Members of Congress are out on the campaign trail, leaving Washington mostly quiet. But that does not mean that work on major issues has halted.
With the Senate still poised to take up the permitting reform bill the week after the election, the bill’s threats to Section 106 are gaining more attention. With constituents calling and meeting with their representatives, national and local organizations sending in letters, and the media starting to cover the issue (see here, here, here, here), lawmakers are increasingly hearing about how the bill will endanger America’s historic sites.
Whether these efforts will slow or stop the bill, or will spur lawmakers to make changes, is still unclear. A lot can happen between now and the beginning of the debate, including the election itself. But the unprecedented advocacy effort around the bill is indispensable to breaking through the noise and forcing Congress to confront the real costs of the bill.
So keep those letters, emails and meetings coming. If you haven’t done so, send a message to your Senators through ACRA’s action alert center. And visit ACRA’s Section 106 Action Alert Center for more resources.
OIRA Continues With ACHP 800 Revisions Meetings
Even as Congress considers changes to the Section 106 statute, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation’s (ACHP) radical overhaul of the 36 CFR 800 regulations remains an ongoing threat to the process.
The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) is continuing to hold meetings with CRM firms and other preservation groups about the ACHP’s plan. To date, 44 such meetings have been scheduled, including with ACRA.
If your firm has not requested a meeting with OIRA, it is not too late. Click here to learn more about scheduling a meeting.
White House Seeks Comments, Consultation for Plan that Would “Diminish” Eisenhower Executive Office Building
The White House has announced it is seeking comments and consulting parties for its plan to paint the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB), a change that its own draft environmental assessment (EA) says would diminish the historic building’s design.
President Trump has pushed a plan to spend $7.5 million to paint the 19th century French Second Empire building, which sits next to the White House, because he believes that the building’s current gray granite exterior is a “really bad color.”
The draft EA concludes that “the design, materials, workmanship, setting, and feeling that is conveyed through the building’s exterior materials would be diminished and fundamentally altered by coating it with paint. Despite the use of reputable products, it would result in a highly visible change to a nationally significant building (for which reversibility is uncertain) that would impair historical continuity and dimmish the EEOB’s value as an exemplar of the French Second Empire architectural style.”
Architects and preservation experts also have expressed concern that covering the granite with paint will trap moisture and degrade the exterior.
The White House has requested that the public submit comments concerning the scope of the analysis, potential alternatives, and identification of relevant information and studies by November 16, 2026.
FERC Proposes Allowing LNG Certificate Holders to Act as its Representatives for Section 106
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is publishing a proposal to create a new blanket certificate program for liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities to allow eligible activities to proceed without case-specific authorization orders under Sections 3 and 7 of the Natural Gas Act. The program is modeled on the Commission’s 40-year blanket certificate program for interstate natural gas pipelines.
Like changes that the Commission proposed for interstate natural gas pipelines earlier this year, the proposal would specify that, upon acceptance of the blanket certificate, the certificate holder will act as the Commission’s non-Federal representative for purposes of complying with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA).