Except for proposals for legislation, environmental impact statements shall be prepared in two stages: Draft statement and final statement.

Proposed rules or guides. (1) An environmental impact statement, if deemed necessary, shall be in draft form at the time a proposed rule or guide is published in the Federal Register and shall accompany the proposal throughout the decisionmaking process.

The major decision points with respect to rules and guides are:

Preliminary formulation of a staff proposal;

The time the proposal is initially published in the Federal Register as a Commission proposal;

Presiding officer's report (in trade regulation rule proceedings);

Submission to the Commission of the staff report or recommendation for final action on the proposed guide or rule;

Final decision by the Commission. The decision on whether or not to prepare an environmental impact statement should occur at point (a)(2)(i) of this section. The publication of any draft impact statement should occur at point (a)(2)(ii) of this section. The publication of the final environmental impact statement should occur at point (a)(2)(iv) of this section.

Legislative proposals. In legislative matters, a legislative environmental impact statement shall be prepared in accordance with CEQ Regulation (40 CFR 1506.8).

In rule or guide proceedings the draft environmental impact statement shall be prepared in accordance with CEQ Regulation (40 CFR 1502.9) and shall be placed in the public record to which it pertains; in legislative matters, the legislative impact statement shall be placed in a public record to be established, containing the legislative report to which it pertains; these will be available to the public through the Office of the Secretary and will be published in full with the appropriate proposed rule, guide, or legislative report; such statements shall also be filed with the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Environmental Review (CEQ Regulation (40 CFR 1506.9)) for listing in the weekly Federal Register Notice of draft environmental impact statements, and shall be circulated, in accordance with CEQ Regulations (40 CFR 1502.19, 1506.6) to appropriate federal, state and local agencies.

Forty-five (45) days will be allowed for comment on the draft environmental impact statement, calculated from the date of publication in the EPA's weekly Federal Register list of draft environmental impact statements. The Commission may in its discretion grant such longer period as the complexity of the issues may warrant.