America's historic preservation law is in peril, advocates say. Here's what's at stake

Johnson signed the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) into law, alongside half a dozen conservation bills. "We have come here this morning to give part of our country back to its people," Johnson declared at the bill signing on Oct. 15, 1966. Now, historic preservation advocates say, the government is trying to yank the public's power away.

"Preservation, from its inception, has worked best with public and private partnership," Brent Leggs, the president and CEO of the nonprofit National Trust for Historic Preservation, told NPR. "Over the last year and a half, the federal government has divested that responsibility." It's a far cry from 1966, when the NHPA created a mechanism for identifying and protecting the country's historic sites — ranging from a single tree to an entire district. Because of that law, those landmarks — today, more than 100,000 of them — are listed on the official National Register of Historic Places.

And federal agencies must consult with states, tribes and stakeholders before beginning any projects that could potentially harm them, through a process called Section 106 review. "Section 106 is in many ways the teeth behind the National Historic Preservation Act," said Elihu Rubin, a professor of architecture and urban studies at the Yale School of Architecture. "It is Section 106 that insists … that federal projects that threaten historic resources can only proceed when efforts are made to mitigate the impacts on those resources." Section 106 has saved historic buildings from demolition and prevented development on archaeological sites, according to "success stories" recently compiled by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

But, Rubin stresses, the review process doesn't necessarily stop projects from happening — and that's the point of participating in it. "Some of the most interesting projects that come out of it are surveys of fascinating buildings or places that will be lost," he said. "But we gain a lot from that process." That process is now facing dual threats.

A federal council packed with Trump appointees voted this summer to weaken Section 106 regulations, while a bipartisan permitting reform bill gaining traction in the Senate would significantly narrow the review process in order to speed up infrastructure and energy projects. "It will effectively rewrite the National Historic Preservation Act in ways that, for all intents and purposes, gut its meaning and protections for hundreds of thousands of sites across the country," said Greg Werkheiser, whose law firm, Cultural Heritage Partners, is leading a coalition to protect Section 106. "Section 106 Strong," which officially launched Thursday, says it spans 1,000 organizations — including religious, environmental and civil rights groups — and Tribal Nations collectively representing more than 9 million Americans.

"I've been involved in historic preservation and politics for 30 years, and I've rarely seen a movement come together this quickly," he told NPR. "I think Americans are simply fed up with watching their history manipulated, defaced, or destroyed as an instrument of political power." During the Great Depression, the federal government hired workers to survey historic buildings across the U.S. But by 1965, when Johnson convened a committee to study the issue, half of those buildings had been either destroyed or damaged beyond repair.