Seacoast History Blog #61
August 16, 2009

When I was teaching journalism to high school kids I had a favorite headline. It came from the front page of Foster’s Daily Democrat. A reporter had doggedly followed a story in which human remains had been found in some landfill, and each day he dutifully called the coroner for a response. The story was not high on the coroner’s list. The bones were obviously old, and there were fresh bodies showing up during a regional crime wave at that time. (Continued below) 

Back then Fosters reporters were supposed to file multiple stories each day, as many as four, five, or six. You can’t write five stories well in a single day, but if you want to keep your job, you do it. And editors know, that if you want to run a good newspaper, you grab onto a good story like grim death and write about it until it plays out. It isn’t sexy, but it’s important. If you don’t believe me, go back and screen the film All the President’s Men.

So each few days the Foster’s reporter called the coroner and the coroner said nothing much, and the reporter filed a story, usually made up of one new paragraph followed by three paragraphs summarizing the previous articles. My favorite headline ran on the front page and announced NO NEWS IN BONES CASE.

That headline cracked me up then, and still does today. And I thought of it when I read Adam Leech’s diligent piece in Saturday’s Portsmouth Herald (August 15. 2007) about the Portwalk Project that some of us "historians" fear may be destroying archeological data. We don’t know, we just fear. Personally, I’m more concerned that the state and federal oversight process and the city itself seems to ignore archeology in Portsmouth, or makes it easy to avoid analyzing a site before it is destroyed for all time. Developers cannot be faulted for tiptoeing around a potentially costly archeological dig. But, if the laws are in place, it should be a lot cheaper to do it right up front, then to stop construction midway.

Technically, nothing has happened since July 20 when one federal agency (ACHP) told another federal agency (EPA) that the Portwalk project appears to be tearing up the earth in an historically sensitive part of town. According to Leech’s article, the EPA still has not responded to the memo. Dave Deegan at EPA, the Herald reports, is "carefully looking over the facts" because the Portwalk case "does raise significant permitting issues". If they look over the issue long enough, the project will be finished.

In a nutshell, The ACHP is supposed to make sure that the EPA does its job to protect our historical properties, which includes archeological artifacts underground. A flag went up recently when a NH state preservation agency (NHDHR) did not receive paperwork on the project in advance of the digging for the new hotel, residence and store complex being built smack in the middle of the historic North End of downtown Portsmouth.

MORE Portwalk blogs here 

One purpose of a good newspaper is to act as a watchdog to keep us honest. When something looks amiss, the media’s job is to hold our feet to the fire. That is exactly what Leech is doing. He is checking in regularly to see if ACHP is making the EPA do what the NHDHR says Portwalk is supposed to do to preserve Portsmouth history. It’s complicated stuff. Having Mr. Leech covering the story is a good thing, since it looks like everyone else in the world is either on vacation, shuffling papers, wordsmithing, or hoping the whole thing will just roll up and blow away. One guy is still on the job, and he’s your friendly neighborhood newspaper reporter.

It remains to be seen whether anyone in Portsmouth really gives a hoot about preserving the history of the North End. We are going to destroy what’s buried there. That is a given. The question is whether we will collect whatever data we can before we rip it up.

Right now it looks like EPA itself is still unsure what its role is in protecting archeologically sensitive sites. But at least they are looking into it. Do they have any teeth in cases like this, or are they toothless?

And what is going on with this oversight process? Portwalk says it did its archeological review in 2007. So what did that study say? Why didn’t we hear about it? And why is the developer allowed to decide whether the site is historically important?

The developer, Cathartes Private Investments, has said there was no actual written report. So how is that possible? The developer told the press that its lawyers looked at the archeological review and determined that Portwalk did not fall under the requirements of the EPA law (Section 106) that protects historical sites. One has to wonder how the lawyers saw the archeological review if it wasn’t written down. Did the lawyers meet with the archeologist and have a verbal review in order to avoid leaving a paper trail? Maybe that is standard policy in these cases. If that’s so, then we need to change a few laws.

Wait a minute! What exactly is Portwalk telling us? Are they saying there is nothing historically significant left in the North End? Or are they saying that, whether there Is or not, they don’t have to report it? Is this a failure of oversight or is someone skirting that process? I’m confused.

And when the developer says that only "a few feet" of earth has been moved, what does that mean? A few cubic feet? Or does that mean that a few feet of surface soil has been moved over a wide area? Most of the important discoveries made in the North End so far, archeologists tell me, were found in "a few feet" of soil.

In the bones case, as I recall, the human remains at one location, turned out to have been delivered with the soil in a landfill from another location. The dig site, it was determined, was probably an unmarked pauper’s grave. New England is littered with unmarked burials and family cemeteries. The coroner eventually marked the case closed, the historians weighed in, the remains were reburied, and that Foster’s reporter went on to other stories. Justice was served.

Eventually, we can close the book on Portwalk too. But for now, this is a story with nothing but loose ends, and there is nothing reporters like more than loose ends. The Portwalk project has two more digging phases to go. Labor Day is coming, and when it does, citizens of Portsmouth will all come back from their vacations and catch up on the news. Maybe by then the EPA will have come to some conclusions, or the developers will have a better explanation about what is going on.

Until then, as the saying goes, no news is good news – as long as one hardworking reporter is on the job.

Copyright © 2009 by J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved.