FYI: Forwarded from The California Council for the Promotion of History
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>Revisiting the law that pits roads against historic places
> Bush administration wants revision to limit power of preservationists
>
>Robert E. Pierre, Washington Post
> Thursday, December 4, 2003
> ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle
>
>
> Harrods Creek , Ky. -- Meme Sweets Runyon's mind and mouth run a
> mile a minute as she
>motors down River Road, pointing out historic homes,
> sweeping vistas and rolling landscapes that could be spoiled if a
> new interstate highway
>project is built.
>
> "This land is beloved," said Runyon, executive director of River
> Fields, an Ohio River
>preservation group. "Children can go to the landscape of the
> corridor and capture what happened 200 years ago."
>
> But she contends that projects such as the Ohio River Bridges -- a
> two- bridge proposal
>here and eight miles downriver in Louisville -- threaten that
> sense of history.
>
> John Carr, Kentucky's deputy state highway engineer, said the state
> has gone overboard to
>limit damage to historic sites. At one property, planners
> have agreed to spend $90 million to burrow a tunnel underneath
> rather than dig a trench
>for the tunnel and cover it up.
>
> The more expensive option avoids uprooting the existing plants and
> trees at Drumanard
>Estate, one of 26 estates built here beginning in the 1870s and
> featuring the work of nationally renowned architects and landscape
> designers.
>
> "We're spending $90 million on a tunnel to avoid a $4 million
> property," said Carr, a
>30-year transportation planner.
>
> "We could have done it much cheaper and replaced the landscape just
> as it is today.
>
> "We're trying to put a little logic in this," he said.
>
> The people who build roads and the ones, like Runyon, who have
> devoted themselves to
>protecting pieces of America's past have battled for decades,
> as interstates have stretched from coast to coast.
>
> Road builders have long complained that Congress, in 1966, gave
> preservationists too
>strong a hand when it mandated that transportation projects
> avoid significant historic sites, public parks and wildlife refuges
> unless there is no
>"feasible and prudent" alternative.
>
> The Bush administration has asked Congress to change what it
> contends is a well-intended
>law that no longer works.
>
> Officials point to egregious examples in several parts of the
> country where millions of
>dollars was spent to move a highway project to avoid a historic
> building only to have the property sold later to the highest bidder
> and then demolished.
>
> The proposed change is part of a new six-year major transportation
> reauthorization bill
>being debated on Capitol Hill.
>
> Historic preservation protections would not go away, officials said,
> because there is a
>current process that allows affected parties to negotiate a
> settlement. The changes would give the secretary of transportation
> leeway to decide, for
>instance, whether taking a small piece of a historic property
> would cause significant harm to the overall site, a departure from
> existing regulations.
>
> Now, "there is no flexibility," Federal Highway Administrator Mary
> Peters said. "The
>current process makes things take longer and doesn't necessarily
> yield better results. It wastes money. It wastes time. All we're
> asking for is a
>balance."
>
> But the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and like-minded
> groups, are determined
>to preserve what they consider their most effective
> preservation tool: the transportation law known as Section 4(f). It
> was the result of
>public outrage at the way highways had ripped through communities
> with reckless abandon.
>
> Richard Moe, president of the National Trust, would just as soon not
> take any chances. He
>credits 4(f) with saving national landmarks such as the
> French Quarter in New Orleans and Fort McHenry in Baltimore from
> being obscured by
>unsightly bridges.
>
> "We're not obstructionists," Moe said. "We've got to have highways,
> and they have got to
>be built in a reasonable time frame. But we need this law in
> place because it's always hanging over the process.
>
> "If it's removed or largely eviscerated, then we fear there is no
> incentive for them to
>work with us. It's a nuisance to highway builders. To some of them,
> anybody who disagrees is unreasonable," Moe said.
>
> The separate transportation proposals working through the House and
> Senate have yet to
>deal with the most controversial of the proposals by the
> Federal Highway Administration, which would require a preservation
> review process but
>would give more discretion to highway administrators to
> resolve disputes.
>
> Preservationists chalked up a slight victory recently when the
> Senate Environment and
>Public Works Committee decided to keep 4(f) in place.
>
> But the fight is not over, and most likely the issue won't be
> decided until the full
>House and Senate take up the transportation bill next year.
>
> "I think it's too soon to say how this thing is going to turn out,"
> said Matthew
>Jeanneret, a vice president at the American Road & Transportation
> Builders Association, which supports the Bush administration's
> proposed changes.
>
> "It's really still early in the game."
>
> ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle
>
>* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
>James C. Williams
>Professor of History
>Vice President - International Committee for the History of Technology
>
>Office:
> History Department
> De Anza College
> Cupertino CA
> Messages: 408-864-8964
>
>Postal address:
> 790 Raymundo Avenue
> Los Altos CA 94024-3138 USA
>
>Phone: 650-960-8193
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>Email: <[log in to unmask]>
>Web Site: <http://www.deanza.fhda/faculty/williams>
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