Rebecca Goodwin was teaching a training session a few weeks ago at a conference for the National Alliance of Preservation Commissions in Minneapolis when she heard the news: Proposed revisions to federal rules designed to protect historic sites from potentially harmful projects threatened to shrink the sites themselves and cut state, local and tribal input.
For Goodwin, the preservation officer for Otero County in southeastern Colorado who also serves on the NAPC board, thoughts and fears turned immediately to the vulnerability of her region’s expansive historic canvas — the Santa Fe Trail, Sand Creek, Bent’s Old Fort, Boggsville, Amache, even historic small-town post offices on the National Register of Historic Places, like La Junta and Rocky Ford.
“It will impact historic resources in the cities and the urban areas,” Goodwin said. “But I think some of the highest risk areas are more rural areas. I think there’s going to be a lot of irreversible loss and damage while this plays out, unless something very drastic happens.”
The proposed changes — they would reimagine Section 106 of the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act — would effectively alter 60 years of collaboration. Consultation with organizations and officials charged with protecting cultural landmarks against damage from projects permitted or funded by the federal government, from infrastructure to energy and many things in between, would be discretionary. Decision-making power would reside almost solely with federal agencies.
News of the draft rewrite leaked around mid-July after it was distributed to members of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. On July 24, a week after Goodwin first heard news of the plan, the council voted to move forward the proposal.
As originally written, Section 106 defines a review process that includes state, local and tribal officials to determine whether a federally backed project would cause “adverse effects” to National Register-eligible historic properties and consider measures to avoid or minimize harm.
For instance, two communications tower projects in Otero County recently triggered Section 106, as they had to be approved by the Federal Communications Commission and they involved adverse effects on the Santa Fe Trail.
On one proposed tower near the Iron Spring historic district, a company worked with preservationists to try to locate the tower out of the direct sightlines of the trail. Although the agreed-upon location wasn’t perfect, the result minimized harm and mitigated the impact by providing funding for an interpretive project.
Another structure, a cell tower on private land, couldn’t effectively be relocated and still provide adequate coverage, but the company provided funding for another project related to the Santa Fe Trail. In both cases, the process pulled together “consulting parties” and reached a resolution.
Over the last five years, the number of new Section 106 consultations in Colorado has fluctuated from a high of 1,900 in 2021 to 1,512 in 2025. In each year, on average, fewer than 2% of those required resolution through mitigation. Nearly all were resolved without completing the prescribed four-step process.
The proposed changes by the advisory council, a majority of whom are presidential appointees, essentially replace the four-step framework with a single-step process that ensures federal control.
They would create a narrower definition of “historic properties”; remove the necessity of consulting with state and local governments whose jurisdictions might be affected by proposed projects; and weaken explicit requirements to consult with Native American tribes. Public participation in reviewing proposed projects would happen only at the discretion of federal agencies.
“One of the things that I think is the most important about the National Historic Preservation Act, as it is written, is that it truly is this collaboration across the federal government, state, tribal governments, local communities,” said Dawn DiPrince, president and CEO of History Colorado and also the state’s historic preservation officer. “And it does recognize this idea that those who are closest, whether geographically or culturally to a place, know it best. And what the revisions do is just take the heart of that away.”
A question of “local control”
In many ways, she added, the controversy boils down to an issue of local control, which she described as “part of the Colorado ethos.” Of particular concern is a portion of the revisions that would require that historic properties be “geographically compact.” That language could exclude broad natural and cultural landscapes like the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, for instance, that encompasses nearly 20 square miles — or vast swaths of park or forest land.
“We think that is a threat to rural historic districts or some of our bigger cultural landscapes,” DiPrince said. “And it’s hard for me to say this, but sometimes these things get written with an East Coast lens, and this is definitely not something that would be the right fit for Colorado or the American West.”
Xcel Energy, whose massive Colorado’s Power Pathways project across the Eastern Plains threatened to infringe on viewsheds at the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, altered the route of transmission lines after accepting Cheyenne and Arapaho tribal input. But that project didn’t trigger a Section 106 review because it didn’t fall under federal jurisdiction.
Additionally, Otero County’s Goodwin noted that a separate transmission line project that would have impacted the Santa Fe Trail also had no federal connection and therefore didn’t fall under Section 106, though the local community was engaged in the process.
“I would say that that’s not the norm, unfortunately,” she said.
Although a wide array of organizations have registered their opposition to the proposed changes, the idea of revisiting Section 106 isn’t new. Even some preservationists say that, after 60 years, it could use some revision.
Goodwin suggested that “there’s some reasonable streamlining that could be done,” particularly on smaller projects, and that she had expected discussions to ensue. But with the sudden appearance of the draft revisions, and the council vote the following week, any chance for broad discussion, she said, “just went out the window almost instantly.”
Earlier this summer, the Institute for Progress, a Washington, D.C.-based, nonpartisan public policy think tank, published a report titled, “Reforming Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act.” The piece described Section 106, as written, as “a modest procedural check on hasty decisionmaking” that has in practice become “a substantive burden on building infrastructure of all kinds.”
Noting that only a small portion of federal undertakings subject to the NHPA are judged to adversely impact historic properties, the report says that key energy and infrastructure projects tend to be disproportionately represented. The result has been increased delays and costs while reviews and legal challenges continue for years.
“Historic properties are part of the heritage of our country and shouldn’t be altered or damaged without a federal agency understanding that’s what they’re doing,” said Ben Schifman, a senior technology fellow at IFP and co-author of the report. “And that’s all well and good. But the problem is that the process, as it has evolved over these many years, has created particular difficulties for certain types of infrastructure, including the clean energy infrastructure that we need to have enough electricity for everyone and to respond to other challenges.
“It’s not only energy projects,” Schifman added. “It’s flood control projects. It’s roads. It’s anything we’re building in the physical world. NHPA can have the potential to slow it down and add cost without a very significant countervailing benefit to the historic resource that it’s meant to protect.”
Schifman said he’s reluctant to comment on proposed changes to Section 106 that are “so preliminary,” but acknowledges that they contain elements he likes and some he feels could be “somewhat counterproductive.”
“I understand why the historic preservationists are upset about the proposed changes to the regulation,” he said. “They’re a very significant change in the way that the NHPA has been administered for many, many years — and there are reasons for preservationists to push back against those.”
Western projects reflect the issues
The controversy over the Section 106 changes has, in some ways, merged with the ongoing legal battles over the limits of historic preservation. The IFP report notes one case in point: the extensive battle over the SunZia Southwest Transmission Project, a key 500-mile, high-voltage line that links wind power generated in New Mexico to customers across the region.
Although construction has been completed, the project remains the subject of complex litigation as Arizona’s federal court addresses Section 106 questions over whether an entire valley could be listed as historic rather than specific archeological sites.
“I don’t think there’s anything conceptually off about saying we have a very large historic property,” Schifman said. “The problem comes in when you try to assess mitigation. How do you mitigate an effect on a property that’s 500 square miles? That becomes, practically, incredibly difficult to do.”
Another controversy in the West involves oil and gas drilling near New Mexico’s Chaco Culture National Historical Park, whose 10-mile buffer limits are under review to possibly be rolled back. While preservationists cite the threat to cultural resources and Indigenous sovereignty, others — including some tribal landowners who receive royalties from energy extraction — argue that restrictions infringe on economic opportunity.
Michaela Pavlat, associate director of Indigenous engagement with the National Parks Conservation Association and a citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, appreciates the cultural value of Chaco Canyon site. The idea of having energy infrastructure bumping up against it “makes me sick to think about. It’s heartbreaking” she said — even though there may be room to revisit Section 106.
“We evolve as a nation,” Pavlat said, “and as tribal sovereignty evolves, technology evolves, there are opportunities to improve processes. This is not it.
“I see a fierce fight ahead,” she added. “And we are not stopping.”
History Colorado, others speak out
The changes advanced by the advisory council are currently under review by the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. After that, a notice of proposed rulemaking will be published in the Federal Register, triggering a 30-day public comment window before the advisory council holds a final vote.
An array of historic preservation advocacy groups has mobilized to encourage robust public comment. And in an unusual move, History Colorado’s board of directors last month issued a statement responding to the proposed changes.
“Whether you live in an urban or rural community, local decision-making and including local voices is a core Colorado value,” the statement said in part. “Yet, the clearest objective of these revisions is to weaken opportunities for public input about what history we preserve and what impacts our communities.”
DiPrince noted that the statement “was not something we asked for them to do,” but that the board, and the preservation community at large, have felt compelled to speak out.
“This spans the divides,” she said. “Preservation always has been both urban and rural, both Democratic and Republican. There are just ways in which this gets at something deep within us, touches us in a way that overcomes those other external divisions. And that is what we’ve really seen in this moment.”
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For some in the historic preservation space, the proposed changes to Section 106 seem of a piece with President Donald Trump’s executive order from May 20, 2025, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” said Elleni Sclavenitis, executive director of the Sand Creek Massacre Foundation. That order, critics argue, effectively seeks to whitewash darker chapters of the nation’s history, in part by excising the narratives of marginalized groups.
Tribal input was key to the formation of the National Historic Site near Eads, dedicated in 2007. For instance, consultation with the tribes — along with historians and archeologists and others — helped determine the precise landscape where the massacre took place.
Historians and archeologists brought maps, metal detecting devices and other means to the process. Tribal experts contributed traditional knowledge and oral histories to pinpoint the location of the 1864 Cheyenne and Arapaho encampment, where about 230 people, mostly women, children and elders, were killed by forces under the command of Col. John Chivington.
Changes to Section 106 that would minimize tribal input in protecting sacred sites, Sclavenitis noted, echo the current administration’s attacks on historic sites on other fronts.
“Sand Creek wouldn’t be what it is today without the consultation process with the tribes,” she said. “This removes those protections and those obligations to tribal voices.”
The foundation has issued its own statement on the Section 106 changes, which includes a call to action during the public comment period.
“Our board is led by tribal descendants of the survivors of Sand Creek, and there is not a lot of fear there,” Sclavenitis said. “There’s really a conviction in continuing to stand for the truth, and that’s what the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes have done for so long. There’s a long history there of standing by beliefs and tradition and values.”
DiPrince anticipates that the proposed revisions will be enacted in spite of opposition, but that lawsuits challenging the changes will follow — and, she believes, ultimately will succeed. But the broader concern revolves around what happens while courts consider the issue.
“When we talk about historic preservation, we’re talking about things that are irreplaceable, and so you know that in the meantime we are losing things that we will not get back,” she said. “I think eventually we will prevail, but things will be lost along the way.”