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3/21/80 5050.4 for the conclusion. The sponsor must furnish a copy of the transcript to the FAA upon request. The responsible official shall review the written report to determine whether the action should remain a categorically excluded action or whether it appears to be covered by conditions set forth in paragraph 21, 22, or 24. 51. FAA COMPLETION OF ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT AND DECISION. a. The FAA is responsible for making the judgment, based on the environmental assessment and any other known information, of whether the action choice will be an environmental impact statement or a finding of no signif- icant impact and shall inform the sponsor of this decision. b. If no thresholds indicating the potential for significant impact are exceeded for the proposed action, the environmental assessment, when evaluated and accepted by the FAA, will have been completed. The FAA decision will be to prepare a finding of no significant impact. c. If some thresholds are exceeded, the environmental assessment may not have been completed when it is evaluated and accepted from the sponsor by the FAA, and the FAA may not be able to make a decision on the appropriate action choice until completing further evaluation and consultation. This situation may occur for two reasons. One is that a number of thresholds of significance may produce borderline cases which require further FAA evaluation, in consultation with appropriate officials having jurisdiction and expertise, in order to make a final judgment on whether impacts are significant. The second reason is that there are some consultations, such as the section 7(a) consultation under the Endangered Species Act Amendments or the consultation with the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, which are required when specific categories of impacts may be of significant concern and for which the FAA rather than the sponsor must take the lead. When enough evaluation and applicable consultations have been completed by the FAA to judge for each category of impact whether the impact is significant or not, the FAA shall complete the documentation of the environmental assessment and make its decision on the action choice. d. In order to minimize overall environmental processing time, sponsors should inform the FAA as soon as they find that their initial analysis exceeds thresholds of significance. Consultations can then be initiated without delay and advice offered on what the needs for additional information for more detailed analyses are likely to be. These further actions need not be delayed until the sponsors final submission of the environmental assessment but can be pursued simultaneously with the environmental assessment preparation. e. To assist in resolving uncertainties on whether impacts are significant, it may be prudent to initiate scoping prior to a firm final decision to prepare an environmental impact statement and prior to issuing a Notice of Intent per CEQ 1501.7. Scoping, under these circumstances, may Chap 5 Par 50 Page 61