Proposed Programmatic Agreement, George Washington's Boyhood Home National Historic Landmark (Ferry Farm)

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The National Park Service (NPS) invites review of and comment on a draft programmatic agreement (PA) among NPS, Virginia Department of Historic Resources (VDHR), and the George Washington Foundation, owner of the 76-acre George Washington's Boyhood Home National Historic Landmark (Ferry Farm). The Foundation is a private, nonprofit organization owning and operating that property as an educational site and museum. NPS owns and manages a conservation easement, conveyed in 2000, over the property. NPS receives from the Foundation certain types of project-proposals for Ferry Farm—for the construction of buildings and landscape features, archeological investigations, and other undertakings that would be funded and implemented by the Foundation—for which the easement requires NPS review of and approval in advance. NPS conducts such reviews under the terms of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), as amended, and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

NPS proposes to sign the attached Ferry Farm PA, which NPS has helped draft and that would replace a now-expired programmatic agreement and guide how it conducts and coordinates NHPA reviews at a property that hosts complex projects. For the draft PA, see "Document List" link at upper left on this webpage, and "NPS George-Washingtons-Boyhood-Home-Programmatic-Agreement draft." Comment may be offered by clicking on the document, or via "Contact Information" below.

The mention in the draft PA of any existing or invited concurring party to it, whether a tribe or other entity, indicates only the scope and distribution of the draft PA to-date by NPS through government-to-government invitations and other means, and at the recommendation of NPS NHPA advisers and those of VDHR, and does not imply any decision; determination; participation; reply; comment; suggestion; perspective; or response by an invited tribe or entity, nor the potential, future invitation by NPS to or participation of additional, concurring parties to the PA. The text of the draft PA is likewise that reviewed by NPS, the Foundation, and VDHR to-date and does not include changes that could be made to the text per such future comment, suggestion, or response.

See draft PA for details, including map of Ferry Farm (p. 22); review requirements for proposed construction, including for proposals, identified on map, that are components of the Preferred Alternative/Site Treatment Plan of an Environmental Assessment for which NPS conducted a public NEPA review in 2014 (pp. 4-10—the Foundation implemented some of the Preferred Alternative component projects following NPS NHPA review in 2015, others, including new visitor center and elements of Washington Home Farm Interpretive Landscape, await formal approval-request from the Foundation and thus also await NPS NHPA-review); responsibilities of Foundation as landowner and as a museum under the terms of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (pp. 2, 13); Foundation's easement-stipulated right to propose to NPS archeological investigations to aid research, interpretation, reconstruction, and/or data recovery (p. 2); protocols for unanticipated discoveries, including of human remains (pp. 12-13); avoidance of gravesites and associated funerary artifacts (p. 12); review requirements for Foundation's archeology research-program, including reports to be circulated for review and comment among the concurring parties, and professional qualifications (pp. 10-11); NPS's easement-stipulated goal of preventing uses of the property which, if allowed to occur, would have an individual or cumulative adverse effect under the terms of the NHPA (p. 2).

Not included in the draft PA is its Appendix C: Programmatic Agreement Among the National Park Service, The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, and the Nat. Conf. of State Historic Preservation Officers for Compliance With Section 106 of the Nat. Historic Preservation Act (2008) , online at many locations including here: https://parkplanning.nps.gov/document.cfm?parkID=461&projectID=13356&documentID=25151 .)

Contact Information

Noel Harrison
540-424-0512