Protect the right of communities to be heard.

On October 15, 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA). He said it was meant "to give part of our country back to its people."

Sixty years on, that is still what it does. The NHPA created the National Register. It created a preservation office in every state. And it created Section 106—the requirement that before a federally funded project damages a historic place, the people who live there get to be heard.

A permitting reform bill now moving through the Senate (S. 5653) would make much of that consultation optional. Agencies could end the conversation on their own. Fewer places would qualify for review. Fewer harms would count. And the courts would be a weaker backstop when agencies get it wrong.

For sixty years, preservation has worked because communities have a voice. Tell your Senators to keep it that way.

The National Trust opposes the bill’s Section 106 provisions and is demanding meaningful changes to its historic preservation provisions.

We support more efficient and predictable federal permitting, but we will not accept efficiency at the expense of silencing communities and the loss of our nation’s history.

Sixty years ago, Congress understood the value of giving ordinary Americans a seat at the table and passed the National Historic Preservation Act. Ask your Senators not lose sight of what your community’s history means to you.

Tell your Senators: Don’t discard our history by limiting the role of Section 106 and seek meaningful changes to the historic preservation provisions of the bill.