Surface Transportation Project Delivery Program; Arizona Department of Transportation Draft FHWA Audit Four Report

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Highway Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[FHWA Docket No. FHWA-2024-0017]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Surface Transportation Project Delivery Program; Arizona Department of Transportation Draft FHWA Audit Four Report</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice; request for comment. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21) established the Surface Transportation Project Delivery Program that allows a State to assume FHWA's environmental responsibilities for environmental review, consultation, and compliance under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for Federal highway projects. When a State assumes these Federal responsibilities, the State becomes solely responsible and liable for carrying out the responsibilities it has assumed, in lieu of FHWA. This program mandates annual audits during each of the first 4 years of State participation to ensure compliance with program requirements. This is the fourth audit of the responsibilities assigned to the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) under the Surface Transportation Project Delivery Program (NEPA Assignment Program). This notice announces and solicits comments on the fourth audit report for ADOT. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before November 27, 2024. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> To ensure that you do not duplicate your docket submissions, please submit all comments by only one of the following means: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> Go to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> and follow the online instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Docket Management Facility, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, W12-140, Washington, DC 20590. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery:</E> West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. The telephone number is (202) 366-9329. • <E T="03">Instructions:</E> You must include the agency name and docket number at the beginning of your comments. All comments received will be posted without change to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Owen Lindauer, Ph.D., RPA, Office of Project Development and Environmental Review, (202) 633-0356, <E T="03">owen.lindauer@dot.gov,</E> Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE., Washington, DC 20590, or Mr. Silvio J. Morales, Office of the Chief Counsel, (202) 366-1345, <E T="03">silvio.morales@dot.gov,</E> Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE., Washington, DC 20590. Office hours are from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., EST, Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Electronic Access</HD> An electronic copy of this notice may be downloaded from the specific docket page at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The Surface Transportation Project Delivery Program, codified at 23 United States Code (U.S.C.) 327, commonly known as the NEPA Assignment Program, allows a State to assume FHWA's environmental responsibilities for review, consultation, and compliance for Federal-aid highway projects. When a State assumes these Federal responsibilities, the State becomes solely liable for carrying out the responsibilities it has assumed, in lieu of FHWA. The ADOT published its application for NEPA assumption on June 29, 2018, and solicited public comment. After considering public comments, ADOT submitted its application to FHWA on November 16, 2018. The application served as the basis for developing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that identifies the responsibilities and obligations that ADOT would assume. The FHWA published a notice of the draft MOU in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on February 11, 2019, at 84 FR 3275, with a 30-day comment period to solicit the views of the public and Federal Agencies. After the close of the comment period, FHWA and ADOT considered comments and proceeded to execute the MOU. Effective April 16, 2019, ADOT assumed FHWA's responsibilities under NEPA, and the responsibilities for other Federal environmental laws described in the MOU. Section 327(g) of title 23, U.S.C., requires the Secretary to conduct annual audits to ensure compliance with the MOU during each of the first 4 years of State participation and, after the fourth year, monitor compliance. The FHWA must make the results of each audit available for public comment. The audit report reflects the findings at the time of the review and does not capture specific actions taken after the review. This notice announces and solicits comments on the fourth audit report for ADOT. <E T="03">Authority:</E> Section 1313 of Public Law 112-141; section 6005 of Public Law 109-59; 23 U.S.C. 327; 23 CFR 773. <SIG> <NAME>Kristin R. White,</NAME> Acting Administrator, Federal Highway Administration. </SIG> <EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Surface Transportation Project Delivery Program Draft FHWA Audit #4 of the Arizona Department of Transportation</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Executive Summary</HD> This is Audit #4 of the Arizona Department of Transportation's (ADOT) assumption of National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) responsibilities under the Surface Transportation Project Delivery Program. Under the authority of 23 U.S.C. 327, ADOT and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) executed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on April 16, 2019, to define ADOT's NEPA responsibilities and liabilities for Federal-aid highway projects and other related environmental reviews for highway projects in Arizona. This MOU covers environmental review responsibilities for projects that require the preparation of environmental assessments (EA), environmental impact statements (EIS), and unlisted (identified as individual by ADOT) categorical exclusions (CE). The FHWA conducted the fourth audit of ADOT's performance according to the terms of the MOU from March 27 to March 31, 2023. Prior to the audit, the FHWA audit team reviewed ADOT's environmental manuals and procedures, NEPA project files, ADOT's response to FHWA's pre-audit information request (PAIR), and ADOT's NEPA Assignment Self-Assessment Report. During the fourth audit, the audit team conducted interviews with staff from ADOT's Office of Environmental Planning (EP), Civil Rights Office (CRO), Construction Districts, Right-of-Way, Alternative Delivery Group, and the Deputy Director, as well as the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO), the Arizona State Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO), and the Arizona Attorney General's Office (AGO) and prepared preliminary audit results. The audit team presented these preliminary results to ADOT EP leadership on March 30, 2023, and to ADOT leadership on April 7, 2023. The audit team found that ADOT has carried out the responsibilities it assumed consistent with the terms of the MOU and ADOT's application. The ADOT continues to develop, revise, and implement procedures and processes required to deliver its NEPA Assignment Program. This report describes several general observations and successful practices, as well as identified non-compliance observations where ADOT must implement corrective actions pursuant to MOU Part 13.2.2. This report concludes with the status of FHWA's observations from the third audit review. After the fourth year of ADOT's participation in the program, FHWA will continue to monitor ADOT's compliance with the terms of this MOU, in accordance with 23 U.S.C. 327(h). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The purpose of the audits performed under the authority of 23 U.S.C. 327 is to assess a State's compliance with the provisions of the MOU as well as all applicable Federal statutes, regulations, policies, and guidance. The FHWA's review and oversight obligation entails the need to collect information to evaluate the success of the NEPA Assignment Program; to evaluate a State's progress toward achieving its performance measures as specified in the MOU; and to collect information for the administration of the NEPA Assignment Program. This report summarizes the results of the fourth audit in Arizona and ADOT's progress towards meeting the program review objectives identified in the MOU. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope and Methodology</HD> The overall scope of this audit review is defined both in statute (23 U.S.C. 327) and the MOU (Part 11). The definition of an audit is one where an independent, unbiased body makes an official and careful examination and verification of accounts and records. Auditors who have special training with regard to accounts or financial records may follow a prescribed process or methodology in conducting an audit of those processes or methods. The FHWA considers its review to meet the definition of an audit because it is an unbiased, independent, official, and careful examination and verification of records and information about ADOT's assumption of environmental responsibilities. The audit team consisted of NEPA subject matter experts from FHWA Headquarters, Resource Center, Office of the Chief Counsel, and staff from FHWA's Arizona Division. This audit is an unbiased official action taken by FHWA, which included an audit team of diverse composition, and followed an established process for developing the review report and publishing it in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . The audit tea ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 49k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━