Heritage Area meeting to be held Thursday

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff writer

GALLUP — An update on the proposed establishment of the Little Colorado River Valley National Heritage Area will be discussed in Gallup this week.

Community members are invited to attend a public meeting from 2 to 3 p.m. on Thursday at the Gallup Chamber of Commerce Conference Room. Dr. William H. Doelle, executive director of the Center for Desert Archaeology, which is located in Tucson, Ariz., will be at the meeting to provide an update on the status of the Heritage Area effort and to distribute copies of a 24-page, full-color executive summary of the feasibility study.
Since 2004, the center has been working with communities in northern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico to explore the concept of a National Heritage Area that would encompass the watershed of the Little Colorado River Valley. National Heritage Areas are places where natural, cultural, historic, and scenic resources combine to form a cohesive, nationally important region. The Center for Desert Archaeology has promoted the proposed establishment of the Little Colorado River Valley National Heritage Area with the following points:

• There are 40 National Heritage Areas in the country; the first one was designated in 1984.

• A National Heritage Area is designated by Congress. The program is managed at the federal level through the National Park Service, but most individual Areas are managed at the local level by local stakeholder through a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Land ownership does not change upon designation.

• A National Heritage Area is eligible for $10 million in federal matching grants during its first 15 years of designation. Matching grants stimulate economic development through heritage tourism development, heritage education, and resource conservation.

• National Heritage Areas function like business enterprise zones. They work through promotion, not regulation. They provide grants and technical support to communities interested in preserving and promoting their heritage resources, but do not adversely affect those who are not interested.

The Center for Desert Archaeology will post the revised draft of the feasibility study on its Web site (www.cdarc.org) in March 2009.

Information on Thursday’s meeting: Martin at (505) 863-6459 or link87301@yahoo.com