Reverse Section 106 Changes and Stop the Destruction of Public Lands

Congress needs to act now to reverse the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation's July 25 vote advancing revisions to Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. These changes would strip protections from more than 100,000 properties and 1.8 million sites on the National Register of Historic Places, eliminate public input on federal projects affecting historic places, and allow highways to be built through neighborhoods and burial sites without review. The administration is also moving to open Chaco Canyon, a UNESCO World Heritage Site with over 4,700 known archaeological sites, to oil and gas extraction, and fast-tracking a triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery that ranking members of both House and Senate committees have called "stone-cold illegal." Meanwhile, plans to paint the granite Eisenhower Executive Office Building white could irreversibly damage the stone at enormous public expense. None of this reflects what Americans want done with their shared history and public spaces. Restore Section 106's full protections, block the Chaco Canyon extraction plan, and defund the triumphal arch project. The National Park Service already carries a $25 billion maintenance backlog, and that is where taxpayer dollars belong, not on vanity projects. These are not partisan issues, they are about whether the American people retain any say over the places that belong to all of us.