Heritage Holdup

Gaze south from the Santa Cruz River’s parched banks, and you’ll
glimpse trappings of the past—the august San Xavier Mission, the
vast desert plains, the irrigation acequias that carried precious water
to early crops.

But glance eastward toward the halls of power in Washington, D.C.,
and you’ll just discover a modern political roadblock.

On April 17, 2007, Southern Arizona Reps. Raúl Grijalva and
Gabrielle Giffords introduced the Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage
Area Act in the U.S. Congress. And on March 30, 2009, President Obama
signed the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act, which added nine new
heritage areas across the country.

But the Santa Cruz Valley was not among them. That’s because late
last year, Sen. Jon Kyl had it pulled from the lands package, according
to a staffer with the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural
Resources.

Was it parliamentary payback? Perhaps so, say political wags who
suggest that there’s little love lost between left-leaning Grijalva and
conservative Kyl. The two have clashed over Kyl’s proposed land
exchange in Pinal County, which would allow Resolution Copper to
establish one of the largest mines in the nation. Grijalva has slowed
that swap in his powerful position as chairman of the House
Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands.

Kyl also recently joined Arizona Sen. John McCain in publicly
criticizing a measure, proposed by Grijalva, to permanently withdraw
sensitive areas around the Grand Canyon from uranium mining.

Now it seems that Kyl is holding the Santa Cruz Heritage area
hostage in this high-stakes tit-for-tat. But if so, the senator isn’t
saying; numerous calls to his spokesman, Andrew Wilder, were not
returned.

In any case, Southern Arizona may wind up missing out on a critical
economic opportunity.

The proposed area would include about 3,300 square miles of what is
considered a distinct physical and cultural landscape with a cohesive,
unique identity. Establishing its parameters didn’t come without some
elbow grease, however: Studies and research included everyone from the
Native American tribes and ranchers to The Center for Desert
Archaeology.

Heritage areas are eligible for investment opportunities and
increased tourism. That has helped the proposal gain support from such
disparate quarters as the
Southern Arizona Home Builders Association to some area ranchers and The
Nature Conservancy.

“It would also allow us to work with the National Park Service, to
promote the history and culture of the region,” says Vanessa Bechtol,
executive director of the Santa Cruz Valley Heritage Alliance. “Other
regions have seen significant increases in tourism once they were
designated as national heritage areas.”

There’s another advantage to the title: money. “Once we’re
designated, we become eligible for federal funding—matched by
local funding—to carry out programs of the heritage area,”
Bechtol says. Those efforts could range from visitors’ programs and
local-foods directories to historic preservation.

So what’s not to like? Well, the Pima County Farm Bureau can name a
few things, primary among them fears that the designation could impede
property rights. Bureau concerns “surround the fact that it’s a federal
designation which encompasses a lot of private property,” says Stefanie
Smallhouse, immediate past president of the conservative agriculture
group. “The people who own property within that designation are
concerned that it will affect their rights, as far as what they can do
on their property.”

Smallhouse points to the Yuma Crossing National Heritage Area,
created by Congress in 1999, as a controversial case-in-point. After
some 700 property owners asked to be excluded from that heritage area,
Grijalva introduced a bill reducing its boundaries—a measure
ultimately supported by Kyl and passed into law in 2006.

To avoid a replay here, says Bechtol, the Santa Cruz legislation
includes language specifically protecting private property. Nothing
within the measure “abridges the rights of any property owner (whether
public or private), including the right to refrain from participating
in any plan, project, program or activity conducted within the National
Heritage Area,” reads the Grijalva bill. Nor does it require property
owners to permit public access, nor does it change “any duly adopted
land use regulation, approved land use plan, or other regulatory
authority of any federal, state, tribal, or local agency.”

But that doesn’t assuage Smallhouse, who counters that local
officials will still be tempted to enact zoning that draws the most
heritage-related funding. “So there’s a pretty high risk of abuse from
city and county governments,” she says, “to use that federal funding as
an incentive to not let you maybe do something with your property that
you wanted to do.”

Nonsense, says Bechtol. She cites a study by the U.S. Government
Accountability Office, which contacted property-rights groups scattered
around the nation. None of them were able “to provide us with a single
example of a heritage area directly affecting—positively or
negatively—property values or use,” the GAO concluded.

So it seems that the property-rights folks may have created a
bogeyman where one doesn’t exist. They might also have given Sen. Kyl
cover for spiking Grijalva’s measure out of spite. Either way, the
Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area—and the needed economic
boost it portends—are indefinitely on hold. And all for naught,
says Bechtol.

“There’s a misconception that this is a land grab,” she says. “But
it has nothing to do with that. The goal of this heritage area is just
to tell the story of our region and how it contributes to the national
history.”

This article appears in Sep 3-9, 2009.