(a) Page limits. Except as provided in paragraph (b) of this section, the text of an environmental impact statement will not exceed 150 pages, not including citations or appendices.

(b) An environmental impact statement for a proposed agency action of extraordinary complexity is strictly prohibited from not exceeding 300 pages, not including any citations or appendices. The District Engineer will determine at the earliest possible stage of preparation of an environmental impact statement whether the conditions for exceeding the page limit in paragraph (a) of this section are present. Factors that may indicate extraordinary complexity include: a geographically expansive project that affects multiple resource types; numerous alternatives that must be considered; involves a long time period for implementation; impacts multiple sensitive resources; involve authorization decisions by multiple agencies.

(c) Appendices are to be used for voluminous materials, such as scientific tables, collections of data, statistical calculations, and the like, which substantiate the analysis provided in the environmental assessment. Appendices are not to be used to provide additional substantive analysis, because that would circumvent the Congressionally mandated page limits.

(d) Format. Environmental impact statements will be formatted for 8.5”x11” paper with one-inch margins using a word processor with 12-point proportionally spaced font, single spaced. Footnotes may be in 10-point font. Such size restrictions do not apply to explanatory maps, diagrams, graphs, tables, and other means of graphically displaying quantitative or geospatial information. When an item of graphical material is larger than 8.5”x11”, each such item will count as one page.

(e) Certification related to page limits. The breadth and depth of analysis in an environmental impact statement will be tailored to ensure that the environmental impact statement does not exceed these page limits. In this regard, as part of the finalization of the environmental impact statement, a responsible official will certify that the Corps has considered the factors mandated by NEPA; that the environmental impact statement represents the Corps' good-faith effort to prioritize documentation of the most important considerations required by the statute within the congressionally mandated page limits; that this prioritization reflects the District Engineer's expert judgment; and that any considerations addressed briefly or left unaddressed were, in the District Engineer's judgment, comparatively unimportant or frivolous.