Beyond "Document and Destroy" Mitigation: Fill in the Blank

Author(s): Chris Jenkins; Lance Lundquist

Year: 2017

Summary

The National Historic Preservation Act requires federal agencies to consider the effects of their actions on historic properties. In contrast to many other federal agencies, the Army Corps of Engineers, Regulatory Branch does not initiate undertakings on its own behalf. Rather, it is tasked with verifying permit applications from other agencies and the public. The Regulatory Branch is neither a proponent nor opponent of the permitted action. As a neutral party, one of the more challenging aspects of the Section 106 process is developing meaningful mitigation to resolve adverse. However before the consultation process reaches this point, the efforts to avoid and minimize the effects on historic properties plays an important role, contributing to and limiting the options to resolve the adverse effects. Examining permitting actions by the Seattle District Regulatory Branch, this paper presents efforts taken to avoid and minimize adverse effects and how these influenced the efforts to find and craft mitigation to resolve the adverse effects. A major challenge is balancing the conflicting agendas and requests of the consulting parties. The process to consider the consulting party’s opinions and the efforts to identify and develop the mitigation measures and their efficacy is presented.

Cite this Record

Beyond "Document and Destroy" Mitigation: Fill in the Blank. Chris Jenkins, Lance Lundquist. Presented at The 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Vancouver, British Columbia. 2017 ( tDAR id: 432112)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17455