On May 6, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994) signs an executive order authorizing the protection of the nation's cultural and historical sites as specified by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA). One of the lesser-known provisions of NEPA is its call to "preserve important historic" and “cultural” sites as well as "natural" sites (NEPA statute). Executive Order 11593 requires federal agencies to administer their historic and cultural in such a way that they would be "preserved, restored and maintained." NEPA will subsequently invoked as a safeguard for preservation of the nation’s historic legacy as well as its environment.
In a Spirit of Stewardship
The National Environmental Policy Act, whose passage was spearheaded by Washington’s powerful U.S. Senator Henry M. Jackson (1912-1983), is known mostly as a centerpiece of the nation's environmental laws. Yet the statute also says that the federal government has the responsibility "to preserve important historic, cultural, and natural aspects of our national heritage" (NEPA statute). Nixon’s Executive Order 11593 stated that the order was "in furtherance" of both NEPA and the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (NHPA). Like NEPA, the historic-preservation law had been introduced and shepherded through Congress by Jackson, in cooperation with the administration of President Lyndon Johnson (1908-1973).
Order 11593 called on federal agencies to "administer the cultural properties under their control in a spirit of stewardship and trusteeship for future generations" (Executive Order). It also specified that agencies make sure that places of "historical, architectural or archaeological significance are preserved, restored and maintained for the inspiration and benefit of the people." It also required agencies to locate, inventory and nominate all sites that might qualify for the National Register of Historic Places.
History and Culture
NEPA requires federal agencies to prepare Environmental Impact Statements for all major federal projects, and those statements should address the historic and cultural impacts as well as the strictly environmental impacts. As a result, there have been many cases in which an Environmental Impact Statement has been challenged based on historic-cultural factors.
For example, in 1999 the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe of Washington challenged the U.S. Forest Service’s Environmental Impact Statement involving a proposed land exchange between the Forest Service and the Weyerhaeuser Co., a swap known as the Huckleberry Exchange. The swap included portions of the Huckleberry Divide Trail, near Greenwater, Washington, which was historically important to the Muckleshoot Tribe. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Environmental Impact Statement was inadequate and halted the swap.
