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PEER Says National Park Service Whitewashed Problems At Effigy Mounds National Monument

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A watchdog group claims the National Park Service dropped the ball when examining how a park superintendent was allowed to run roughshod over Effigy Mounds National Monument for more than a decade without getting caught/NPS photo of Marching Bear Mounds

Charging that the National Park Service "circled the wagons" in assessing how a former superintendent of Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa was able to run roughshod over the monument's sacred grounds for more than a decade, a watchdog group said the agency failed to put adequate reforms in place to ensure something similar doesn't happen in the future.

That reaction from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility comes in the wake of the Park Service's release last Thursday of a 50-page "After Action Review" that examined how Phyllis Ewing was able during her tenure between 1999 and 2010 to spend nearly $3.4 million on boardwalks and bridges across the monument's grounds, which contain more than 200 sacred mounds, without performing the required cultural resources surveys first.

“This new report epitomizes what is wrong with the current Park Service leadership which never takes direct responsibility for screw-ups no matter how flagrant or preventable,” said PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that the original investigation was buried by Park Service until PEER threatened litigation to force its release. “Tellingly, this report preaches transparency and accountability but illustrates precisely the opposite, gauzing over critical facts and offering not a single meaningful reform.” 

In 2014, a voluminous report into management actions from 1999-2010 at the national monument found that ancestral burial grounds and ceremonial mounds considered sacred by at least a dozen Native American tribes were desecrated by Park Service managers who "clearly knew what they were doing was against the law."

The Special Agent's investigation, built on interviews with monument and regional office staff, memorandums, personnel documents, and budget documents, provided a paper trail leading to both the superintendent and her maintenance chief. That trail indicated that park staff failed to conduct the required archaeological assessments and consultations with state and tribal officials before proceeding with the projects. In some cases, the documents show, compliance with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act was done after the fact.

In a cover letter to the report, Peggy O'Dell, the Park Service's deputy director for operations who retired at the end of July, cited a number of changes the Park Service was instituting to better educate park managers as to their responsibilities concerning cultural resources:

  • Since 2010, nearly 200 Midwest superintendents, 106 coordinators, and others have attended formal training on the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA)- Section 106, and other applicable laws.
  • MWR now has a full-time NHP A, Section 106 Coordinator to provide more effective regionwide oversight.
  • A compliance information aid was created for Midwest parks that is being routinely used by parks to ensure proper compliance procedures are followed.
  • In 2015, MWR established an Office of American Indian Affairs to improve relationships with tribal partners across the region.
  • The MWR now has a permanent, full-time Associate Regional Director for Cultural Resources, who also oversees the Midwest Archeological Center and provides direct senior leadership and oversight on all cultural resource activities throughout the region.
  • The region is actively developing better methods for ensuring that compliance has been completed prior to project dollars being released.
  • The region is actively developing better methods to monitor and compare expended park project dollars outlined in the PEPC system.

But Mr. Ruch maintained that while the report "urges more training, better communication, and employee empowerment, including the aspiration that '(E)mployees should feel confident and free to speak openly without retaliation when they see' cultural resource violations," it does not call for any significant reforms. Moreso, he said, the report does not call for any repairs to the landscape at Effigy Mounds.

“All the illegally constructed boardwalks, decks, and bridges should be removed and the national monument returned to its original condition prior to this crime spree,” said Tim Mason of Friends of Effigy Mounds, who worked at the park for 19 seasons.  “We had a saying: ‘ls your heart in the park?’, but this report is not about your heart but covering another piece of the anatomy.”

 

Comments

Is anyone surprised?  What the NPS gets away with is murder on a daily basis.  Then they scream about an ever growing maintenance backlog after receiving appropriation after appropriation.  Jarvis tenure will be forever noted on the 100th anniversary of the park as the desecration of two other graves.  Muir and Mather.


Aside from the cultural resource desecration and uselessness of the Regional Office, note that the Chief of (so-called) Maintenance spent $3.4 million on development over eleven years.  This at a park whose annual operating budget is probably less than one million.  During my career (70's through 90's) at western parks, actual maintenance of existing infrastructure was almost an afterthought.  New construction and upgrades were the highest priority and diverting actual maintenance resources to development was the fast track to promotion.  I served under Foremen and Chiefs of Maintenance who literally did not know the meaning of the word.  We built new toilets while existing ones went unmaintained; could there be a better symbol of NPS managerial incompetence?

IMO, over forty years of this system-wide mismanagement is a larger factor in the multi-billion dollar maintenance backlog than insufficent funding.   Sorry, Smokies, the backlog is real, though I suspect the current PR figure is vastly inflated, probably doubled, by yet more planned development posing as maintenance.


Well, Tahoma, you have definitely given me some insight as to how these backlogs get developed.  Wow.  That makes perfect sense.

 


This at a park whose annual operating budget is probably less than one million.  

 

The operating budget there is between $1 and $1.5 milion dollars annually. Last publically reported number was a little over $1.1 million in 2012 (then systems changed and that particular database went dark.) However, this does not include "friends" dollars contributed, a portion of national recreation fees which are awarded to small "non-fee" park for projects and operations, nor other occasional "development" dollars as you describe them.

 

 


I once worked at a NPS unit in which hundreds of thousands of dollars from its maintenance budget went into "Restoration" (Construction) of a questionabe historical site within the Park.  Several members of the Interpretive staff were of the opinion that the "History" of this site was largely fake.  While I believe that there is a maintenance backlog, and the NPS is not adequately funded by Congress, the organizational dysfunction of the NPS ensures that much of its funding isn't efficiently used.  Additionally, I don't think that merely educating NPS Managers in the NHPA will prevent future Effigy Mounds examples of misconduct; not when there is a continued system of managerial unaccountabiliity.



"The operating budget there is between $1 and $1.5 milion dollars annually. Last publically reported number was a little over $1.1 million in 2012 (then systems changed and that particular database went dark.) However, this does not include "friends" dollars contributed, a portion of national recreation fees which are awarded to small "non-fee" park for projects and operations, nor other occasional "development" dollars as you describe them."

Thanks, Anon, for the budget correction.  Whether the source of the development spending is the operating budget or recreational fees, the net effect is to increase the maintenance backlog by diverting staff time from existing maintenance and increasing the long-term maintenance load.  Despite $3.4 million in spending by the Chief of Maintenance, EFMO's maintenance backlog is listed as almost $734,000, or about two-thirds of their annual operating budget.  It would be interesting to know what the backlog was at the start of this development binge.

https://www.nps.gov/subjects/plandesignconstruct/upload/FY14-DM-by-State...

NPS managers seem to love boardwalks, but they are a very expensive and maintenance-intensive way to harden high-standard trails.  Note the wood decay and broken stringer (beam) on this Photo-of-the Week, for example:

http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/potw/follow-mossy-green-boardwalk

The expense of the new boardwalks at Effigy Mounds will no doubt repeat every few decades and probably rise due to increased lumber costs.  I hear Olympic has begun replacing boardwalks with gravel at Ozette because six miles of wooden trail was just unsustainable and averaged one injury evacuation per week due to falls by visitors and even staff.  Effigy Mounds could probably have paved all their trails for $3.4 million and saved money in the long run.


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