LAWSUIT TO BLOCK THEATER AT LITTLE BIGHORN’S LAST STAND HILL

[nosmokes]

Cover up the real thing so folks can look at the pretty film and the scale model?WTF?
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original-peer

For Immediate Release: July 31, 2008
Contact: Carol Goldberg [phone]

LAWSUIT TO BLOCK THEATER AT LITTLE BIGHORN’S LAST STAND HILL

— Retired Park Historians and Superintendents Say Structure Will Obscure Battlefield

Washington, DC — A plan to build an expanded visitor center and theater at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana violates both environmental and historic preservation laws, according to a lawsuit filed today in federal court by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The suit contends that the National Park Service (NPS) proposed construction will detract from the very historical setting it seeks to present to the public.

Plaintiffs include two former Chief Historians of the National Park Service, three former Superintendents of the Little Bighorn National Battlefield, the Custer Battlefield Historical & Museum Association as well as Little Bighorn historians. Although NPS Director Mary Bomar has agreed to give the project further consideration, the project has legal clearance to proceed absent a lawsuit.

The Park Service plans include erecting an enclosed theater seating 200 people at the base of Last Stand Hill, site of the climax of the 1876 battle in which General George Armstrong Custer and five companies of the 7th Cavalry were wiped out. The project would occupy the middle of the battlefield, blocking views of how the battle evolved as well as where it ended.

“The existing Visitor Center was built in an intrusive location in 1952 and is almost universally regarded as an adverse effect. Any expansion will worsen the adverse effects on the historical and cultural aspects of the Battlefield,” stated former NPS Chief Historian Robert Utley, a plaintiff in the case, who has authored two versions of the Battlefield’s official historic handbook, a biography of General Custer and several other books concerning the Sioux Indian wars.

“The proposed enlargement obviates a chance to do the right thing for the battlefield and its interpretation and continues a pattern that has been going on for nearly four decades,” said Jerome A. Greene, another plaintiff who is a retired NPS research historian and author of Stricken Field: The Little Bighorn since 1876. Greene noted that the 1986 General Management Plan for the park calls for a new visitor center out of the battle sightlines and near where the battle started rather than where the NPS now proposes. “This band-aid approach perpetuates an outmoded structure in the wrong place on the historic ground.”

On April 23, 2008, the NPS cleared the project for construction by finding that it would have “no significant impact”. The PEER suit argues that the agency’s failure to adequately consider alternatives and impacts violates both the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act as well as the Service’s own Management Policies. As recently as last year, NPS conceded that the project would have an “adverse impact” on the Battlefield but reversed that finding without explanation.

“The law requires the Park Service to engage in a full and honest review of available options and potential effects but that full and honest review is missing on this project,” commented PEER Senior Counsel Paula Dinerstein, who filed the complaint today in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. “Unfortunately, the Park Service has decided to turn a deaf ear to the advice from its most distinguished officials and other experts who dedicated their careers to protecting our historical heritage.”


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complete release including links to related sources link:www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=1085|here

[Mabus]

1. Incredible

Keep throwing money at a bad idea.

K&R

[Wednesdays]

2. Shoot, why stop there? Let's build a mall and amusement park

with all sorts of fast-food joints and upper-scale clothing shops. That'll give visitors an idea of how the original site was in 1876. :eyes:

[EFerrari]

3. Is that site a burial ground? What do the people say? n/t

[islandmkl]

4. among everything else...

this is just unf***ing necessary...

these ass-wipes would pave over Old Faithful to expand a parking lot (and pocket some huge government $$$) and wonder why people would ask "What about the geyser?"....

don't expect anybody even remotely involved, especially as an appointee, in any aspect of this administration to understand, let alone give a shit about, any historical significance of anything beyond how much they can steal from the American people...

the damage this gang has done will be in a constant state of discovery for the next 20 years....