Testimony submitted by Emily
Wadhams
Vermont State Historic
Preservation Officer
before the
Senate Committee on
Environment and Public Works
“Project Delivery and Environmental Stewardship”
September 19, 2002
Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, thank you
for inviting me to provide testimony today on the approach Vermont has taken to
expedite historic preservation reviews of transportation projects. My name is Emily Wadhams. I am the Vermont
State Historic Preservation Officer. I
am also on the Board of Directors of the National Conference of State Historic
Preservation Officers and am an Advisor to the National Trust for Historic
Preservation. Although I am not
speaking on behalf of these national organizations, I have been working closely
with them on the issues I’ll be addressing this morning.
I
appreciate the opportunity to testify today and especially want to thank
Senator Jeffords for the invitation. We
in Vermont have long looked to Senator Jeffords as a leader in historic
preservation. History is important to
Vermonters, and Senator Jeffords has done a lot to help the citizens of Vermont
preserve our state as a special place.
He has recognized and supported the importance of landmarks like covered
bridges and barns with national legislation that helps preserve these icons for
all Americans. And he has championed our small towns and villages with his
leadership on postal service policy that keeps post offices active as vital
community centers.
In Vermont, my office collaborated with state and
federal transportation officials to improve the way we review the impacts of
transportation projects on historic and archeological resources. In brief, we developed an agreement known
officially as a Programmatic Agreement, or PA, that creates an alternative
review process for transportation projects under Section 106 of the National
Historic Preservation Act. Although
Section 106 regulations encourage programmatic agreements, Vermont is the only
state to have developed such a comprehensive document. Under the agreement, the State Historic
Preservation Officer has delegated the review and sign-off authority to
qualified historic preservation professionals within the Vermont Agency of
Transportation for all state and federal transportation undertakings. After almost two years of experience with
the PA, I can report that the success of this approach has far exceeded our
expectations.
Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation
Act requires federal agencies to consider the effects of their undertakings on
historic and archeological resources.
In Vermont, as in other states, transportation safety and efficiency
goals have often collided with historic preservation goals, sometimes delaying
projects, and pitting state DOT’s against State Historic Preservation Offices
(SHPOs) in battles over the preservation of cultural resources. Mistrust among the parties to the process
was common, and it often turned into a ‘blame game’ of whose fault it was that
projects were being delayed. In the end
both sides lost – project schedules lengthened, costs increased, and cultural
resources were destroyed. Vermont, like
most states, was mired in the problem.
We were hearing from communities that they were not being heard and that
changes were being made in the name of improving roads that were ruining the
character of their towns.
Vermonters believe that it is possible to change
things for the better, that if you bring together the right people and talk
about a problem, you can fix it. In the
mid 1990’s, Vermont started talking about how to solve the Section 106 review
problem for transportation projects.
Many of the most pressing –and adversarial - projects involved historic
metal truss bridge replacements, and so we focused first on a survey of these
bridges – which ones were most important, which ones were good candidates for
preservation, which ones had to be removed, and was it feasible to reuse some
elsewhere? The Vermont Agency of
Transportation and the Vermont State Historic Preservation Office both
committed time and money to answer the questions and produced a consensus
bridge plan, formalized into a programmatic agreement for bridges. Although many bridges have been saved in
place and continue to serve vehicular traffic, AOT developed a Historic Bridge
Program to relocate and restore important bridges. In Hinesburg, Vermont, a small pony truss has been reused to
cross a stream on a heavily used community pedestrian and bike path. In Arlington, a bypassed metal truss bridge
next to a fishing access on the famed Battenkill trout stream became a fishing
platform accessible for people with disabilities.
Another collaborative effort also occurred at the
same time. This was the development of
the Vermont Design Standards (1996) and a new community review process designed
to create more flexibility and creativity in designing transportation projects
and to increase community input early in the planning process. One of the first beneficiaries of the new
Standards was the town of Underhill where citizens fought for and won a
“footprint” replacement bridge, a bridge that matched the dimensions of the old
bridge as well as the small scale of the community. The success of these efforts led to broader discussions about how
to streamline all Section 106 reviews and better protect cultural resources in
transportation planning.
These projects changed our relationship with the
Agency of Transportation. We began
working on the premise that we shared the same two goals - to improve the
review process to allow AOT to do it’s job, and to be good stewards of the
state’s historic resources. The trust
that evolved led to the creation of a general Programmatic Agreement, or PA,
that emerged in 2000. The PA delegates
Section 106 sign-off authority to the Agency of Transportation itself, for its
own projects, a radical concept. The PA
relies on qualified historic preservation professionals within AOT to ensure
appropriate consideration of historic and archeological resources in
transportation project planning. AOT
now files a final comment with the SHPO, and there is a specified timeframe for
the SHPO to ask questions or disagree. AOT and SHPO staff worked together to
create the PA Manual that clarified or developed procedures and other guidance
to define how resources should be evaluated and treated in the Section 106
process. That effort allowed us to
discuss, debate, and agree on exactly how the Section 106 process would work
under the PA, which set the overall tone of the process, but did not provide
details. The first annual evaluation of the PA process proclaimed it a
resounding success. Thirty other states
have requested copies so that they may consider it for their jurisdictions.
Preservationists have long thought that
consideration of historic and archeological resources early in project planning
could eliminate many potential adverse effects on those resources in
transportation projects. The PA promotes
early consideration by sanctioning AOT historic preservation staff to actively
and authoritatively participate in that early planning to avoid adverse
effects. Formerly, when preservation
issues came up late in the project planning process, it was often difficult and
expensive to redesign to avoid adverse effects, and resources were lost.
The PA has reduced delays in the review process
dramatically. AOT estimates that review
of routine projects has been shortened by weeks, and complex projects, by
months or more. The PA exempts from
review a long list of activities with little potential to affect historic and
archeological resources. The
time-consuming exchange of memos, telephone calls and frequent meetings have
been eliminated between the SHPO and AOT staff.
The PA Manual prescribes opportunities for broad
public involvement and comment on the issues covered by Section 106,
piggybacked on the Agency’s existing public process. The Manual requires that
the Agency reach out to certain interested constituencies and inform them about
their opportunity to comment, thereby enhancing the public’s ability to understand
and comment on affected historic and archeological resources. The PA also stresses public education about
historic and archeological resources, both as projects occur and as mitigation.
The PA also called for interagency cooperation on
other innovative non-regulatory projects, and several are currently underway
which will benefit Vermonters: AOT now
co-sponsors our annual state-wide historic preservation conference and Vermont
Archeology Month; it is working with us to develop a database of historic
resources, refine a GIS-based predictive model for archeological sites; and is
considering helping us update our long-neglected state survey of historic
sites. And I’ll throw in a plug for
more capacity for state historic preservation offices here. The appropriation to Department of
Interior’s Historic Preservation Fund, which provides federal funding to state
historic preservation offices to do all the things we are mandated to do under
federal law, - survey work, regulatory
reviews, historic tax credit reviews, provide technical assistance, and so on -
has seen only minor increases in the last 30 years. In Vermont, we have not been able to invest in the infrastructure
– good database, historic sites surveys and GIS mapping - to allow information about historic
resources to be integrated into state, local and federal planning
processes. Any way that the Historic
Preservation Fund can be increased or enhancement dollars earmarked to assist
us with this process would greatly improve our ability to be better stewards of
these resources while improving the historic preservation offices’ regulatory
review process.
The key to success of the Vermont Programmatic
Agreement has been a willingness on AOT’s part to take its mandated
responsibility towards historic preservation seriously. In the past, it was too easy for AOT to say
the state historic preservation office was “making them” do something. With the new process, historic preservation
concerns are more naturally integrated into the agency’s thinking in the
earliest stages of project development, not as an afterthought or a
burden. In addition, the Agency of
Transportation has now begun to develop projects, like a new railroad depot
initiative to rehabilitate the state-owned railroad depots that probably
wouldn’t have happened without this new integration of historic resource
protection into their day-to-day activities.
Without the enactment of ISTEA and TEA-21 – the
enhancement programs that began in 1991, I’m not sure we would be where we are
today. Congress made a clear statement
with the enhancements program that built upon on the 1966 National Historic
Preservation Act. It said that ‘yes’
in 1966 we were serious about making sure that federally funded highway
projects and other federal undertakings couldn’t ignore the impacts of
interstate highways and other transportation projects on our nation’s historic
resources. Now, with the enhancements
program, Congress has also made a commitment to those “activities that enhance
community benefits of transportation investments”. Enhancements are engines of change and natural partnership
builders. They enhance the natural and
built environments through which roads pass.
Vermont’s Agency of Transportation’s major responsibility is to repair
and builds roads and bridges for safe and efficient travel. But it also takes
its environmental responsibilities seriously.
AASHTO honored the Vermont enhancements program as one of the four best
in America in a 2000 competition.
We have come a long way towards recognizing the
importance of stewardship. We still
need better policies to address important issues like limiting truck length and
weight on the National Highway System roads, changing federal funding policy to
encourage, not discourage retention of historic bridges, and provide funding
that will allow for the retention of unpaved scenic roads, for example. Also badly needed are changes to the enhancements
program that remove serious impediments in applying for scenic easement
acquisitions. Vermont is making a major
effort to gain scenic or conservation easements at interstate exits to help
communities address growth and traffic concerns. The current program, which will not allow for an appraisal or
negotiated purchase price until after the enhancements grant has been awarded,
make this almost impossible.
In Vermont our “new and improved” approach to
regulatory reviews is working. I believe it works because we have a citizenry
that values the resources we strive to protect, we have legislators in
Washington who recognize the importance of protecting these resources for
future generations of Vermonters, we have a governor who has worked hard to protect
our downtowns, village centers and scenic landscapes, we have supportive
leadership within our Agency of Transportation, and we have a Federal Highway
Administration staff that has been a strong partner in these efforts. Our mutual goal has been to address issues
of safety and efficiency in a modern transportation system in a way that
enhances and does not compromise the special characteristics of the state we
love.
Section
4(f)
I strongly believe that the approach we’re taken in
Vermont to improve the regulatory process can also work with the protections
established in Section 4(f) of the Department of Transportation Act. 4(f) prohibits the use of historic sites and
public lands unless there is no prudent and feasible alternative. It is viewed by some as being rigid and
cumbersome and sometimes results in solutions that don’t make sense especially
with smaller projects. In Vermont,
4(f) is rarely a problem, because AOT’s historic preservation staff flags
adverse effects very early on in the planning process and can work to either
avoid the adverse effect or go through the required alternatives analysis early
on. I think almost everyone who works
with 4(f) agrees that improvements to the process could be made. But changing the statute would be drastic
and unnecessary and open the door to weakening the protections created by the
law. The success of the Vermont example
to expedite reviews under Section 106 can be applied to improving the 4(f)
process. As we learned with our
project, willing partners committed to making the process work effectively, can
devise a regulatory or procedural solution to address the problem. In Vermont, I believe we have shown that
with a collaborative approach, everyone wins – projects get built, resources
get protected and the public is better served.
Thank you.
1.)
Manual of Standards and Guidelines,
in accordance with the Programmatic Agreement among the VAOT, FHWA, ACHP, VSHPO
regarding the Implementation of the Federal-Aid Highway Program in Vermont (12/28/0). Manual includes the Programmatic Agreement
as Appendix A.
2.)
Better Historic Preservation Reviews
for Road Projects, National Trust for Historic Preservation, 2002.