In the final Environmental Impact Statement for the Coldwater/ Bureau of Mines property in Hennepin County Minnesota, the National Park Service has produced a rigged document, designed to achieve the result it wanted to achieve, and avoid the result it wanted to avoid. In the process the public interest has been subverted and the interests of Dakota people in the cultural and historical heritage of Minnesota—the place that bears the name the Dakota gave it—have been have been deliberately thwarted.

Federal environmental review processes are governed by NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act. As it happens January 1 of this year was the 40th anniversary of NEPA. Just a few days ago President Barack Obama issued a proclamation to mark the anniversary. He stated:

Forty years ago, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was signed into law with overwhelming bipartisan support, ushering in a new era of environmental awareness and citizen participation in government. NEPA elevated the role of environmental considerations in proposed Federal agency actions, and it remains the cornerstone of our Nation’s modern environmental protections. On this anniversary, we celebrate this milestone in our Nation’s rich history of conservation, and we renew our commitment to preserve our environment for the next generation

NEPA governs the actions of agencies like the National Park Service. And in terms of NEPA, the environment is defined to include the historical and cultural aspects of the environment—the meanings of places like Coldwater to people such as the Dakota. NEPA states that aim of NEPA is to “preserve important historic, cultural, and natural aspects of our national heritage, and maintain, wherever possible, an environment which supports diversity, and variety of individual choice.”

An important aspect for consideration in a NEPA environmental review would be to determine if a federal property contained places of importance to people, and more specifically places defined under the criteria of the National Register of Historic Places as TCPs or traditional cultural properties. The definition of that term owes a lot to Thomas F. King, an archaeologist and noted expert in the field who co-authored National Register Bulletin 38, “Guidelines for Evaluating and Documenting Traditional Cultural Properties.”

King has authored many books and articles on the topic of NEPA and other laws governing environmental review. Recently he wrote to President Obama applauding his proclamation on the 40th anniversary of NEPA, but at the same warning of ways in which the law has been undermined by the federal agencies it governs. He wrote:

I especially appreciate your call for executive branch agencies to promote public involvement and transparency in NEPA implementation. I fear, however, that in the last decade or so most federal agencies have forgotten how to make their decision making transparent, and moreover, forgotten why doing so is a good idea. It is all very well and good for the concerned public to be able to look through the transparent window and see what an agency is doing, but if that public is unable to do anything about it, it only produces frustration.

King’s comment applies well to the Coldwater/ Bureau of Mines EIS process, one that has fostered the opposite of openness, particularly on the question of the importance of Coldwater for Dakota people.

Three years ago, commenting on the draft EIS for Coldwater, I questioned in detail the conclusion the Park Service had come to in relation to the spring, pointing out that it was based on faulty reasoning and incomplete information. I stated:

The Park Service’s stance does little to undercut the traditional cultural importance of Coldwater Spring, but it does do great damage to the Park Service itself. The Park Service’s arrogant assertions about Coldwater Spring have already had and will continue to have a profound and disproportionate effect on the federal government’s environmental review process relating to the disposal of the Bureau of Mines property. As a result it is unclear if the Park Service is capable of carrying out a fair and unbiased environmental review.

It is now clear that the Park Service was not capable capable of carrying out a fair and unbiased environmental review in relation to Coldwater Spring. The proof is in the final Environmental Impact Statement released on December 11, 2009.

Environmental reviews are dependent on the gathering of complete and accurate information. When information is inaccurate or incomplete it can bias the conclusions that result. In relation to Coldwater Spring it was important to gather full information on the all aspects of the environment of the property, including its cultural and historical features.

It is in this sense that the federal EIS process has subverted the public interest in having complete information about the Coldwater/ Bureau of Mines property, and the interest of Dakota people in having their heritage and connection to the place acknowledged.

Like the draft EIS, the final version interprets the history of the Fort Snelling area in general and Camp Coldwater in particular through the lens of European history. While detailed and extensive information—much of it easily available in the collections of the Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul—on the activities of Native people, both Dakota and Ojibwe at the spring and the area around it, was submitted by members of the public in November 2006, none of this was incorporated into the final version.

This information supported the statements made by Dakota and Ojibwe people for the last ten years and longer about the historical and cultural importance of the place. However, in its record of responses to much of this information, the authors of the final EIS merely state: “Comment noted,” without any further effort to interpret the information.

The final EIS continues to rely on a cursory historical study completed in 2002, before the EIS was even contemplated:

A historical study completed in 2002 by Barbara J. Henning focused on the Center and also made a determination as to whether Camp Coldwater Spring is independently eligible for the NRHP. The author concluded that neither the spring nor associated features are independently eligible for the NRHP. However, she did conclude that Camp Coldwater Spring does contribute to the significance of the Fort Snelling National Historic District, the Fort Snelling National Historic Landmark, and the Old Fort Snelling State Historic District.

Henning’s statement exemplifies a puzzling aspect of the NPS Coldwater/ BOM EIS process: Dakota tribes and communities were repeatedly assured that while the federal government would not recognize their own heritage, it would preserve Coldwater Spring because it was part of White, European-American heritage. But Henning’s conclusion was faulty, based on a brief study of secondary sources. In one of the most obvious errors, the study stated:

In a book published in 1835, Charles Joseph Latrobe stated that “lodges of the Sioux and the Chippewas encamped near the Reservation, or near the trading houses.” These would have been temporary visits, if only because the Dakota and the Chippewa were enemies unlikely to reside near one another except for brief visits to traders, the Indian Agency, or the fort.

But the evidence submitted in 2006 revealed an extensive written record of repeated interactions between Dakota and Ojibwe at Coldwater Spring, in which they met ceremonially, traded, and danced together. This information too supported to statements of Native people as recorded over the last ten years. But it was not acknowledged in the final EIS. As a result, in five separate places, the final report states: “no historical documentation of American Indian use of Camp Coldwater Spring has been found,” (first statement on page 72).

Besides ignoring the important written documents that support Native connections to Coldwater, the statement is  a clear and forthright admission of a shameful ethnocentric bias in the interpretation of what constitutes history and documentation. The Park Service discounts the importance of oral history and tradition for documenting the importance of culturally important places. The  FEIS states:

The studies completed for the EIS and Section 106 reviews located no ethnographic sites eligible for inclusion on the National Register. Oral traditions and histories collected during these investigations suggest that natural springs, like Coldwater Spring, are associated with ceremonies and deities of the Dakota Indian spiritual world. Coldwater Spring is currently used by some members of the federally recognized Dakota and Ojibwe communities, and other American Indians, as a source of water for ceremonies. Many American Indian communities have a traditional association with the area surrounding the spring.

Oral traditions and histories also state that Coldwater Spring itself is a place of traditional cultural importance. But this fact was simply not acknowledged in the various versions of the EIS. The Park Service also continues to reject the study by Michelle Terrell and her associates, the contractor for the Park Service, who found in a 2005 study that the site was eligible for the National Register of Historic Places as a traditional cultural property. Without even acknowledging the conclusion of that study the final EIS stated:

In support of the EIS planning process, an ethnographic resources study was completed at the Center (Terrell et al. 2005). The primary focus of this study was to document tribal use and perceptions of this area, to assess whether Camp Coldwater Spring constitutes a TCP under NHPA section 106 (16 U.S.C. 470f) or a sacred site under Executive Order 13007 (Indian Sacred Sites), and to identify any additional ethnographic resources present within the area of potential effect of the proposed action and alternatives being assessed in this EIS. A TCP is generally defined as a property that “is eligible for inclusion in the NRHP because of its association with cultural practices or beliefs of a living community that (a) are rooted in that community’s history, and (b) are important in maintaining the continuing cultural identity of the community” (Parker and King 1998).

After review of the study, the National Park Service has determined [contrary to the conclusion of the Terrell study] that Camp Coldwater Spring does not meet the criteria listed in the NRHP for designation as a TCP. However, Camp Coldwater Spring and Reservoir are culturally important to some Indian people for ritual and ceremonial reasons. The importance ascribed to this area, including the spring and reservoir and the subsequent need for protection, is addressed in the alternatives presented in this EIS. A copy of the draft ethnography report was also provided to the Indian tribes and interviewees that participated in the study by the National Park Service. The ethnographic resources study will be sent to the Minnesota SHPO as part of the section 106 process occurring concurrently with this EIS.

The treatment of the TCP issue, the rejection of the Terrell report, the misplaced reliance on the Henning report, and the purposeful rejection of historical documentation on the historical use of Coldwater by Native people, are all evidence of the way in which the EIS process has been rigged and subverted by the National Park Service. As a result, the decisions that the Department of Interior is expected to make in the weeks ahead about the disposal of the property will not be grounded in complete and accurate information about the cultural and historical aspects of the environment of the Bureau of Mines property, though they may embrace the results the Park Service was seeking from the beginning.

More on this, and the 106 process mentioned in the quotation above from the FEIS, next time.

What is in the final environmental impact statement for the Coldwater/ Bureau of Mines property near Fort Snelling in Hennepin County, Minnesota? How does it provide a basis for the Department of Interior to select Preferred Alternative D [3], including the cleanup the property by the federal government and its retention in federal hands? And how does it deal with the issues about Coldwater Spring as a place of traditional cultural importance for Dakota people?

To know the answers to those questions—and the meaning of those answers—requires context and information. One of the problems of dealing with any bureaucracy which operates in an environment of controversy has to do with the flow of information. To understand how such agencies make their decisions requires access to hidden information, buried reports, and phantom memos. Every decision has a hidden history that has to be understood before you can begin to figure out the decision. Should you choose to try to learn this context, may the force be with you.

For ten years the Department of Interior, through the National Park Service and its Twin Cities entity, the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA), has been trying to extricate itself from Coldwater Spring and the problems associated with the ownership of 27 acres of controversial land and abandoned buildings. For supporters of the preservation of Coldwater Spring, including those who believe that it is a sacred and culturally important place for Dakota and other Native people, the process has been difficult to follow, in part because they have not been given all the information needed to understand it. The Park Service and MNRRA have managed information carefully, sometimes concealing it or giving it out only after the fact, after decisions were made.

The initiation of an environmental review process and the beginning of work on a draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in 2005, seemed to suggest a change in tone, the possibility of a real flow of information that would lead to a collaboration between supporters of preservation and a governmental agency seeking to do the best for an environmental, cultural, and historic resource. The release of the draft EIS (DEIS) in 2006 tempered enthusiasm a little bit. The DEIS provided a lot of information. But a great deal of the cultural and historic information was inaccurate and incomplete. And using the incomplete information the Park Service announced that it did not believe Dakota people and others who insisted on the importance of Coldwater Spring to Native people. In doing so, the Park Service rejected the finding of its own contracting experts who found that Coldwater Spring was a TCP, a traditional cultural property of importance to Dakota people.

During a 90-day comment period in the fall of 2006, many people submitted comments to correct the record compiled by the Park Service about the cultural nature of the property, on the theory that given the right information the agency would revise the EIS and the conclusions to which it came. Adequate knowledge about the historical and current importance of Coldwater Spring and the surrounding area is not just about correcting the historical record or assuring that competent history is done. It is also about assuring that the right decisions are made about Coldwater Spring.

Many supporters of Coldwater preservation are united in their belief about the environmental importance of the spring and beauty of the spring area. They can agree that the buildings should be removed, preferably at government expense, and the area restored environmentally. Under the DEIS issued in 2006, the best alternative to achieve that purpose was Alternative D. However Alternative D had several alternatives built into them. These alternatives were not numbered but to better understand them, they should probably have been. Under Alternative D, once the property was cleaned up by the federal government, the alternatives are:

[1]. The property would be transferred to a university or nonfederal entity—including Indian tribes—without conditions.

[2]. The property would be transferred to a university or nonfederal entity—including Indian tribes—with conditions.

[3]. The property would be retained by the federal government, including being held as trust land for Indian tribes.

It is important to know that supporters of Coldwater preservation did not all agree on who the ultimate owner of the property should be. Some wanted the property to be a public park. Others wanted Indian ownership. In 2006 several Dakota tribal entities asked for the federal government to transfer the property to them.

Was it a mere coincidence that, given the Dakota beliefs about the importance of the spring and the proposals from Dakota tribes to acquire the property, that the National Park Service rejected its own contractor’s documentation that the spring was a Traditional Cultural Property for Dakota people? The tenaciousness of the Park Service’s position on this point and the lack of explanation for it in the DEIS suggested instead that the Park Service simply did not want to give Dakota people any leverage in any negotiations about the ultimate fate of the Coldwater property. For the Park Service to acknowledge what Dakota people said about the spring and what its own experts said about the spring, and what many other people outside the federal government said about the spring would have given Dakota people, a moral and perhaps, legal claim to the spring that the Park Service simply did not want to recognize.

It was hard to figure out, from the DEIS, the Park Service’s own rationale for the decision it had reached about the TCP status of Coldwater. There was, of course, a phantom memo, that shed some light on the issue. Midway through the DEIS comment period a memo was written by an unnamed person in MNRRA, explaining some of it. The memo was issued to a few people at the time, though it was not a part of the DEIS, which meant that the rationale for the Park Service decision about the TCP status of Coldwater was not supported in the DEIS by any facts or reasoning. The memo is still preserved on the MNRRA website in pdf from, although it is hard to find.

Some of those who reviewed the DEIS did read the phantom memo and commented on it in their comments to the Park Service in November 2006. At that point, at the conclusion of the DEIS comment period, there was optimism that given more information, the Park Service would rethink its decision in revising the DEIS, something that has been expected to happen for the last three years.

Finally, after more than three years, on December 11, 2009, the Park Service released the Final Environmental Impact Statement on the Coldwater/ Bureau of Mines property. Although it had taken a long time, the Department of Interior seemed closer to a decision about what would happen to Coldwater Spring. A year earlier, in the waning days of the Bush administration, Lyle Laverty, Acting Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, had written several memos (one of them was another phantom memo, which has not yet been made public) stating that the department had identified the Preferred Alternative for the EIS process for Coldwater as Alternative D, which would include the cleaning up of the property and D[3] the subsequent ownership and management by MNRRA.

Subsequent to that finding there had been a further comment period and discussion of the process of restoration of the property, including an open house on February 23, 2009, at which Dakota people had described again the importance of the spring and the surrounding area to Dakota people. Subsequently, the Park Service drafted a Memorandum of Agreement to govern the restoration process for the spring area.

The announcement that Alternative D was the preferred alternative and that long-term ownership of the property would remain in the possession of the federal government was a signal of what to expect in the final EIS (FEIS). It would be expected that the FEIS would include the weighing of alternatives and evidence to show why the Preferred Alternative was preferred.

It was also expected that the Park Service would weigh in further on the question of the importance of the spring for Dakota people either changing its analysis to acknowledge new information or justifying further the Park Service insistence that that Coldwater Spring was not a TCP for the Dakota people.

Again the reason for expecting a more detailed analysis of the TCP question was not a simple matter of having a corrected historical record about Coldwater Spring, but was relevant to the question of the Preferred Alternative. If the Park Service was planning to reject proposals for the property by Dakota tribal groups and claims by the Dakota people about the importance of the property, one would expect some justification of that in the FEIS.

What is in the FEIS and how does it deal with the issues about Coldwater Spring as a Dakota place and how does it provide a basis for the Department of Interior to select Alternative D [3], including the cleanup the property by the federal government and its retention in federal hands?

More about that next time.