Section 106 for Federally Funded Projects (civil engineers, help!)

[ltmullen]

Are there any civil engineers out there who can help me?

Right now at work I'm working on a project and my boss wants me to complete an Application for Section 106 Review, the point of which is to determine whether there will be any adverse effects of a project on any historic properties.

Our company has a little bit of experience having done one of these in the past, but it was a different kind of project and I'm having trouble transferring the thought process over, and I was wondering whether anyone here had any experience with these and could offer some advice.

The project I'm doing this for is a road paving project for a stretch of roadway a little over a mile long. The main point of uncertainty is defining the "area of potential effects" (APE). The "guide" that goes with it says that the APE is the area that could be affected physically, visually, auditorily, or socioculturally, and that it is very rarely limited ot just the site of the project itself. For a paving project like this, for example, traffic on nearby roads could be affected.

However...I'm pretty lost as to where to draw the line here. So maybe traffic will be affected on neigboring streets, and there's no clear line at which I can point to and say, "here is where the effect stops propagating."

Does anyone know of any sort of generally accepted, less abstract guidelines for determining an APE for a Section 106 review?

Hope at least someone out there has dealt with this. Thanks for any help you can give.

[Anonymous]

just make something up like 14' or something. that's what the feds do to come up with this stuff.

[Charles_Shade]

Funny you ask that.

My neighbor is an archeologist that has been invloved in gvernement projects over the years; though I have no idea if he can help with your specific request.

Let me know if you would like for me to have him contact you via email.