United States Department of Agriculture
Rural Development, Iowa

Rural farmsteads and businesses in drought-stricken counties of Iowa needed water quickly. Foth consulted with the USDA-Rural Development (USDA-RD), Iowa State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO), and Iowa Rural Water Association and eventually authored the development of a Programmatic Agreement to achieve Section 106 compliance.

USDA-RD was helping to relieve the need for water by financially assisting the regional water companies so that they could construct a water distribution pipeline network across rural Iowa. The need for water reached critical stages, but not to the point of being considered an emergency. Therefore, the normal environmental review process still needed to be implemented, which included Phase I archaeology investigations.

In many cases, the pipeline installation contractors were ready to start. The USDA-RD did not anticipate that the water needs and compliance requirements were both increasing, and found themselves in serious jeopardy of defaulting on Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. This default could have halted the pipeline installation. Foth negotiated a temporary settlement that would appease the interested parties and allow for the continuation of pipeline installation already under contract. This was allowed provided that a more permanent settlement in the form of a Programmatic Agreement be developed immediately. The agreement stipulations were broad enough to accommodate the needs of all parties, and also flexible enough to be modified as the USDA-RD program evolved.

Foth and the USDA-RD next co-authored a User’s Manual to help educate and guide their Iowa staff and customers on how to operationalize the Section 106 process for three USDA-RD units, Rural Housing, Rural Business, and Rural Water. Additional tasks included: performing multiple training sessions for the USDA-RD and Iowa Rural Water staffs.

The end result was a customized Section 106 process by which the USDA-RD and its customers could continue with their operations and also be compliant with Section 106. The “good faith” attempt at finding and protecting Iowa’s cultural resources would be satisfied at a significant time and cost savings compared to performing a 100 percent survey for thousands of “areas of potential effect” in the coming years.