 

determination whether there could be 

significant environmental impacts. 

Signed on October 18, 2011. 

Carolyn B. Cooksie, 

Acting Executive Vice President, Commodity 

Credit Corporation. 

[FR Doc. 2011–27339 Filed 10–20–11; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 3410–05–P 

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE 

Submission for OMB Review; 

Comment Request 

The Department of Commerce will 

submit to the Office of Management and 

Budget (OMB) for clearance the 

following proposal for collection of 

information under the provisions of the 

Paperwork Reduction Act (44 U.S.C. 

chapter 35). 

Agency: U.S. Census Bureau. 

Title: Business R&D and Innovation 

Survey. 

Form Number(s): BRDI–1, BRDI–1A. 

OMB Control Number: 0607–0912. 

Type of Request: Revision of a 

currently approved collection. 

Burden Hours: 130,855. 

Number of Respondents: 43,000. 

Average Hours per Response: 3 hours. 

Needs and Uses: The National 

Science Foundation Act of 1950 as 

amended authorizes and directs NSF 

‘‘* * * to provide a central 

clearinghouse for the collection, 

interpretation, and analysis of data on 

scientific and engineering resources and 

to provide a source of information for 

policy formulation by other agencies of 

the Federal government.’’ The Business 

R&D and Innovation Survey (BRDIS) is 

the vehicle with which NSF carries out 

the business portion of this mandate. 

NSF together with the Census Bureau, 

the collecting and compiling agent, 

analyze the data and publish the 

resulting statistics. 

Companies are the major performers 

of research and development (R&D) in 

the United States, accounting for over 

70 percent of total U.S. R&D outlays 

each year. A consistent business R&D 

information base is essential to 

government officials formulating public 

policy, industry personnel involved in 

corporate planning, and members of the 

academic community conducting 

research. To develop policies designed 

to promote and enhance science and 

technology, past trends and the present 

status of R&D must be known and 

analyzed. Without comprehensive 

business R&D statistics, it would be 

impossible to evaluate the health of 

science and technology in the United 

States or to make comparisons between 

the technological progress of our 

country and that of other nations. 

NSF has published annual R&D 

statistics collected from the Survey of 

Industrial Research and Development 

(1953–2007) and BRDIS (2008–2010) for 

more than 50 years. The results of the 

survey are used to assess trends in R&D 

expenditures by industry sector, 

investigate productivity determinants, 

formulate science and tax policy, and 

compare individual company 

performance with industry averages. 

This survey is the Nation’s primary 

source for international comparative 

statistics on business R&D spending. 

The 2011 BRDIS will continue to 

collect the following types of 

information: 

• R&D expense based on accounting 

standards. 

• Worldwide R&D of domestic 

companies. 

• Business segment detail. 

• R&D related capital expenditures. 

• Detailed data about the R&D 

workforce. 

• R&D strategy and data on the 

potential impact of R&D on the market. 

• R&D directed to application areas of 

particular national interest. 

• Data measuring innovation, 

intellectual property protection 

activities and technology transfer. 

The following changes will be made 

to the 2011 BRDIS from the 2010 BRDIS. 

• Section 7: R&D Time Frame and 

R&D Product Life will be deleted. This 

section was only collected in 2010 at the 

request of the Bureau of Economic 

Analysis. 

• The 2011 BRDIS will only have one 

short form (BRDI–1A). The 2010 BRDIS 

included two versions of the short form 

to conduct a test on the innovation data 

collection. 

Starting in 2009, BRDIS decreased the 

number of long forms mailed from 

approximately 5,000 to 3,000. This was 

done based on a study done during the 

processing of the 2008 BRDIS pilot. The 

data showed that the imputation rate on 

the key data variables would not be 

significantly impacted by reducing the 

number of long forms for the details that 

are only collected on the long forms. 

Also, R&D activity in the U.S. is highly 

concentrated to a relatively small 

number of large firms so the potential 

benefit in the reduction of burden was 

deemed to outweigh the need to collect 

all of the detail from smaller R&D 

performing firms. 

Policy officials from many Federal 

agencies rely on these statistics for 

essential information. For example, total 

U.S. R&D expenditures statistics have 

been used by the Bureau of Economic 

Analysis (BEA) to update the System of 

National Accounts and, in fact, the BEA 

recently has established a separate R&D 

satellite account in the System. 

Accurate R&D data are needed to 

continue the development and effect 

subsequent updates to this detailed 

satellite account. Also, a data linking 

project has been designed to augment 

the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) data 

collected by BEA. The initial attempt to 

link the SIRD data with BEA’s FDI 

benchmark files was successful, and 

plans now call for the annual linkage of 

the R&D data to the Foreign Direct 

Investment (FDI) and U.S. Direct 

Investment Abroad (USDIA) data. 

Further, the Census Bureau links data 

collected by the Survey with other 

statistical files. At the Census Bureau, 

historical company-level R&D data are 

linked to a file that contains information 

on the outputs and inputs of companies’ 

manufacturing plants. Researchers are 

able to analyze the relationships 

between R&D funding and other 

economic variables by using micro-level 

data. 

Many individuals and organizations 

access the survey statistics via the 

Internet and hundreds have asked to 

have their names placed on the mailing 

list for a paper copy of the annual SRS 

InfoBrief that announces the availability 

of statistics from each cycle of the 

Survey. Information about the kinds of 

projects that rely on statistics from the 

Survey is available from internal records 

of NSF’s Division of Science Resources 

Statistics (SRS). In addition, survey 

statistics are regularly printed in trade 

publications and many researchers use 

the survey statistics from these 

secondary sources without directly 

contacting NSF or the Census Bureau. 

Affected Public: Business or other forprofit organizations. 

Frequency: Annually. 

Respondent’s Obligation: Mandatory. 

Legal Authority: Title 13 U.S.C., 

Sections 182, 224, and 225. 

OMB Desk Officer: Brian HarrisKojetin, (202) 395–7314. 

Copies of the above information 

collection proposal can be obtained by 

calling or writing Diana Hynek, 

Departmental Paperwork Clearance 

Officer, (202) 482–0266, Department of 

Commerce, Room 6616, 14th and 

Constitution Avenue, NW., Washington, 

DC 20230 (or via the Internet at 

dhynek@doc.gov). 


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