Pima County, Ariz. (Feb. 13, 2012) – Pima County has won praise from the federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation for the way it handled the challenging task of negotiating with Indian nations and others in southern Arizona for their support for constructing a communications tower atop Tumamoc Hill.

Tumamoc Hill west of downtown Tucson is an ancestral site of great significance to the Tohono O’odham and other Native Americans. Petroglyphs, rock house foundations and evidence of farming at the site indicate that indigenous peoples have lived there for more than 2,000 years.

The Tumamoc proposal by Pima County called for removing several buildings and communications towers from the site and the installation of one replacement tower  to consolidate facilities in order to reduce existing impacts and help to restore the summit of the hill.

Tumamoc Hill is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and the Desert Laboratory is a National Historic Landmark. The County began a complex consultation process in compliance with the National Historic Preservation Act that involved the University of Arizona, several Native American groups, the National Park Service, the State Historic Preservation Office, the Federal Communications Commission and others that resulted in a Memorandum of Agreement to resolve any direct or visual effects from the communications tower.

The  Memorandum of Agreement assures that the archaeological and cultural resources at the site will be protected throughout the project and that archaeological data recovery will be completed by the County and visual effects will be minimized.  The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation chose not to actively participate in the  Memorandum of Agreement for the project after noting the  consultation  process was being carried out properly by Pima County. The  Memorandum of Agreement has been sent to the Federal Communications Commission for signature. When fully signed, the MOA will allow the project to move forward.

The successful handling of this difficult task is described in detail in the Winter 2012 edition of Case Digest published by the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.

To read the article, “New Case: Pima County Wireless Integrated Network,” go to  http://www.achp.gov/docs/CaseDigestWinter2012.pdf

 

 

 

This entry was posted on Monday, February 13th, 2012 at 4:17 pm and is filed under Pima County, Southern Arizona, Tucson. Tags for this post: Petroglyphs, Tohono O'odham, Tumamoc Hill, wireless communication, Wireless Integrated Network. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.