Archeologists like to call themselves the “cowboys of science,” consultant Ken Cannon confides, and sometimes the work appears as glamorous as an Indiana Jones film. But it can also look like scientists staring at their feet as they walk, documenting any potential artifacts in their path.
A Logan-based consulting firm completed work in a national park in Utah last year. The unpaid bill isn’t what worries its owner and other archeologists.
Archeologists like to call themselves the “cowboys of science,” consultant Ken Cannon confides, and sometimes the work appears as glamorous as an Indiana Jones film. But it can also look like scientists staring at their feet as they walk, documenting any potential artifacts in their path.
That’s the job Cannon and his six-person, Logan-based crew did for the National Parks Service in a Utah national park last year — and for which he saidthey have not been paid.
The Department of the Interior owes his business, Cannon Heritage Consultants of Logan, $10,000 for an archeological survey on the site of a potential new road, he said.But due to President Donald Trump’s executive order freezing Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funds, the money hasn’t arrived. It’s not a huge sum, Cannon said, but it’s half a month’s payroll.
Cannon is the second Utah contractor to tell The Salt Lake Tribune that the IRA funding freeze halted payment for already completed work. ARC Construction Solutions, a three-employee construction shop in Cedar City, is owed $30,000 by the office of the Bureau of Land Management, which has now released documents to The Tribune showing it owes an additional $108,000 to other contractors for work in Utah.
The National Park Service did not respond to requests for comment on the money owed to Cannon Heritage Consultants. The Tribune has filed a records request seeking information about NPS contracts for work in Utah that have been completed and remain unpaid.
The federal government is one of the archaeological consulting firm’s most reliable clients, Cannon said, and this is the first time the government hasn’t quickly paid its bill. He’s done “thousands of hours” of work assessing cultural artifacts on federally owned land, he said, including at Hill Air Force Base and Dugway Proving Grounds.
Other new projects have also been delayed as work under the IRA funding umbrella gets “scrutinized,” Cannon said. Trump’s Day 1 executive order freezing IRA funds has been challenged in court, and The New York Times has reported that some agencies have started to release money allocated under the act.
But the money doesn’t worry Cannon and other archeologists as much as what recent changes by the Trump administration portend for the future of historical preservation — especially in a state with so much history to preserve.
Cannon said he’s worried the funding freeze, federal layoffs and legislation targeting federal land management will hinder archeologists’ ability to survey and protect public lands.
“The larger issue is: what becomes of our cultural heritage?” Cannon said. “It’s a big reason people come here.”
Suzanne Eskanazi, principal investigator at Salt Lake City’s SWCA Environmental Consultants,said sheshares Cannon’s concern.
“We learn from history, through history,” she said. “If you lose that, what is your sense of place? Just a new condo? … It has always been important to me to preserve the past and tell those stories.”
‘We’re very dedicated’
Historical artifacts — everything from fossils to petroglyphs to structures that have endured the tests of time — dot Utah’s public lands and draw millions of visitors to the state every year, according to research from Preservation Utah and the Gardner Policy Institute.
The people responsible for preserving Utah’s cultural artifacts are part of a small group of archeologists. Most of them are private employees, according to data from Heritage Business International. The federal government contracts with them to ensure any project that alters public land or uses public dollars complies with laws andregulations, like those laid out in the such as the Antiquities Act or the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA).
Eskenazi said she’s wary of what she sees as an appetite from the federal government to roll back or narrow the scope of lawsthat have defined her career.
“Everything I have spent my career on — NEPA [the National Environmental Policy Act], NHPA — it’s all being gutted,” she said.
Her dread, then, is also existential. Eskenazi said she is used to the economic cycles of consulting work: some years and some seasons are slower than others. This seems different, she said, because the risk feels more permanent.
“This is not just an economic downturn. If these regulations go away, there’s no need for us,” she said. “I’ve been doing this for 25 years. It’s my identity.”
There are 32 cultural resource management firms with offices in Utah, according to Heritage Business International; 19 are based here. Among their employees are 216 archeologists.
Cannon said he may have to putat least six of them in his Logan office on unpaid leave soon if contracts with the federal government dry up. And they’ll do it — not happily, but willingly, because they’re “committed to what they do,” he predicted.
“We enjoy what we do. We’re very dedicated to the work we do,” Cannon said. “This is our passion.”
On pause
BLM Utah has seven IRA-funded contracts budgeted in its 2024-25 fiscal year, according to records obtained by The Tribune. Some are still active and have not yet been invoiced.
Four, including ARC Construction Solutions’ $30,000 fence project, are unpaid, pending movement in the IRA funding freeze.
A Utah-based excavation company with a $7,000 pending invoice told The Tribune it had not received notification of any paused payment — but it also hadn’t noticed that the payment was already late.
Shannon Sollitt is a Report for America corps member covering business accountability and sustainability for The Salt Lake Tribune. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by clicking here.
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