The Proposed Stimulus Package, Environmental Impact Assessment, and Cultural Resource Management
Thomas F. King: January 17, 2009
Introduction
As of January 15, 2009, we began to get a reasonably clear view of what the Obama Administration is proposing as a package of programs to stimulate the staggering economy. The package, as outlined in a paper entitled “Summary: American Recovery and Reinvestment” issued on the 14th, includes quite a number of projects and programs that could have negative effects on the human environment, both natural and cultural. This is not to say that they are not good programs and projects – only that like most things we do, they may do injury to some aspect of the environment.
For several decades we have had laws requiring that the environmental impacts of federal proposals be reviewed in an orderly manner, so that they can be lessened if feasible, sometimes avoided altogether, or at least accepted with full knowledge of what we are doing. Notable among these laws are the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA). Compliance with NEPA is a type of environmental impact assessment (EIA); EIA is conducted by governments and international bodies throughout the world in an effort to control environmental damage. Compliance with Section 106 of NHPA is an important aspect of what is commonly referred to as cultural resource management (CRM) – assessing and controlling impacts on the historic and other cultural aspects of the environment.
As discussed in my forthcoming book, Our Unprotected Heritage (Left Coast Press 2009), neither EIA nor CRM is performed very well in this country, but their performance is nevertheless a suggestion that project proponents and overseers have given some thought to the impacts of their actions. Such thought-giving takes a certain amount of time; it commonly requires some study, and it should (though seldom does) involve good-faith consultation with affected parties.
Whenever the federal government proposes a new program, a new infusion of money into society, there is the danger that the time will not be taken to give the impacts of the program the consideration that caution and discretion commend. This can have costly, damaging results. This danger is exacerbated when it is perceived, rightly or wrongly, that the money must be spent quickly.
As a long-term practitioner of EIA and CRM, I thought it might be useful, both to me and to interested colleagues, to go through the proposed stimulus package piece by piece and speculate about where problems are and are not likely to arise between implementing its terms and protection of the human environment. In doing so, below, I do not pretend to offer judgments about the appropriateness of the package’s components. I merely apply my knowledge of how the EIA/CRM systems have worked in the past, in an effort to be forewarned about where problems may arise in the near future as the stimulus package goes into effect.
Below, each “item” is derived verbatim (though with explanatory material and some lengthy descriptions of low potential impact programs deleted in many cases) from the summary paper alluded to above. Each “item” is followed by my assessment of the likelihood that it will present conflicts with protection of the natural and cultural environment, sometimes with brief elaboration on the kinds of conflicts I anticipate. What to do about these conflicts will be the subject of a subsequent paper, assuming I come up with any good ideas.
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Item: Reliable, Efficient Electricity Grid: $11 billion for research and development, pilot projects, and federal matching funds for the Smart Grid Investment Program
My assessment: There is a tendency to think that “green” projects are by definition “clean” projects that have no environmental impacts. Of course, this is by no means true, but such projects often get “fast-tracked” through EIA/CRM review, without full consideration of impacts, mitigation measures, and alternatives that would reduce impacts. One result of this is unnecessary damage to the environment; another can be costly last-minute delays when some serious impact is identified too late to be dealt with effectively and too dramatically to be ignored. To the extent the projects financed by this part of the program may disturb the land, buildings, viewscapes, or neighborhoods, or introduce visual, auditory, or other elements into the environment, and to the extent they haven’t been subjected to thorough, systematic, professionally responsible and transparent EIA/CRM review, they may produce a high level of conflict and damage.
Item: Renewable Energy Loan Guarantees: $8 billion for loans for renewable energy power generation and transmission projects.
My assessment: May be a particular problem because loan guarantees are subjected at best to rather sporadic EIA/CRM review. It is easy to imagine last-minute unanticipated conflicts.
Item: GSA Federal Buildings: $6.7 billion for renovations and repairs to federal buildings including at least $6 billion focused on increasing energy efficiency and conservation.
My assessment: The quality of GSA EIA/CRM historically is rather mixed, but GSA has a high level of expertise in building management and rehabilitation, so my guess is that these projects will mostly present few problems.
Item: Local Government Energy Efficiency Block Grants: $6.9 billion to help state and local governments make investments that make them more energy efficient and reduce carbon emissions.
My assessment: Block grants historically have not been subjected to federal EIA and CRM review. Whether this is good policy is debatable, but it does eliminate the potential for much technical conflict with federal EIA and CRM laws.
Item: Energy Efficiency Housing Retrofits: $2.5 billion for a new program to upgrade HUD sponsored low-income housing to increase energy efficiency, including new insulation, windows, and furnaces. Funds will be competitively awarded.
My assessment: HUD has a relatively abysmal record of EIA/CRM review, and things like window replacement are historically problematic in terms of impacts on historic buildings. My guess is that most individual projects will be of sufficiently small scale as to be non-controversial, but at minimum I’d expect a fair amount of unnecessary damage to historic buildings and neighborhoods.
Item: Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Research: $2 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy research, development, demonstration, and deployment activities to foster energy independence, reduce carbon emissions, and cut utility bills. Funds are awarded on a competitive basis to universities, companies, and national laboratories.
My assessment: Much as with the housing retrofit projects, the problems with things like demonstration projects and “deployment activities” are likely to fly below the radar of public controversy over environmental impacts. Such impacts will probably occur, but be ignored unless a university, company or national lab that fails to get funds chooses to use the EIA/CRM laws to challenge a project that IS funded.
Item: Advanced Battery Loans and Grants: $2 billion for the Advanced Battery Loan Guarantee and Grants Program, to support U.S. manufacturers of advanced vehicle batteries and battery systems.
My assessment: EIA/CRM issues might arise around the manufacture of batteries, acquisition of raw materials, and disposal of wastes, but my guess is that these will be relatively rare and controllable.
Item: Home Weatherization: $6.2 billion to help low-income families reduce their energy costs by weatherizing their homes and make our country more energy efficient.
My assessment: Same potential problems as with HUD housing retrofits. A lot will depend on how the money is distributed, and by what agencies.
Item: Smart Appliances: $300 million to provide consumers with rebates for buying energy efficient Energy Star products to replace old appliances, which will lower energy bills.
My assessment: Probably not a problem.
Item: GSA Federal Fleet: $600 million to replace older vehicles owned by the federal government with alternative fuel automobiles that will save on fuel costs and reduce carbon emissions.
My assessment: Probably not a problem.
Item: Electric Transportation: $200 million for a new grant program to encourage electric vehicle technologies.
My assessment: To the extent this mostly stimulates research in existing labs and factories, probably not a problem.
Item: Cleaning Fossil Energy: $2.4 billion for carbon capture and sequestration technology demonstration projects.
My assessment: To the extent this finances modifications to existing power plants and research in laboratories, probably not a problem except to the extent it fosters a continuing reliance on coal, and hence on mining with all its adverse environmental effects.
Item: Department of Defense Research: $350 million for research into using renewable energy to power weapons systems and military bases.
My assessment: The military services have relatively robust, if not always very efficient or transparent, EIA/CRM systems, and the funding proposed here won’t support much, so I would anticipate few problems.
Item: Alternative Buses and Trucks: $400 million to help state and local governments purchase efficient alternative fuel vehicles to reduce fuel costs and carbon emissions.
My assessment: Probably few problems.
Item: Industrial Energy Efficiency: $500 million for energy efficient manufacturing demonstration projects.
My assessment: To the extent this involves upgrading the efficiency of existing factories, probably few problems.
Item: Diesel Emissions Reduction: $300 million for grants and loans to state and local governments for projects that reduce diesel emissions.
My assessment: Probably few problems, but the description is too vague to allow much confidence.
Item: Wireless and Broadband Grants: $6 billion for broadband and wireless services in underserved areas.
My assessment: Probably not a problem except to the extent it results in expansion of fiber-optic networks that require trenching and other potentially environmentally damaging activities. These are usually small-scale impacts, however, which should be fairly easily handled IF they are identified in a timely manner.
Item: National Science Foundation: $3 billion, including … $400 million to build major research facilities that perform cutting edge science, $300 million for major research equipment shared by institutions of higher education and other scientists, (and) $200 million to repair and modernize science and engineering research facilities.
My assessment: NSF, probably because it assumes that whatever it does is “good,” has a rotten track record in EIA/CRM. Wherever NSF funds new construction or renovation, there is the potential for unconsidered EIA/CRM conflicts. The rest of the $3 billion is to be allocated to relatively innocuous activities that should have few if any impacts.
Item: National Institutes of Health Biomedical Research: $2 billion, including $1.5 billion for …biomedical research… and $500 million to implement the repair and improvement strategic plan developed by the NIH for its campuses.
My assessment: No likely problems except with the $500 million campus upgrade – which also may not be a problem IF the strategic plan has been subjected to responsible EIA/CRM. This is by no means assured, however.
Item: University Research Facilities: $1.5 billion for NIH to renovate university research facilities and help them compete for biomedical research grants.
My assessment: Universities are well known for their insensitivity to some EIA/CRM issues, notably historic preservation and respect for neighborhoods surrounding university campuses. To the extent this program funds improvements to existing facilities, the problems will probably be minimal, but new construction could trigger serious conflicts.
Item: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: $462 million to enable CDC to complete its Buildings and Facilities Master Plan, as well as renovations and construction needs of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
My assessment: The potential for conflict depends on whether and how well the Master Plan and NIOSH construction plans have been subjected to responsible EIA/CRM review.
Item: Department of Energy: $1.9 billion for basic research into the physical sciences
My assessment: To the extent this supports research in existing labs, probably few problems.
Item: NASA: $600 million, including $400 (for) climate change research, $150 million for research, development, and demonstration to improve aviation safety and Next Generation air traffic control (NextGen); and $50 million to repair NASA centers damaged by hurricanes and floods last year.
My assessment: NASA is another “good” agency with a rotten record of EIA/CRM review, but to the extent this funding supports research with existing facilities and spacecraft, it should produce few problems.
Item: Biomedical Advanced Research and Development, Pandemic Flu, and Cyber Security: $900 million to prepare for a pandemic influenza.
My assessment: Probably no problems.
Item: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Satellites and Sensors: $600 million for satellite development and acquisitions, including climate sensors and climate modeling.
My assessment: Probably no problems.
Item: National Institute of Standards and Technology: $300 million for competitive construction grants for research science buildings at colleges, universities, and other research organizations…
My assessment: The proposed grant recipients typically do a bad job of considering EIA/CRM issues, and NIST has little or no experience with EIA/CRM. As a result there may well be conflicts, though the program is small enough that it will probably result in a lot of relatively small grants with low potential for impacts.
Item: Agricultural Research Service: $209 million for agricultural research facilities across the country.
My assessment: This money will apparently be used mostly to correct problems arising from deferred maintenance on existing facilities, so probably won’t present many problems.
Item: U.S. Geological Survey: $200 million to repair and modernize U.S.G.S. science facilities and equipment.
My assessment: A pretty small program, probably little potential for problems.
Item: Small Business Credit: $430 million for new direct lending and loan guarantee authorities.
My assessment: Will probably finance some environmentally damaging activities, but SBA has mostly gotten away without much if any EIA/CRM review in the past, and will probably continue to do so.
Item: Rural Business-Cooperative Service: $100 million for rural business grants and loans to guarantee $2 billion in loans for rural businesses.
My assessment: “Rural businesses” like industrial agriculture can have a wide range of environmental impacts, which tend to be rather poorly managed, so the potential for uncontrolled environmental impact by this program is probably high, but the potential for controversy and conflict is probably low because such impacts tend to occur where no one is really watching.
Item: Industrial Technology Services: $100 million, including $70 million for the Technology Innovation Program to accelerate research in potentially revolutionary technologies … and $30 million for the Manufacturing Extension Partnerships to help small and mid-size manufacturers compete globally by providing them with access to technology.
My assessment: Probably no problem.
Item: Economic Development Assistance: $250 million to address long-term economic distress in urban industrial cores and rural areas. EDA leverages $10 in private investments for $1 in federal funds.
My assessment: A small program with big potential impacts on the environment because of its leveraging effects. To the extent projects it funds get EIA/CRM attention at all, they are likely to raise contentious issues concerning the extent to which the federal tail can wag the dog of a mostly non-federal development project.
Item: DTV Conversion Coupons: $650 million to continue the coupon program to enable American households to convert from analog television transmission to digital transmission.
My assessment: No problem except what’s going to happen to all those old TVs?
Item: Highway Infrastructure: $30 billion for highway and bridge construction projects.
My assessment: In an informal poll of state department of transportation (DOT) environmental staff, most reported that they had plenty of “shovel-ready” projects that had completed EIA/CRM review, but in some states (notably in the south) it appears that EIA/CRM review is not initiated until federal funds are in hand. A project in this condition shouldn’t be regarded as “shovel-ready,” but many probably will be, and could present serious conflicts if environmental and cultural resource issues arise at the “last minute.” There is also the question of the quality of the EIA/CRM work done on some ostensibly shovel-ready projects, particularly where such work was done either long ago or in the latter part of the Bush administration, during which EIA/CRM standards tended to be relaxed throughout the government.
Item: Transit New Construction: $1 billion for Capital Investment Grants for new commuter rail or other light rail systems to increase public use of mass transit and to speed projects already in construction.
My assessment: This will apparently be a Federal Transit Administration program; FTA’s handling of EIA/CRM matters tends to be pretty flaccid, so the potential for unresolved impacts and conflicts is probably pretty high.
Item: Transit Upgrades and Repair: $2 billion to modernize existing transit systems, including renovations to stations, security systems, computers, equipment, structures, signals, and communications. Funds will be distributed through the existing formula.
My assessment: Fairly high likelihood of impacts on historic rail facilities, stations, etc., which have probably not been thoroughly assessed.
Item: Transit Capital Assistance: $6 billion to purchase buses and equipment needed to increase public transportation and improve intermodal and transit facilities.
My assessment: Probably little danger of problems.
Item: Amtrak and Intercity Passenger Rail Construction Grants: $1.1 billion to improve the speed and capacity of intercity passenger rail service.
My assessment: May be some conflicts with historic facilities along Northeast Corridor, but such facilities are relatively well known, so there shouldn’t be a lot of unexpected problems.
Item: Transportation Security Administration Explosive Detection Systems: $500 million to install Aviation Explosive Detection Systems in the nation’s airports:
My assessment: Little danger of problems.
Item: Coast Guard Bridges: $150 million for ready-to-go investments to repair or remove bridges deemed hazardous to marine navigation.
My assessment: Depends on what the Coast Guard means by “ready-to-go.” If achieving this happy state includes completing responsible EIA/CRM work, there should be few problems, but this may be a big “if.”
Item: Social Security Administration Modernization: $400 million to replace the 30 year old Social Security Administration’s National Computer Center.
My assessment: Depends on whether this involves new construction or just upgrading equipment. New construction could present problems, but assuming that GSA will do the modernizing, there’s a reasonable chance that EIA/CRM issues are under control.
Item: Farm Service Agency: $245 million for critical IT improvements to systems that have been unable to handle workload increases.
My assessment: Probably not a problem.
Item: State Department Technology: $276 million to upgrade and modernize information technology platform.
My assessment: Probably not a problem.
Item: Department of Agriculture: $44 million for repairs and security improvements at USDA’s headquarters.
My assessment: My impression is that this project has been on GSA’s books for years, so EIA/CRM issues are probably under control.
Item: DOD Medical Facilities: $3.75 billion for new construction of hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers, and $455 million in renovations.
My assessment: Lots of potential for environmental/cultural impacts, but there is a fairly good chance that DOD has completed a responsible program of EIA/CRM, albeit perhaps with little public involvement.
Item: Facilities Renovations: $2.1 billion to address needed repairs to military facilities.
My assessment: Same as above, and special potential for problems if any renovations are to be carried out overseas, where pertinent US EIA/CRM laws have limited applicability.
Item: Troop Housing: $1.2 billion for new construction and $154 million for renovations to improve housing for our troops.
My assessment: Same as above.
Item: Child Development Center: $360 million for new child development centers.
My assessment: Same as above.
Item: Guard and Reserve: $400 million for new construction to support Guard and Reserve units across the country with operations and training facilities and utilities infrastructure.
My assessment: Same as above, with complications arising from likely questions about the relationship between federal and state programs/responsibilities/authorities.
Item: Veterans Medical Facilities: $950 million for veterans’ medical facilities.
My assessment: VA is playing catch up on its EIA/CRM responsibilities, toward which it has not very vigorously applied itself in the past. I anticipate serious conflicts here. In the interests of full disclosure, the reader should know that I am under contract to assist VA with resolving some existing CRM problems.
Item: Veterans Cemeteries: $50 million to put people to work making monument and memorial repairs at cemeteries.
My assessment: Depends on whether we’re talking here about literally just fixing monuments and memorials, which should have pretty limited impacts, or whether VA will include more extensive renovation/expansion of cemeteries. The latter could create serious impacts and controversies.
Item: Border Ports of Entry: $1.15 billion to construct GSA and Customs and Border Patrol land ports.
My assessment: This has been a GSA priority for some years, and it’s likely that some kind of EIA/CRM review has been completed on each project. Whether it’s been done well is another matter.
Item: Job Corps Facilities: $300 million to upgrade job training facilities serving at-risk youth while improving energy efficiency.
My assessment: Depends substantially on what agency will do the upgrading, but in any event we’re probably looking at relatively minor changes to existing facilities, so the problems may be limited.
Item: Construction on Public Lands and Parks: $1.8 billion for the National Park Service, $325 million for the Bureau of Land Management, $300 million for the National Wildlife Refuges and National Fish Hatcheries, and $650 million for the Forest Service.
My assessment: A good deal of potential for poorly defined and controlled impacts on the environment, both natural and cultural. Though NPS, BLM, FWS and FS have fairly robust programs of EIA/CRM, all have deteriorated in recent years, and have suffered from ill-advised though understandable efforts to “streamline” review in ways that have tended to reduce comprehensiveness and transparency.
Item: National Treasures: $400 million, including $200 million to address the deterioration of the National Mall; $150 million to address the repair backlog at the Smithsonian; and $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts.
My assessment: National Mall repairs have almost surely undergone extensive review by a variety of planning bodies, so probably present few problems. The Smithsonian insists that it is not a federal agency whenever it is urged to comply with federal EIA/CRM laws, so the likelihood of undefined and very much unresolved conflicts over Smithsonian repairs may be high (depending on the scale and character of the repairs). NEA may have sporadic impacts on the environment, which almost certainly have not been properly identified and addressed.
Item: Clean Water State Revolving Fund: $6 billion for loans to help communities upgrade wastewater treatment systems.
My assessment: Considerable potential for impacts through improvement/extension of wastewater facilities. No idea to what extent the projects likely to be funded have undergone EIA/CRM review.
Item: Drinking Water State Revolving Fund: $2 billion for loans for drinking water infrastructure.
My assessment: Same as above.
Item: Rural Water and Waste Disposal: $1.5 billion to support $3.8 billion in grants and loans to help communities fund drinking water and wastewater treatment systems.
My assessment: Same as above.
Item: Corps of Engineers: $4.5 billion for environmental restoration, flood protection, hydropower, and navigation infrastructure critical to the economy.
My assessment: The Civil Works side of the Corps has a well-developed EIA/CRM program (as opposed to the Regulatory side, which is a poster child for mindless pseudo-compliance with EIA/CRM laws). I would not anticipate many problems with these projects.
Item: Bureau of Reclamation: $500 million to provide clean, reliable drinking water to rural areas and to ensure adequate water supply to western localities impacted by drought.
My assessment: Essentially the same as the various EPA water and wastewater programs.
Item: Watershed Infrastructure: $400 million for the Natural Resources Conservation Service watershed improvement programs to design and build flood protection and water quality projects, repair aging dams, and purchase and restore conservation easements in river flood zones.
My assessment: If these projects are parts of an NRCS backlog, they have probably undergone some level of EIA/CRM review, but my impression is that the quality of such review varies widely from area to area. My guess is that there will be few problems as the result of such a small infusion of money, however.
Item: International Boundary and Water Commission: $224 million to repair flood control systems along the international segment of the Rio Grande damaged by hurricane Katrina and other serious storms.
My assessment: Probably under control, particularly assuming FEMA involvement.
Item: Superfund Hazardous Waste Cleanup: $800 million to clean up hazardous and toxic waste sites that threaten health and the environment.
My assessment: Serious potential for destructive, costly, controversial conflicts. EPA (at least half the time) argues that it need not comply with EIA/CRM laws when it does Superfund cleanup, because the law (CERCLA) ostensibly exempts the agency from such laws. This is hardly true, but the law (CERCLA) is inartfully written, and EPA pretty regularly gets away without considering environmental impacts, or with considering them in very strange, usually highly inefficient, ineffective, and opaque ways. I seriously doubt if many projects to be funded out of this (admittedly small) pot have been responsibly subjected to EIA/CRM review. The organization Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) has recently presented evidence of the damage EPA is doing to EPA’s Inspector General, requesting review. PEER’s arguments appear to me to be well founded.
Item: Leaking Underground Storage Tanks: $200 million for enforcement and cleanup of petroleum leaks from underground storage tanks at approximately 1,600 additional sites.
My assessment: Most of the projects that will be funded probably present few problems, but I question how well they have been examined for environmental and cultural resource impacts.
Item: Nuclear Waste Cleanup: $500 million for nuclear waste cleanup at sites contaminated as a result of the nation’s past nuclear activities.
My assessment: The Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission routinely carry out what they interpret as EIA/CRM review, but it tends to be minimalist and hampered by over-lawyerly interpretations of their responsibilities. Such a small infusion of money will probably not make things notably worse than they are already, however.
Item: Closed Military Bases: $300 million for cleanup activities at closed military installations allowing local communities to redevelop these properties for productive use.
My assessment: Cleanup per se is probably not a serious issue, though the uses that may be allowed as a result may be another matter.
Item: NOAA Habitat Restoration: $400 million for ready-to-go habitat restoration projects.
My assessment: Depends on what “ready-to-go” means to NOAA.
Item: Brownfields: $100 million for competitive grants for evaluation and cleanup of former industrial and commercial sites.
My assessment: Some such sites are historically and archaeologically important, and some doubtless have other environmental values. EPA tends to be reluctant to acknowledge that its environmental improvement activities could have environmental impacts, so I would anticipate at least some problems with these projects.
Item: Reducing Wildfires Threats: $850 million for hazardous fuels removal and other efforts to prevent wildfires on public lands.
My assessment: Depends on what’s meant by “hazardous fuels removal” and “other efforts.” Recalling the Bush administration’s oxymoronic “healthy forests” initiative, I would recommend caution in accepting any Forest Service assurance that a fuels reduction project is environmentally benign.
Item: Bureau of Indian Affairs: $500 million to address maintenance backlogs at schools, dams, detention and law enforcement facilities, and over 24,000 miles of roads.
My assessment: BIA has an at-best mixed record of compliance with EIA/CRM legal requirements, and lately has not even done much of a job of consulting tribes in the course of such compliance. Many BIA facilities are historic, and programs like roads improvement have obvious potential impacts on the environment. I would anticipate problems, but they will probably be covered up.
Item: School Construction: $20 billion, including $14 billion for K-12 and $6 billion for higher education, for renovation and modernization, including technology upgrades and energy efficiency improvements.
My assessment: Funds will probably be distributed through the Deparment of Education, whose knowledge of and involvement with EIA/CRM requirements are very, very thin. Lots of potential for mistakes, screw-ups both technical and substantive. Lots of school buildings are eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, so federally funded changes are subject to review under Section 106 of NHPA. I expect that money will go from DoEd to state education departments, and thence to school districts, none of whom will know the National Register from the Federal Register. The result will be that worthy and politically powerful projects will get hung up at the 11th hour when somebody discovers Section 106 and decides to ask the State Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO) about it. SHPOs will take the blame for delaying such projects (or they’ll duck).
Item: Education Technology: $1 billion for 21st century classrooms, including computer and science labs and teacher technology training.
My assessment: To some extent, same problem as above, though much less serious.
Item: Pell Grants: $15.6 billion to increase the maximum Pell Grant by $500, from $4,850 to $5,350.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: College Work-Study: $490 million to support undergraduate and graduate students who work.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Student Loan Limit Increase: Increases limits on unsubsidized Stafford loans by $2,000.
My assessment: No problem
Item: Student Aid Administration: $50 million to help the Department of Education administer surging student aid programs.
My assessment: No problem
Item: IDEA Special Education: $13 billion for formula grants to increase the federal share of special education costs and prevent these mandatory costs from forcing states to cut other areas of education.
My assessment: Probably little or no problem, except where these programs require new construction or major renovation of classrooms and other facilities.
Item: Title I Help for Disadvantaged Kids: $13 billion for grants to help disadvantaged kids in nearly every school district and more than half of all public schools reach high academic standards.
My assessment: Same as above.
Item: Statewide Data Systems: $250 million for competitive grants to states to design and develop data systems that analyze individual student data to find ways to improve student achievement.
My assessment: Probably no problem.
Item: Education for Homeless Children and Youth: $66 million for formula grants to states to provide services to homeless children including meals and transportation.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Improving Teacher Quality: $300 million, including $200 million for competitive grants to school districts and states to provide financial incentives for teachers and principals
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Child Care Development Block Grant: $2 billion to provide child care services .
My assessment: No problem and because these are block grants, they are unlikely to be subjected to EIA/CRM review anyway.
Item: Head Start: $2.1 billion to provide comprehensive development services to help 110,000 additional children succeed in school.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: IDEA Infants and Families: $600 million for formula grants to help states serve children with disabilities age 2 and younger.
My assessment: Could present ADA-like conflicts between accessibility and historic facilities. With experience gained in over a quarter-century’s work with ADA, these shouldn’t be difficult to resolve.
Item: Health Information Technology: $20 billion to jumpstart efforts to computerize health records to cut costs and reduce medical errors.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Prevention and Wellness Fund: $3 billion to fight preventable chronic diseases, the leading cause of deaths in the U.S., and infectious diseases.
My assessment: Probably no problem.
Item: Healthcare Effectiveness Research: $1.1 billion for Healthcare Research and Quality programs to compare the effectiveness of different medical treatments funded by Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Community Health Centers: $1.5 billion, including $500 million to increase the number of uninsured Americans who receive quality healthcare and $1 billion to renovate clinics and make health information technology improvements.
My assessment: Could be conflicts where new construction and renovation are proposed. Very unlikely that such proposals have undergone EIA/CRM review. Conflicts will probably mostly go unnoticed, however.
Item: Training Primary Care Providers: $600 million to address shortages and prepare our country for universal healthcare by training primary healthcare providers including doctors, dentists, and nurses as well as helping pay medical school expenses for students who agree to practice in underserved communities through the National Health Service Corps.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Indian Health Service Facilities: $550 million to modernize aging hospitals and health clinics and make healthcare technology upgrades to improve healthcare for underserved rural populations.
My assessment: Conflicts likely where aging hospitals and health clinics are historic, or hospital administrators get carried away with enlargement plans, but this is a pretty small program so problems are unlikely.
Item: Training and Employment Services: $4 billion for job training including formula grants for adult, dislocated worker, and youth services (including $1.2 billion to create up to one million summer jobs for youth).
My assessment: No problem, some opportunity (priority is to be given to training for “green” jobs).
Item: Vocational Rehabilitation State Grants: $500 million for state formula grants for construction and rehabilitation of facilities to help persons with disabilities prepare for gainful employment.
My assessment: Some potential for conflicts similar to those generated by ADA. Few if any proposed projects have probably undergone EIA/CRM review.
Item: Employment Services Grants: $500 million to match unemployed individuals to job openings through state employment service agencies and allow states to provide customized services.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Community Service Employment for Older Americans: $120 million to provide subsidized community service jobs to an additional 24,000 low-income older Americans.
My assessment: No problem, potential opportunity to employ older Americans in environmental and historic preservation work.
Item: Unemployment Insurance Benefits Extension: $27 billion to continue the current extended unemployment benefits program – which provides up to 33 weeks of extended benefits - through December 31, 2009 given rising unemployment.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Increased Benefits: $9 billion to increase the current average unemployment insurance benefit from roughly $300 per week, paid out of State trust funds, by $25 per week using Federal funds, through December 2009.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Unemployment Insurance Modernization: Provides funds to states though a “Reed Act” distribution, tied to states’ meeting specific reforms to increase unemployment insurance coverage for low-wage, part-time, and other jobless workers.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: COBRA Healthcare for the Unemployed: $30.3 billion to extend health insurance coverage to the unemployed.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Medicaid Coverage for the Unemployed: $8.6 billion to provide 100 percent Federal funding through 2010 for optional State Medicaid coverage of individuals (and their dependents) who are involuntarily unemployed and whose family income does not exceed a State-determined level, but is no higher than 200 percent of poverty, or who are receiving food stamps.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Public Housing Capital Fund: $5 billion for building repair and modernization, including critical safety repairs.
My assessment: This program will present historic preservation advocates with something of a quandary. On the one hand, “building repair and modernization” of homes that are historic can be very destructive; on the other hand, a lot of such buildings need to be fixed up. Depending on how these funds are distributed, the people responsible for them may have no notion whatever of how to work with a historic building, or about what makes a building historic. Big potential for clashes here, I’m afraid, between interests that ought to be working in synch.
Item: HOME Investment Partnerships: $1.5 billion to help local communities build and rehabilitate low-income housing using green technologies.
My assessment: About the same as above.
Item: Native American Housing Block Grants: $500 million to rehabilitate and improve energy efficiency at some of the over 42,000 housing units maintained by Native American housing programs.
My assessment: Same as above.
Item: Neighborhood Stabilization: $4.2 billion to help communities purchase and rehabilitate foreclosed, vacant properties in order to create more affordable housing and reduce neighborhood blight.
My assessment: Some real potential for conflict; some of those vacant buildings may be (a) historic and (b) good for energy-efficient, cost-effective rehabilitation, but historically, the tendency of housing authorities has been to demolish and build new. Probably little EIA/CRM has been done on such projects. Probably an easy remedy in the form of program policy and procedures favoring rehabilitation, but lots of potential for conflicts as people fight over (for example) whether a dilapidated old building is eligible for the National Register.
Item: Homeless Assistance Grants: $1.5 billion for the Emergency Shelter Grant program to provide short term rental assistance, housing relocation, and stabilization services for families during the economic crisis. Funds are distributed by formula.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Rural Housing Insurance Fund: $500 million to support $22 billion in direct loans and loan guarantees to help rural families and individuals buy homes during the credit crunch.
My assessment: There’s an unresolved question about how loan and loan guarantee programs should comply with EIA/CRM requirements like NEPA and Section 106. These problems could come to a head in connection with this fund and others like it.
Item: Self-Help and Assisted Homeownership Program: $10 million for rural, high-need areas to undertake projects using sustainable and energy-efficient building and rehabilitation practices. Funds will be awarded by competition to projects that can begin
My assessment: Too vaguely defined to get much of a handle on, but also a very small program.
Item: Lead Paint: $100 million for competitive grants to local governments and nonprofit organizations to remove lead-based paint hazards in low-income housing.
My assessment: Lead paint remediation often conflicts with historic preservation, but a good deal of expertise has been developed about how to resolve such conflicts. Assuming the program is administered by knowledgeable agencies and individuals, should p0resent no serious problems.
Item: Rural Community Facilities: $200 million to support $1.2 billion in grants and loans to rural areas for critical community facilities, such as for healthcare, education, fire and rescue, day care, community centers, and libraries.
My assessment: New construction and rehab could present conflicts, probably not yet addressed through EIA/CRM review.
Item: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance: $20 billion to provide nutrition assistance to modest-income families and to lift restrictions that limit the amount of time individuals can receive food stamps.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Senior Nutrition Programs: $200 million for formula grants to states for elderly nutrition services including Meals on Wheels and Congregate Meals.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Afterschool Meals: $726 million to increase the number of states that provide free dinners to children and to encourage participation by new institutions by increasing snack reimbursement rates.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Supplemental Nutrition Program Information Systems: $100 million to improve state management information systems for the WIC program.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Payments to Disabled and Elderly: $4.2 billion to help 7.5 million low-income disabled and elderly individuals with rising costs by providing an additional SSI payment in 2009.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Community Services Block Grant: $1 billion for grants to local communities to support employment, food, housing, and healthcare efforts serving those hardest hit by the recession.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Community Development Block Grants: $1 billion for community and economic development projects including housing and services for those hit hard by tough economic times.
My assessment: CDBG projects often have impacts on historic properties and other aspects of the urban environment, but my impression is that most local governments have either found ways to ignore EIA/CRM requirements or have routinized their means of dealing with them, so there will probably be no problems other than a certain amount of environmental damage.
Item: Emergency Food and Shelter: $200 million to help local community organizations provide food, shelter, and support services to the nation’s hungry, homeless, and people in economic crisis
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Low-Income Home Energy Assistance: $1 billion to help low-income families pay for home heating and cooling at a time of rising energy costs.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Child Support Enforcement: $1 billion to provide federal incentive funds for states to collect support owed to families.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Social Security Administration Disability Backlog and Claims Processing: $500 million to help the Social Security Administration process a steep rise in disability and retirement claims
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Centers for Independent Living: $200 million for state formula grants to help individuals with disabilities continue to live in their communities.
My assessment: To the extent this involves new construction and rehabilitation of centers, could present conflicts, and most projects have probably not been subjected to effective EIA/CRM review.
Item: AmeriCorps Programs: $200 million to put approximately 16,000 additional AmeriCorps members to work doing national service, meeting needs of vulnerable populations and communities during the recession.
My assessment: My guess is that AmeriCorps projects sometimes have adverse effects on the environment, but I’ve never heard of one being a source of conflict, or undergoing EIA/CRM review. So the potential for conflict is probably low.
Item: Compassion Capital Fund: $100 million for grants to faith- and community-based organizations to provide critical safety net services to needy individuals and families.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Department of Labor Worker Protection and Oversight: $80 million to ensure that worker protection laws are enforced as recovery infrastructure investments are carried out.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Medicaid Aid to States (FMAP): $87 billion to states, increasing through the end of FY 2010 the share of Medicaid costs the Federal government reimburses
My assessment: No problem.
Item: $41 billion to local school districts through Title I ($13 billion), IDEA ($13 billion), a new School Modernization and Repair Program ($14 billion), and the Education Technology program ($1 billion).
My assessment: Considerable potential for problems if these funds are used to build and modernize schools; such projects have almost certainly not gone through EIA/CRM review.
Item: $79 billion in state fiscal relief, including: $39 billion to local school districts and public colleges and universities distributed through existing state and federal formulas; $15 billion to states as bonus grants as a reward for meeting key performance measures; and $25 billion to states for other high priority needs such as public safety and other critical services, which may include education.
My assessment: A rather ill-defined catchall, hard to get a handle on; I’m really not sure whether conflicts with EIA/CRM requirements are likely.
Item: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families: $2.5 billion for block grants to help States deal with the surge in families needing help during the recession and to prevent them from cutting work programs and services for abused and neglected children.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: State and Local Law Enforcement: $4 billion to support state and local law enforcement including $3 billion for the Byrne Justice Assistance formula grants to support local law enforcement efforts with equipment and operating costs, and $1 billion for the COPS hiring grant program, to hire about 13,000 new police officers for three years.
My assessment: No problem.
Item: Periodic Census and Programs, Communications: $1 billion for work necessary to ensure a successful 2010 census, including $150 million for expanded communications and outreach programs to minimize undercounting of minority groups.
My assessment: No problem.
Tom King’s CRM Plus -- Ruminations on "cultural resource management," environmental impact assessment, and related esoteric topics, by a curmudgeon who seldom has anything good to say about anything.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Friday, November 28, 2008
Environmental Impact Assessment and Cultural Resource Management:
Wastes of Money and Time That the Obama Administration Can Fix
The Myth of Federal Heritage Protection
Darkside Development Unlimited wants to build a new shopping mall, sports stadium, speedway or wind farm in your town or your rural community. The project will devastate some piece of your heritage in the natural or built environment—your neighborhood, or the landscape you love, the family farm, the hill where your tribal elders seek visions, the stream where everybody in your valley goes to fish. Darkside needs some kind of help from the federal government—in other words, from you and me, us taxpayers—to make its project happen. Maybe it needs a federal permit to fill a wetland, or maybe a new access road off the interstate. What can you do to fight the project, or at least seek changes to protect what you treasure?
Realistically, I’m sorry to say, not much—even though there are impressive-sounding federal laws that ostensibly give your heritage, and everyone’s, a degree of protection. I say this based on forty-plus years of increasingly bitter experience with those laws and despite having written half a dozen books encouraging people to use them.
Those laws – the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) and others – have been around for almost half a century. They say that whenever a federal agency proposes to do something, or proposes to help or permit someone else to do something, that might damage the natural or cultural environment, it has to consider what those impacts are, and what it can do to avoid or reduce them. It has to factor them into its planning, consider alternatives, in some cases even consult with the interested public about them. Over the decades, most other countries, as well as international organizations like the World Bank, have adopted similar requirements.
As a result, we now have substantial federal and state bureaucracies overseeing environmental impact assessment (EIA) under NEPA and cultural resource management (CRM) under NHPA, and we have well-heeled private companies doing EIA and CRM work under contract. What we do not have is an orderly system for actually, honestly considering and trying to reduce impacts on our natural and cultural heritage. It’s all pretty much a sham.
Which is why, when Congress these days decides to do something like build a big fence along our southern border to keep out terrorists, its members don’t even blink before waiving EIA and CRM requirements. The notion that these requirements serve an actual purpose—that it’s a good idea to consider what damage may result from something you’re thinking of doing, before doing it—has been quite lost. Thinking about impacts on the environment is seen as something that’s nice to do if you have the time, but nothing that ought really to influence policy.
I’ve worked in CRM and EIA for over forty years, so I guess I have a vested interest in it, but I find the whole thing rather sad. There are good reasons to consider how something we plan may muck up the environment, and to do so before we undertake it. And in a democracy, citizens should have real opportunities to influence what government does, or lets others do, to their heritage. It’s too bad, I think, that we’ve let things develop in such a way that we’re spending lots of money on mere public relations efforts, slathering the lipstick of environmental responsibility on the pigs of development. We ought to change our system.
Early next year, Left Coast Press (www.lcoastpress.com) will publish my latest book, entitled Our Unprotected Heritage: Whitewashing Destruction of Our Natural and Cultural Environment, which goes into all this in some detail. Here, I want to outline what’s wrong with our EIA/CRM systems, and offer some suggestions (abstracted from the final chapter of Unprotected) about steps the Obama administration could take to make these systems serve the purpose they were designed to serve, in the interests of the American people.
What’s Wrong?
There are five essential problems with EIA and CRM in the United States (and elsewhere).
1. The specialist firms that perform EIA and CRM are usually hired by project proponents. They view themselves as members of their clients’ planning teams, and behave accordingly. If they don’t, they can be fired. The supposedly objective analyses of impacts that the specialist firms produce are inevitably shaped by their relationships with their clients.
2. It might nevertheless be possible to obtain honest analyses of project impacts on our natural and cultural heritage if the federal agencies responsible for complying with NEPA and NHPA took their responsibilities seriously, but they don’t. On the whole they regard EIA and CRM as processes of getting and giving “clearance” to projects, and they seek to do so with as little impediment as possible to the interests of project proponents.
3. We might still have tolerable EIA and CRM systems if there were strong, enlightened oversight by agencies like the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP), but there is not. CEQ and ACHP are deeply compromised structurally and politically, and they have no real authority. If they ever provided serious oversight, they do so no longer. Oversight agencies that do exercise a degree of authority, like State Historic Preservation Officers (SHPOs) tend to focus their attention on technical fine points and ignore larger matters of policy and principle.
4. We might still at least sometimes see EIA and CRM results we could believe in if there were transparency in the review systems, with serious opportunities for stakeholders besides proponents and agencies to participate in and influence project review. But the systems are not transparent, and the limited opportunities for participation that do exist often are illusory.
5. But we in the EIA and CRM games, both in and out of government, have all pretty much accepted the fact that this is the way things are, and we resist even considering change.
Why don’t we do something about this? There are two reasons.
Vested Interests and Fear of Flying
Among professionals in EIA and CRM, there is something akin to contentment with things as they are. Yeah, what we do isn’t always much fun, and no, it doesn’t necessarily accomplish much. But hell, it beats flipping burgers or working in a bank, and there aren’t enough academic jobs to go around. We’re doing all right ourselves, and we need to keep our jobs, so we’re just going to keep on keepin’ on. Please don’t rock our boat.
Among people who want to save pieces of their heritage, I find a lot of discontent, in some cases a fair amount of cynicism, but not much organized desire to fix things. There’s a well institutionalized fear in the conservation/preservation world that if we “open up” laws like NEPA and NHPA to change, the changes we’ll get will not be ones we like. Based on the experience of the last eight years, this fear is not groundless, but interestingly, I heard it expressed just about as often during the Clinton administration as I have since the Bush ascendance. I could attribute it to a Republican-dominated congress, but I’ve heard it, really, for as long as I’ve been around Washington – some thirty years now.
So most of us muddle along doing our things, content with or at least resigned to the status quo. Or we rail about how impure and pointless EIA and CRM are, but shrink from doing anything to make them better.
These are understandable ways of thinking and living, but in the long run I don’t think they’re tenable. If EIA isn’t reliably producing responsible assessments of environmental impacts, if CRM doesn’t manage cultural resources in the public interest, it’s hard to believe the public will forever keep funding them, putting up with them. In our own self-interest, if we’re EIA and CRM practitioners, we need to clean up our act. And if we’re people who’d like to keep our heritage, we really ought to try to fix the systems that are supposed to give it a fighting chance at survival.
But how?
In Our Unprotected Heritage, I go into some detail about what others – notably the late Lynton K. Caldwell, NEPA’s major author – have proposed in the way of reform, and why these proposals have gone nowhere. Skipping all that here, let me offer what I think could be at least some first steps toward rebuilding an EIA/CRM system that actually does what Congress intended it to do.
Memo to the Obama Administration
Mister President – or more realistically, Mister or Ms. Secretary of the Interior and Chairs of CEQ and the ACHP – if you think it would be worthwhile to stop wasting everybody’s time and money whitewashing the impacts of federal actions and decisions on our natural and cultural heritage, here are a few things you can do.
Tell the Agencies to Clean Up Their Acts
Issue an executive order telling all agencies of the federal government to establish or rework their procedures for compliance with the heritage laws – notably but not exclusively NEPA and NHPA – to ensure to the extent possible that the studies that are done and the reports that are prepared are free from bias in favor of or against actions whose impacts are analyzed. Go on to direct that such procedures provide for things like:
1. Conducting impact analyses – environmental assessments, environmental impact statements, and all the specialist studies on which such summary analyses are based – using knowledgeable third parties with no direct or indirect links to the proponent of the actions whose impacts are analyzed.
2. Conducting rigorous third party review and critique of any analyses performed by or on behalf of project proponents.
3. Objectively analyzing alternatives, including those suggested by members of the public.
4. Consulting – really consulting – with affected and interested parties and the general public, to identify and resolve objections and explore alternatives, with the objective of reaching agreements among all concerned parties (though with provision for a final decision to be made in the absence of agreement). You should be very clear about the fact that while expert opinion is important, so are the opinions of ordinary citizens, especially where places and things that citizens value are concerned.
5. Considering all kinds of project effects – direct effects, indirect effects, and crucially, how the alternatives under review would contribute to cumulative effects.
6. Considering not only quantifiable impacts but those that can’t be quantified, such as effects on our social, cultural, and spiritual values.
7. Integrating and coordinating analysis and consultation under all the environmental and heritage laws, regulations, and executive orders, notably including NEPA, NHPA, and the Endangered Species Act.
8. Regular training for agency and contractor personnel, cooperation with academic institutions, and other such measures designed to maintain the quality of interdisciplinary research and responsible consultation with the public.
9. Monitoring performance to promote integrity in analysis and in relations with the public.
10. Actually using the results of impact analysis in making decisions, with explicit attention to the policies set forth in NEPA (section 101) and NHPA (section 2). An agency should be able to show either that a decision it makes is consistent with these policies, or that its inconsistency is justified in the public interest.
I know that a lot of these things seem so obvious that you shouldn’t need to instruct your establishment in them, but believe me, you do. And doing so would be a start at reforming the system, both by improving its integrity and by getting the public actively involved.
There’s something else you should do.
Rework the Regulations and Consider Consolidation
Tell CEQ, the ACHP, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and all the other oversight agencies to get together over a specified period of time, with lots of public participation, to reconsider and revise their collective regulations implementing NEPA, NHPA, and the other impact assessment laws. The agencies should seek consistency, simplicity, transparency, and full, open public involvement.
Direct the same agencies, perhaps through the same program of cooperative review, to come up with recommendations for consolidating compliance with the various laws, including changes in the laws themselves as needed, to create an EIA system (including CRM) that is simple, straightforward, and accessible to the public.
Make sure the cooperative interagency review is overseen and coordinated by someone with the authority to resolve disputes and gore whoever’s oxen need goring (Maybe Al Gore). Consolidation of oversight agency functions is certainly going to leave blood on the floor, but it has to be done if a system is to be created that ordinary citizens, not just specialists, can understand and participate in.
And then –
Consider Legislation
Once you have an idea of what ought to be done to improve the review systems, and once you’ve explored how far you can go under existing authorities, consider going to Congress with a package of legislative adjustments to NEPA, NHPA, and the other laws. Some might simply be done away with. For instance, there would be no need for a Section 106 of NHPA if NEPA provided for public consultation about impacts on the cultural aspects of the environment. Others could be adjusted. For instance, rather than just calling for a “statement” of environmental impacts, NEPA might prescribe a process of analysis, consultation, and application of the policies already set forth in section 101 of the statute.
Whatever law or laws emerged from this process should clearly embody the principles of honest, balanced analysis and consultative public participation. The law should not elevate heritage protection over everything else, but it should make sure that such protection – and the interests of people who care about their heritage – have a fair chance to influence public policy.
A Constitutional Amendment?
Caldwell and others – most recently, I think, Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) – have pointed out that the U.S. Constitution is painfully thin when it comes to protection of our natural and cultural heritage. Congress has had to stretch things like the Commerce Clause to construct a basis for environmental management. That needs to be fixed too but this will obviously take time. Congressman Jackson introduced an elegant version of such an amendment in 2007; it goes like this:
Section 1. All persons shall have a right to a clean, safe, and sustainable environment, which right shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation.
Caldwell argued that such a “rights-based” amendment would be difficult to interpret, but I think Congressman Jackson’s language is perfectly clear, and appropriately broad. It would require Congress and the courts to balance the right to environmental protection against other rights – like the right to the enjoyment of private property – which to me seems only sensible.
But there’s no need to wait for a constitutional amendment – or even legislation – to begin adjusting our EIA and CRM systems so they do what their creators intended, rather than merely wasting time and money and generating public frustration. A well-crafted executive order and some clear direction to the oversight agencies could work wonders.
Does It Matter?
Of course, the administration has lots of other environmental (to say nothing of economic, diplomatic, and political) crises on its hands that are of more cosmic significance than the quality of EIA and CRM. In writing Our Unprotected Heritage I’ve often paused – sometimes for hours, sometimes for months, overcome by the feeling that I’m fiddling while Rome burns. What earthly point is there, I ask myself, in diddling about with adjustments in the way we consider environmental impacts – and impacts on things like old buildings and archaeological sites, for heaven’s sake – when the atmosphere’s warming, the polar ice is melting, the seas are rising? Doing fieldwork as I sometimes do on a Pacific atoll, I can see the water rising, and I doubt if anything is going to save a host of island nations and a lot of continental waterfront from inundation. The costs of this disaster in terms of natural and cultural heritage will be far beyond anything we can imagine measuring or mitigating.
But be this as it may, it seems to me that the American people deserve to have effective ways to influence what government does to their – our – heritage. And I even harbor the notion that EIA and CRM might, if they’re improved, help a little in ameliorating the effects of global climate change. All those displaced islanders and coastal residents will have to be housed and fed; all those coastal cities and industries, farms and forests will have to be relocated or replaced. The impacts of all these adjustments may be greater in some ways than the impacts of climate change itself. And unlike climate change, these impacts will be subject to human control, human influence. EIA and CRM can help governments manage these impacts so that we don’t inadvertently do more damage than necessary to achieve the adaptations we will have to make. But if all we have to work with is the EIA/CRM industry as it’s presently constituted, we will only be wasting money that could be better spent building floating cities or seeking another planet to despoil.
The Myth of Federal Heritage Protection
Darkside Development Unlimited wants to build a new shopping mall, sports stadium, speedway or wind farm in your town or your rural community. The project will devastate some piece of your heritage in the natural or built environment—your neighborhood, or the landscape you love, the family farm, the hill where your tribal elders seek visions, the stream where everybody in your valley goes to fish. Darkside needs some kind of help from the federal government—in other words, from you and me, us taxpayers—to make its project happen. Maybe it needs a federal permit to fill a wetland, or maybe a new access road off the interstate. What can you do to fight the project, or at least seek changes to protect what you treasure?
Realistically, I’m sorry to say, not much—even though there are impressive-sounding federal laws that ostensibly give your heritage, and everyone’s, a degree of protection. I say this based on forty-plus years of increasingly bitter experience with those laws and despite having written half a dozen books encouraging people to use them.
Those laws – the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) and others – have been around for almost half a century. They say that whenever a federal agency proposes to do something, or proposes to help or permit someone else to do something, that might damage the natural or cultural environment, it has to consider what those impacts are, and what it can do to avoid or reduce them. It has to factor them into its planning, consider alternatives, in some cases even consult with the interested public about them. Over the decades, most other countries, as well as international organizations like the World Bank, have adopted similar requirements.
As a result, we now have substantial federal and state bureaucracies overseeing environmental impact assessment (EIA) under NEPA and cultural resource management (CRM) under NHPA, and we have well-heeled private companies doing EIA and CRM work under contract. What we do not have is an orderly system for actually, honestly considering and trying to reduce impacts on our natural and cultural heritage. It’s all pretty much a sham.
Which is why, when Congress these days decides to do something like build a big fence along our southern border to keep out terrorists, its members don’t even blink before waiving EIA and CRM requirements. The notion that these requirements serve an actual purpose—that it’s a good idea to consider what damage may result from something you’re thinking of doing, before doing it—has been quite lost. Thinking about impacts on the environment is seen as something that’s nice to do if you have the time, but nothing that ought really to influence policy.
I’ve worked in CRM and EIA for over forty years, so I guess I have a vested interest in it, but I find the whole thing rather sad. There are good reasons to consider how something we plan may muck up the environment, and to do so before we undertake it. And in a democracy, citizens should have real opportunities to influence what government does, or lets others do, to their heritage. It’s too bad, I think, that we’ve let things develop in such a way that we’re spending lots of money on mere public relations efforts, slathering the lipstick of environmental responsibility on the pigs of development. We ought to change our system.
Early next year, Left Coast Press (www.lcoastpress.com) will publish my latest book, entitled Our Unprotected Heritage: Whitewashing Destruction of Our Natural and Cultural Environment, which goes into all this in some detail. Here, I want to outline what’s wrong with our EIA/CRM systems, and offer some suggestions (abstracted from the final chapter of Unprotected) about steps the Obama administration could take to make these systems serve the purpose they were designed to serve, in the interests of the American people.
What’s Wrong?
There are five essential problems with EIA and CRM in the United States (and elsewhere).
1. The specialist firms that perform EIA and CRM are usually hired by project proponents. They view themselves as members of their clients’ planning teams, and behave accordingly. If they don’t, they can be fired. The supposedly objective analyses of impacts that the specialist firms produce are inevitably shaped by their relationships with their clients.
2. It might nevertheless be possible to obtain honest analyses of project impacts on our natural and cultural heritage if the federal agencies responsible for complying with NEPA and NHPA took their responsibilities seriously, but they don’t. On the whole they regard EIA and CRM as processes of getting and giving “clearance” to projects, and they seek to do so with as little impediment as possible to the interests of project proponents.
3. We might still have tolerable EIA and CRM systems if there were strong, enlightened oversight by agencies like the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP), but there is not. CEQ and ACHP are deeply compromised structurally and politically, and they have no real authority. If they ever provided serious oversight, they do so no longer. Oversight agencies that do exercise a degree of authority, like State Historic Preservation Officers (SHPOs) tend to focus their attention on technical fine points and ignore larger matters of policy and principle.
4. We might still at least sometimes see EIA and CRM results we could believe in if there were transparency in the review systems, with serious opportunities for stakeholders besides proponents and agencies to participate in and influence project review. But the systems are not transparent, and the limited opportunities for participation that do exist often are illusory.
5. But we in the EIA and CRM games, both in and out of government, have all pretty much accepted the fact that this is the way things are, and we resist even considering change.
Why don’t we do something about this? There are two reasons.
Vested Interests and Fear of Flying
Among professionals in EIA and CRM, there is something akin to contentment with things as they are. Yeah, what we do isn’t always much fun, and no, it doesn’t necessarily accomplish much. But hell, it beats flipping burgers or working in a bank, and there aren’t enough academic jobs to go around. We’re doing all right ourselves, and we need to keep our jobs, so we’re just going to keep on keepin’ on. Please don’t rock our boat.
Among people who want to save pieces of their heritage, I find a lot of discontent, in some cases a fair amount of cynicism, but not much organized desire to fix things. There’s a well institutionalized fear in the conservation/preservation world that if we “open up” laws like NEPA and NHPA to change, the changes we’ll get will not be ones we like. Based on the experience of the last eight years, this fear is not groundless, but interestingly, I heard it expressed just about as often during the Clinton administration as I have since the Bush ascendance. I could attribute it to a Republican-dominated congress, but I’ve heard it, really, for as long as I’ve been around Washington – some thirty years now.
So most of us muddle along doing our things, content with or at least resigned to the status quo. Or we rail about how impure and pointless EIA and CRM are, but shrink from doing anything to make them better.
These are understandable ways of thinking and living, but in the long run I don’t think they’re tenable. If EIA isn’t reliably producing responsible assessments of environmental impacts, if CRM doesn’t manage cultural resources in the public interest, it’s hard to believe the public will forever keep funding them, putting up with them. In our own self-interest, if we’re EIA and CRM practitioners, we need to clean up our act. And if we’re people who’d like to keep our heritage, we really ought to try to fix the systems that are supposed to give it a fighting chance at survival.
But how?
In Our Unprotected Heritage, I go into some detail about what others – notably the late Lynton K. Caldwell, NEPA’s major author – have proposed in the way of reform, and why these proposals have gone nowhere. Skipping all that here, let me offer what I think could be at least some first steps toward rebuilding an EIA/CRM system that actually does what Congress intended it to do.
Memo to the Obama Administration
Mister President – or more realistically, Mister or Ms. Secretary of the Interior and Chairs of CEQ and the ACHP – if you think it would be worthwhile to stop wasting everybody’s time and money whitewashing the impacts of federal actions and decisions on our natural and cultural heritage, here are a few things you can do.
Tell the Agencies to Clean Up Their Acts
Issue an executive order telling all agencies of the federal government to establish or rework their procedures for compliance with the heritage laws – notably but not exclusively NEPA and NHPA – to ensure to the extent possible that the studies that are done and the reports that are prepared are free from bias in favor of or against actions whose impacts are analyzed. Go on to direct that such procedures provide for things like:
1. Conducting impact analyses – environmental assessments, environmental impact statements, and all the specialist studies on which such summary analyses are based – using knowledgeable third parties with no direct or indirect links to the proponent of the actions whose impacts are analyzed.
2. Conducting rigorous third party review and critique of any analyses performed by or on behalf of project proponents.
3. Objectively analyzing alternatives, including those suggested by members of the public.
4. Consulting – really consulting – with affected and interested parties and the general public, to identify and resolve objections and explore alternatives, with the objective of reaching agreements among all concerned parties (though with provision for a final decision to be made in the absence of agreement). You should be very clear about the fact that while expert opinion is important, so are the opinions of ordinary citizens, especially where places and things that citizens value are concerned.
5. Considering all kinds of project effects – direct effects, indirect effects, and crucially, how the alternatives under review would contribute to cumulative effects.
6. Considering not only quantifiable impacts but those that can’t be quantified, such as effects on our social, cultural, and spiritual values.
7. Integrating and coordinating analysis and consultation under all the environmental and heritage laws, regulations, and executive orders, notably including NEPA, NHPA, and the Endangered Species Act.
8. Regular training for agency and contractor personnel, cooperation with academic institutions, and other such measures designed to maintain the quality of interdisciplinary research and responsible consultation with the public.
9. Monitoring performance to promote integrity in analysis and in relations with the public.
10. Actually using the results of impact analysis in making decisions, with explicit attention to the policies set forth in NEPA (section 101) and NHPA (section 2). An agency should be able to show either that a decision it makes is consistent with these policies, or that its inconsistency is justified in the public interest.
I know that a lot of these things seem so obvious that you shouldn’t need to instruct your establishment in them, but believe me, you do. And doing so would be a start at reforming the system, both by improving its integrity and by getting the public actively involved.
There’s something else you should do.
Rework the Regulations and Consider Consolidation
Tell CEQ, the ACHP, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and all the other oversight agencies to get together over a specified period of time, with lots of public participation, to reconsider and revise their collective regulations implementing NEPA, NHPA, and the other impact assessment laws. The agencies should seek consistency, simplicity, transparency, and full, open public involvement.
Direct the same agencies, perhaps through the same program of cooperative review, to come up with recommendations for consolidating compliance with the various laws, including changes in the laws themselves as needed, to create an EIA system (including CRM) that is simple, straightforward, and accessible to the public.
Make sure the cooperative interagency review is overseen and coordinated by someone with the authority to resolve disputes and gore whoever’s oxen need goring (Maybe Al Gore). Consolidation of oversight agency functions is certainly going to leave blood on the floor, but it has to be done if a system is to be created that ordinary citizens, not just specialists, can understand and participate in.
And then –
Consider Legislation
Once you have an idea of what ought to be done to improve the review systems, and once you’ve explored how far you can go under existing authorities, consider going to Congress with a package of legislative adjustments to NEPA, NHPA, and the other laws. Some might simply be done away with. For instance, there would be no need for a Section 106 of NHPA if NEPA provided for public consultation about impacts on the cultural aspects of the environment. Others could be adjusted. For instance, rather than just calling for a “statement” of environmental impacts, NEPA might prescribe a process of analysis, consultation, and application of the policies already set forth in section 101 of the statute.
Whatever law or laws emerged from this process should clearly embody the principles of honest, balanced analysis and consultative public participation. The law should not elevate heritage protection over everything else, but it should make sure that such protection – and the interests of people who care about their heritage – have a fair chance to influence public policy.
A Constitutional Amendment?
Caldwell and others – most recently, I think, Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) – have pointed out that the U.S. Constitution is painfully thin when it comes to protection of our natural and cultural heritage. Congress has had to stretch things like the Commerce Clause to construct a basis for environmental management. That needs to be fixed too but this will obviously take time. Congressman Jackson introduced an elegant version of such an amendment in 2007; it goes like this:
Section 1. All persons shall have a right to a clean, safe, and sustainable environment, which right shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation.
Caldwell argued that such a “rights-based” amendment would be difficult to interpret, but I think Congressman Jackson’s language is perfectly clear, and appropriately broad. It would require Congress and the courts to balance the right to environmental protection against other rights – like the right to the enjoyment of private property – which to me seems only sensible.
But there’s no need to wait for a constitutional amendment – or even legislation – to begin adjusting our EIA and CRM systems so they do what their creators intended, rather than merely wasting time and money and generating public frustration. A well-crafted executive order and some clear direction to the oversight agencies could work wonders.
Does It Matter?
Of course, the administration has lots of other environmental (to say nothing of economic, diplomatic, and political) crises on its hands that are of more cosmic significance than the quality of EIA and CRM. In writing Our Unprotected Heritage I’ve often paused – sometimes for hours, sometimes for months, overcome by the feeling that I’m fiddling while Rome burns. What earthly point is there, I ask myself, in diddling about with adjustments in the way we consider environmental impacts – and impacts on things like old buildings and archaeological sites, for heaven’s sake – when the atmosphere’s warming, the polar ice is melting, the seas are rising? Doing fieldwork as I sometimes do on a Pacific atoll, I can see the water rising, and I doubt if anything is going to save a host of island nations and a lot of continental waterfront from inundation. The costs of this disaster in terms of natural and cultural heritage will be far beyond anything we can imagine measuring or mitigating.
But be this as it may, it seems to me that the American people deserve to have effective ways to influence what government does to their – our – heritage. And I even harbor the notion that EIA and CRM might, if they’re improved, help a little in ameliorating the effects of global climate change. All those displaced islanders and coastal residents will have to be housed and fed; all those coastal cities and industries, farms and forests will have to be relocated or replaced. The impacts of all these adjustments may be greater in some ways than the impacts of climate change itself. And unlike climate change, these impacts will be subject to human control, human influence. EIA and CRM can help governments manage these impacts so that we don’t inadvertently do more damage than necessary to achieve the adaptations we will have to make. But if all we have to work with is the EIA/CRM industry as it’s presently constituted, we will only be wasting money that could be better spent building floating cities or seeking another planet to despoil.
Friday, September 26, 2008
TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY AND THE NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES
The other day I broke a long-standing policy of avoiding historic preservation conferences, and attended a meeting of the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers (NATHPO). There I listened to two groups of speakers talk about historic – or cultural – or (heaven help us) “ethnographic” landscapes and the National Register of Historic Places.
One of the sessions was put on by the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. The Council’s representatives accurately noted that some federal agencies have trouble understanding what tribes are talking about when they insist on respect for the landforms and landscapes that figure in their cultural traditions. To remedy this problem, the Council staff suggested that tribes consider using the language and concepts employed by the landscape architects who have made cultural landscapes the latest fad in the National Park Service.
I’m all in favor of recognizing the importance of cultural landscapes, whatever you call them – though I think that calling a landscape “ethnographic” puts the wrong spin on its significance. Landscapes are often significant to communities; their significance to ethnographers is rather beside the point. At the same time, a lot of the concepts employed by NPS and its ilk in the evaluation of landscape strike me as overly architectural and insufficiently ethnographic. But for all that, the move toward greater recognition of landscapes as cultural phenomena is, I think, a very good thing.
But the question I asked the Council at the end of their session was this, more or less verbatim:
Why should a sovereign Indian tribe that wants the U.S. government to respect places important in the tribe’s history and culture have to document that significance using terms and concepts dreamed up by non-indigenous landscape architects?
The response, after a few “oh, there goes Tom again” looks, was “it shouldn’t.” And, the Council’s Reid Nelson was quick to point out, “our (the Council’s) regulations are pretty clear in saying they don’t have to.”
Thank you, Reid; I think that’s a very important but widely misunderstood fact. But if it’s true – if the regulations don’t demand any particular sort of eligibility documentation, then why in the world is the Council acting like documentation IS required and encouraging tribes to try another way of providing it? Particularly a way that involves terms and precepts developed by specialists without an iota of tribal expertise in and around the U.S. government? Why doesn’t the Council use its precious (that is, limited) political clout and intellectual capital to (a) make it really, really clear to agencies that the regulations do NOT require that tribal cultural places be documented by ethnographers or anyone else, or at all, and (b) try – I know it would be hard and unrewarding, but TRY – to beat the same point through the heads of the National Register staff?
Rather than promoting more and different documentation of tribal cultural places, how about a nice succinct publication giving agencies guidance about how to respect such places WITHOUT documenting them? We all know this can be done, but it’s never been laid out in an authoritative government guideline; perhaps it should be. Or more generally, how about an elaboration on the sturdy direction given in the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Identification – standard #1 – that identification (and hence documentation) is done to the extent necessary to make a decision (and implicitly, no farther)?
But I have no expectation that the Council will undertake such an educational effort, and the (thankfully unlikely) prospect of the National Park Service’s doing so sends shivers down my spine, so as a different way to clarify things here’s a suggestion for tribes.
You’re sovereign governments, right? Then why should you have to prove the significance of your special places – be they landscapes, ancestral cemeteries and living sites, or big pointy rocks – to the United States government? Using methods that the United States Government approves? More to the point, perhaps, why do you let Washington get away with demanding such proof? France wouldn’t. Russia wouldn’t. The Republic of Kiribati wouldn’t. Why should you?
Instead, why don’t you adopt policies that say something like:
“We, the (xxx) tribe, have the sovereign right to define what constitutes our cultural heritage, including what constitutes a place that is significant as a part of that heritage. We decide such things based on our own beliefs and practices, and document such places to the extent and in the manner we determine to be correct and justified. We expect the U.S. government to consult with us about any action proposed or under consideration that may affect land, water, or air within, on, or over the territory used and occupied by our ancestors (See attached map). We further expect the U.S. government to treat as eligible for its National Register of Historic Places and as a significant cultural place any location, landscape, water body, or other area that we identify as culturally significant to our tribe, and consider it accordingly under its environmental, historic preservation, and religious freedom laws.”
And then focus your efforts on getting agencies to respect this policy, rather than on documenting your cultural places in ways that non-indigenous specialists – be they landscape architects, mainstream historians, archaeologists or U.S. government officials – want you to.
Not to put too fine a point on it – are you sovereigns, or are you not?
One of the sessions was put on by the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. The Council’s representatives accurately noted that some federal agencies have trouble understanding what tribes are talking about when they insist on respect for the landforms and landscapes that figure in their cultural traditions. To remedy this problem, the Council staff suggested that tribes consider using the language and concepts employed by the landscape architects who have made cultural landscapes the latest fad in the National Park Service.
I’m all in favor of recognizing the importance of cultural landscapes, whatever you call them – though I think that calling a landscape “ethnographic” puts the wrong spin on its significance. Landscapes are often significant to communities; their significance to ethnographers is rather beside the point. At the same time, a lot of the concepts employed by NPS and its ilk in the evaluation of landscape strike me as overly architectural and insufficiently ethnographic. But for all that, the move toward greater recognition of landscapes as cultural phenomena is, I think, a very good thing.
But the question I asked the Council at the end of their session was this, more or less verbatim:
Why should a sovereign Indian tribe that wants the U.S. government to respect places important in the tribe’s history and culture have to document that significance using terms and concepts dreamed up by non-indigenous landscape architects?
The response, after a few “oh, there goes Tom again” looks, was “it shouldn’t.” And, the Council’s Reid Nelson was quick to point out, “our (the Council’s) regulations are pretty clear in saying they don’t have to.”
Thank you, Reid; I think that’s a very important but widely misunderstood fact. But if it’s true – if the regulations don’t demand any particular sort of eligibility documentation, then why in the world is the Council acting like documentation IS required and encouraging tribes to try another way of providing it? Particularly a way that involves terms and precepts developed by specialists without an iota of tribal expertise in and around the U.S. government? Why doesn’t the Council use its precious (that is, limited) political clout and intellectual capital to (a) make it really, really clear to agencies that the regulations do NOT require that tribal cultural places be documented by ethnographers or anyone else, or at all, and (b) try – I know it would be hard and unrewarding, but TRY – to beat the same point through the heads of the National Register staff?
Rather than promoting more and different documentation of tribal cultural places, how about a nice succinct publication giving agencies guidance about how to respect such places WITHOUT documenting them? We all know this can be done, but it’s never been laid out in an authoritative government guideline; perhaps it should be. Or more generally, how about an elaboration on the sturdy direction given in the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Identification – standard #1 – that identification (and hence documentation) is done to the extent necessary to make a decision (and implicitly, no farther)?
But I have no expectation that the Council will undertake such an educational effort, and the (thankfully unlikely) prospect of the National Park Service’s doing so sends shivers down my spine, so as a different way to clarify things here’s a suggestion for tribes.
You’re sovereign governments, right? Then why should you have to prove the significance of your special places – be they landscapes, ancestral cemeteries and living sites, or big pointy rocks – to the United States government? Using methods that the United States Government approves? More to the point, perhaps, why do you let Washington get away with demanding such proof? France wouldn’t. Russia wouldn’t. The Republic of Kiribati wouldn’t. Why should you?
Instead, why don’t you adopt policies that say something like:
“We, the (xxx) tribe, have the sovereign right to define what constitutes our cultural heritage, including what constitutes a place that is significant as a part of that heritage. We decide such things based on our own beliefs and practices, and document such places to the extent and in the manner we determine to be correct and justified. We expect the U.S. government to consult with us about any action proposed or under consideration that may affect land, water, or air within, on, or over the territory used and occupied by our ancestors (See attached map). We further expect the U.S. government to treat as eligible for its National Register of Historic Places and as a significant cultural place any location, landscape, water body, or other area that we identify as culturally significant to our tribe, and consider it accordingly under its environmental, historic preservation, and religious freedom laws.”
And then focus your efforts on getting agencies to respect this policy, rather than on documenting your cultural places in ways that non-indigenous specialists – be they landscape architects, mainstream historians, archaeologists or U.S. government officials – want you to.
Not to put too fine a point on it – are you sovereigns, or are you not?
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
What The Hell is Section 110?
On the “ReNEPA” discussion forum maintained by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), there’s recently been a discussion of Section 110 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) that revealed a (to me) remarkable amount of confusion about what this piece of the law says. Having been very much involved in the 1992 amendments to NHPA that gave us Section 110 in more or less its present form, I thought it might be useful, or at least satisfying to me, to provide a complete copy of the section with my annotations. Here it is:
Section 110
(a) (1) The heads of all Federal agencies shall assume responsibility for the preservation of historic properties which are owned or controlled by such agency. Prior to acquiring, constructing, or leasing buildings for purposes of carrying out agency responsibilities, each Federal agency shall use, to the maximum extent feasible, historic properties available to the agency in accordance with Executive Order No. 13006, issued May 21, 1996 (61 Fed. Reg. 26071). Each agency shall undertake, consistent with the preservation of such properties and the mission of the agency and the professional standards established pursuant to section 101(g) of this Act, any preservation, as may be necessary to carry out this section.
Annotation: In other words, federal agencies are responsible for historic properties they own or control. That’s FEDERAL AGENCIES, not just FEDERAL LAND MANAGING AGENCIES, as some people seem to believe. And it’s HISTORIC PROPERTIES – in other words, districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects included in or eligible for the National Register, not just PROPERTIES THAT HAVE BEEN FORMALLY DETERMINED TO BE HISTORICALLY SIGNIFICANT THROUGH NOMINATION OR ELIGIBILITY DETERMINATION, as some seem to believe.
Agencies are supposed to give priority to “using” such properties in appropriate ways, following a rather complex prioritizing system established by Executive order 13006, and they’re to “preserve” such properties – but understand that the NHPA definition of “preservation” is a very broad one; it DOESN’T mean “preservation” as outlined in the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Historic Preservation Projects.
(2) Each Federal agency shall establish (unless exempted pursuant to Section 214) of this Act, in consultation with the Secretary, a preservation program for the identification, evaluation, and nomination to the National Register of Historic Places, and protection of historic properties. Such program shall ensure —
(A) that historic properties under the jurisdiction or control of the agency, are identified, evaluated, and nominated to the National Register;
Annotation: Again, each federal agency (not just each land managing agency) is required to have a historic preservation program. There are guidelines for such programs at http://stage.historicpreservation.gov/TechnicalInfo/HistPres/FedAgencyGuidelines.aspx . Note that the “nomination” part of this subsection does not obligate agencies to nominate everything they have anything to do with; in fact, a requirement to nominate “all” historic properties was removed by the 1992 amendments at the very reasonable (I think) request of agencies like BLM and the Forest Service. So it’s perfectly OK for an agency to do as the U.S. Army has done, and prescribe conditions under which it will and won’t nominate properties.
(B) that such properties under the jurisdiction or control of the agency as are listed in or may be eligible for the National Register are managed and maintained in a way that considers the preservation of their historic, archaeological, architectural, and cultural values in compliance with section 106 of this Act and gives special consideration to the preservation of such values in the case of properties designated as having National significance;
Annotation: This subsection establishes the affirmative responsibility of federal agencies (not just land management agencies) to manage historic properties they own or control in a responsible way, though it doesn’t rigidly require their physical preservation.
(C) that the preservation of properties not under the jurisdiction or control of the agency, but subject to be potentially affected by agency actions are given full consideration in planning;
Annotation: If the agency’s going to do, assist, or permit something that may affect a historic property it DOESN’T own or control, the agency has an affirmative responsibility to make sure that preservation is “given full consideration.” This obviously underscores agency 106 responsibilities.
(D) that the agency's preservation-related activities are carried out in consultation with other Federal, State, and local agencies, Indian tribes, Native Hawaiian organizations carrying out historic preservation planning activities, and with the private sector; and
Annotation: This is general direction, again to ALL federal agencies (not just land managers) to consult with others in carrying out their activities. The definition of “consultation” in the guidelines referred to above is the same as in the Section 106 regulations, though more fulsomely detailed.
(E) that the agency's procedures for compliance with section 106 of this Act —
(i) are consistent with regulations issued by the Council pursuant to section 211 of this Act;
(ii) provide a process for the identification and evaluation of historic properties for listing in the National Register and the development and implementation of agreements, in consultation with State Historic Preservation Officers, local governments, Indian tribes, Native Hawaiian organizations, and the interested public, as appropriate, regarding the means by which adverse effects on such properties will be considered; and
(iii) provide for the disposition of Native American cultural items from Federal or tribal land in a manner consistent with section 3(c) of the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act (25 U.S.C. 3002(c)).
Annotation: Agency programs must address Section 106 responsibilities, and do so in a manner consistent with the Advisory Council’s regulations. Programs must provide for consultation and agreements. Agency programs must be consistent with NAGPRA.
(b) Each Federal agency shall initiate measures to assure that where, as a result of Federal action or assistance carried out by such agency, an historic property is to be substantially altered or demolished, timely steps are taken to make or have made appropriate records, and that such records then be deposited, in accordance with section 101(a) of this Act, in the Library of Congress or with such other appropriate agency as may be designated by the Secretary, for future use and reference.
Annotation: If a federal agency (not just a land management agency) will do something or help anybody else do something that will muck up a historic property, the agency must AT LEAST provide for the property to be documented. The Secretary’s standards and guidelines indicate that the consulting parties under Section 106 are to decide what kind of documentation will be done; it can be whatever sort of documentation (architectural, archaeological, oral historical, etc.) the parties agree to. Nothing in this subsection relieve agencies of their responsibility to consider doing things BESIDES documentation, or of their broad “preservation” responsibilities.
(c) The head of each Federal agency shall, unless exempted under section 214 of this Act, designate a qualified official to be known as the agency's "preservation officer" who shall be responsible for coordinating that agency's activities under this Act. Each Preservation Officer may, in order to be considered qualified, satisfactorily complete an appropriate training program established by the Secretary under section 101(h) of this Act.
Annotation: Each agency has to have an FPO, who’s supposed to be “qualified.”
(a) Consistent with the agency's mission and mandates, all Federal agencies shall carry out agency programs and projects (including those under which any Federal assistance is provided or any Federal license, permit, or other approval is required) in accordance with the purposes of this Act and, give consideration to programs and projects which will further the purposes of this Act.
Annotation: I actually think this is an important provision. All federal agencies (That is, ALL federal agencies) are required to try to make their programs and actions consistent with the purposes of NHPA, and to advance those purposes. Nobody pays any more attention to this than they do to Section 101 of NEPA, which is a major reason that compliance with both Section 106 and NEPA is in the shape it’s in. This subsection SHOULD be understood to (among other things) set a standard for agreements under Section 106.
(e) The Secretary shall review and approve the plans of transferees of surplus federally owned historic properties not later than ninety days after his receipt of such plans to ensure that the prehistorical, historical, architectural, or culturally significant values will be preserved or enhanced.
Annotation: A curious provision, mostly honored in the breach, that predated the 1992 amendments. If an agency has surplus property that it’s transferring, and has the recipient prepare a plan for its preservation, and submits it to the Secretary of the Interior for review, the Secretary will review it within 90 days.
(f) Prior to the approval of any Federal undertaking which may directly and adversely affect any National Historic Landmark, the head of the responsible Federal agency shall, to the maximum extent possible, undertake such planning and actions as may be necessary to minimize harm to such landmark, and shall afford the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation a reasonable opportunity to comment on the undertaking.
Annotation: If you’re going to muck up an NHL, you’re supposed to do what’s necessary to minimize the up-mucking, and consult with the Advisory Council. This provision has been built into the Council’s regulations.
(g) Each Federal agency may include the costs of preservation activities of such agency under this Act as eligible project costs in all undertakings of such agency or assisted by such agency. The eligible project costs may also include amounts paid by a Federal agency to any State to be used in carrying out such preservation responsibilities of the Federal agency under this Act, and reasonable costs may be charged to Federal licensees and permittees as a condition to the issuance of such license or permit.
Annotation: Agencies can budget for preservation, and charge others for it. In the early days of NHPA, there were agencies that insisted they lacked this authority; Section 110(g) disposed of that excuse.
(h) The Secretary shall establish an annual preservation awards program under which he may make monetary awards in amounts not to exceed $1,000 and provide citations for special achievements to officers and employees of Federal, State, and certified local governments in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the preservation of historic resources. Such program may include the issuance of annual awards by the President of the United States to any citizen of the United States recommended for such award by the Secretary.
Annotation: The Secretary will give prizes for preservation. Nice.
(i) Nothing in this Act shall be construed to require the preparation of an environmental impact statement where such a statement would not otherwise be required under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 [42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq.], and nothing is this Act shall be construed to provide any exemption from any requirement respecting the preparation of such a statement under such Act.
Annotation: This does NOT relieve agencies of the responsibility to prepare EISs where they may have significant impacts on the quality of the human environment (the EIS trigger under NEPA), but it does say that NHPA does not automatically require an EIS if you’re going to muck up a historic property.
(j) The Secretary shall promulgate regulations under which the requirements of this section may be waived in whole or in part in the event of a major natural disaster or an imminent threat to the national security.
Annotation: Waiver regulations for emergencies, etc.
(k) Each Federal agency shall ensure that the agency will not grant a loan, loan guarantee, permit, license, or other assistance to an applicant who, with intent to avoid the requirements of section 106 of this Act, has intentionally significantly adversely affected a historic property to which the grant would relate, or having legal power to prevent it, allowed such significant adverse effect to occur, unless the agency, after consultation with the Council, determines that circumstances justify granting such assistance despite the adverse effect created or permitted by the applicant.
Annotation: If I’m looking for a federal grant to put in, say, a hog farm, and I decide to simplify my life by bulldozing away that nasty old Indian cemetery on the site before I put in my application, the federal agency isn’t supposed to give me the grant, unless they find, in consultation with the Advisory Council, that there’s some really good reason to.
(l) With respect to any undertaking subject to section 106 of this Act which adversely affects any property included in or eligible for inclusion in the National Register, and for which a Federal agency has not entered into an agreement pursuant to regulations issued by the Council, the head of such agency shall document any decision made pursuant to section 106 of this Act. The head of such agency may not delegate his or her responsibilities pursuant to such section. Where a section 106 of this Act memorandum of agreement has been executed with respect to an undertaking, such memorandum shall govern the undertaking and all of its parts.
Annotation: Where there’s no MOA under Section 106 on a project with adverse effects, and the Council accordingly comments to the agency head, the agency head has to consider the comment and document his or her response. He or she can’t delegate this responsibility down the food chain. This is designed to encourage agencies to negotiate MOAs, which the subsection underscores as documents that are binding on (shall govern) the relevant undertaking.
There’s an abiding myth that Section 110 speaks only to land managing agencies; in fact, only a handful of its subsections are limited to agencies with “jurisdiction or control” over historic properties. There also seems to be a myth that Section 110 is mostly about properties already on or determined eligible for the National Register; that’s absolutely not true. “Historic property” under Section 110 means the same thing it means everywhere else in NHPA – anyplace that’s included in or eligible for the Register, whether anybody’s determined it to be so or not.
Friday, June 06, 2008
The Keeper Forgets History
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it
George Santayana, 1905
When the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) was enacted in 1966, its section 106 required federal agencies to take into account the effects of their undertakings on places included in the National Register of Historic Places. It soon became apparent that this requirement was unworkable, because it left agencies free to destroy historic places to their hearts’ content unless and until somebody else came along and got them listed on the National Register. In those days, nominating something to the Register wasn’t very hard, but it still didn’t make sense to lay the responsibility for finding and evaluating places on those who wanted to save them, rather than on those who wanted to benefit from destroying them.
So in 1971, President Nixon issued Executive Order 11593, directing agencies to treat places that were eligible for the Register but not yet listed just like those that were already on it. This provision was absorbed into NHPA itself a few years later; section 106 was amended to require agencies to consider the effects of their undertakings on places included in or eligible for the Register.
These presidential and congressional actions placed the burden of determining what significant places a project might affect where it rightfully belonged – on the project proponent or oversight agency. The obvious downside of this shift, though, was that the proponent had no motivation whatever to find anything eligible, and every motivation to find things not eligible. In theory, the State Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO), with whom agencies had to consult about eligibility, was supposed to provide a check on the natural tendency to give one’s own project a clean bill of health. But SHPOs are political creatures, and overworked to boot, and certainly not omniscient. By the mid-1980s a number of instances had arisen in which SHPOs and agencies had agreed on the ineligibility of manifestly eligible places, depriving these places, and hence the interested public, of the fragile protections of section 106.
To check the tendency toward such dealmaking, when the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) revised its regulations in 1985, it provided that agencies and SHPOs could determine eligibility by consensus, but if either the ACHP or the Keeper of the National Register so requested[1], the agency had to seek a formal determination of eligibility/ineligibility from the Keeper. This didn’t allow just anybody to trigger a formal determination for any old frivolous reason, but it did set up a system through which concerned citizens, if they had a good enough case, could get the ACHP or Keeper to require such a determination.
What constitutes a good enough case? The regulations don’t say, but a recent case provides an example. A year or so ago the Department of Energy (DOE) was discovered digging a backhoe trench in the middle of a dump created by the Manhattan Project on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State. Archaeologists from the Umatilla Tribe objected, and notified a number of historical archaeologists and archaeological organizations, who did the same, claiming that DOE was violating section 106. DOE said nonsense, dumps aren’t eligible for the National Register. Unaccountably, the SHPO agreed. The archaeologists appealed to the ACHP, pointing out that dumps are pretty much what archaeologists study, and that the Manhattan Project was a rather significant historical phenomenon whose domestic leavings might very well produce significant information. The ACHP found these arguments convincing, and required DOE to seek a formal determination. DOE grudgingly did, and the Keeper found the dump eligible.
A fairly straightforward system: you don’t like what an agency and SHPO have agreed to, you write the ACHP or Keeper and lay out your counter-argument, and if one of them finds it worthy they can require the agency to give the matter more study, more documentation, and send that documentation to the Keeper for a determination. Importantly, the responsibility to do the documentation, to make the studies and hence to fund them, remains with the agency, and hence with the project proponent – the guy with the money, who expects to benefit from mucking up the putatively historic place.
I’m looking at a letter recently sent out by the National Park Service on behalf of the Keeper, in response to a citizen request that the Keeper ask an agency to seek a formal determination. The facts of the case don’t matter – though I’ll frankly acknowledge that I drafted the request, and thought we’d made a passably good case for the probable eligibility of the place involved. What does matter are the reasons the Keeper turned down our request.
First, the Keeper seems not to have understood what she was being asked to do. The letter says the Keeper’s office is “unable to adequately determine if the area…meets the National Register Criteria…” But no one was asking them to do that. What they were being asked to do was think about whether the area was likely enough to meet the criteria to justify insisting that the federal agency involved in the case get the information needed to determine eligibility. It’s almost as if the Keeper doesn’t understand the Advisory Council’s regulations, but of course that’s unthinkable.
Now, why couldn’t the Keeper determine if the area meets the criteria? According to the letter, because the citizens didn’t provide:
A careful delineation of boundaries;
A comprehensive inventory of features;
Conclusive evidence that an eligible (property) exists;
Answers to questions that occurred to the Keeper about integrity;
Documentation describing component resources and defining relationships;
Contextual information;
Photographs of component sites and features;
A map depicting the property in detail.
All these demands will be familiar to anyone who has nominated something to the National Register – they outline the requirements for such a nomination. In other words, the Keeper was insisting on a nomination before she could consider a citizen appeal of a determination of ineligibility. “Without conclusive evidence that an eligible (property) exists,” the Keeper said, “we do not think it appropriate to ask the (agency) to request a formal determination of eligibility” (emphasis added).
This effectively takes us back to the condition in which we existed before President Nixon issued Executive Order 11593. If we think an agency is ignoring a significant place, the Keeper is telling us, we have to provide “conclusive evidence” of its eligibility – for all practical purposes, we have to nominate it. If you haven’t prepared a nomination, this may not seem like a big deal, but if you have, you know it takes a great deal of research, writing, mapping, photography, and other documentary work, typically costing several thousand dollars. Executive Order 11593 shifted this burden from the public to the agency proposing to destroy a place; the Keeper is now shifting it back.
If you’re inclined, you can accuse me of sour grapes – I’m just irritated because my effort to demonstrate the significance of the place failed. But I actually never much expected to prevail; the case was a highly political one, and we were lined up against some very powerful interests. And however I feel about this particular case, I think there's something for everyone to be concerned about when an agency like the National Park Service forgets – or decides to ignore – the principle that the would-be destroyer of a resource, not the affected public, should bear the cost of evaluating and dealing with its significance.
[1] Or, of course, if the agency and SHPO didn’t agree.
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