Chairman's Award of the Advisory Council On Historic Preservation Goes To FEMA 

Release Date: August 16, 2007
Release Number: HQ-07-166b

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is the recipient of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) Chairman’s Award for Federal Achievement in Historic Preservation, a period award that recognizes federal projects and policy leaders that make significant contributions to historic preservation in the federal government. David Maurstad, associate administrator of FEMA’s Mitigation Directorate is to receive the award presented by ACHP Chairman John L. Nau, III, August 17, at the ACHP Summer Business Meeting in Vicksburg, Miss.

FEMA is being honored for its work with the ACHP and State Historic Preservation Offices in Louisiana and Mississippi in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. This work included negotiating programmatic agreements that cover a range of treatment measures to mitigate damage to cultural resources, including updating the boundaries of existing historic districts and identifying new historic districts, architectural salvage, resurveys of existing historic districts, and geographic referencing of historic maps in a Geographic Information System.

Also under the programmatic agreements, FEMA will conduct a survey of undesignated or previously unidentified historic districts and individual properties and resurvey existing National Register-listed districts. As part of this effort, FEMA will prepare a Mississippi Historic Resources Inventory Form and Determination of Eligibility for each historic property surveyed that is eligible individually or as part of a district.

FEMA will provide an integrated historic properties survey report of properties affected by the hurricane and the re-survey of existing historic districts including those in Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian, Gulfport, Biloxi, Ocean Springs and Pascagoula. FEMA also is going to assist in the creating of State Historical Markers to interpret sites where historic properties were destroyed.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency coordinates the federal government’s role in preparing for, preventing, mitigating the effects of, responding to and recovering from all domestic disasters, whether natural or man-made, including acts of terror.

Last Modified: Monday, 20-Aug-2007 18:06:15