On Friday, July 17,  2026  the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation’s Vice Chairman sent a draft revision of 36 C.F.R. Part 800 to members of the Council asking for their vote on these new Section 106 regulations through email by Friday July 24, 2026. You can read the redlined version here and the draft here.

These revisions would devastate our ability to protect and preserve historic places and would dramatically curtail public participation in federal decisions that affect local communities. They strip the regulations of the language for meaningful consultation, change the definition of consultation, eliminate the requirements for “avoidance, minimization, and mitigation,” eliminate protections for Traditional Cultural Landscapes, and imperil thousands of significant cultural and historical sites who will not meet the new definition of “historic.” They are a betrayal of Congress’s intent when it passed the NHPA sixty years ago, and a betrayal of the government-to-government relationship with Tribal Nations. 

We convened a strategy session on Sunday evening to review what these changes would do and discuss what steps we can take as preservation advocates. You can watch the recording below or view and download the presentation here. Once ACHP votes to approve the draft, it will be sent to the OIRA for review and will then be published on the Federal Register with a 30 day public comment period.