The ACES-NRCS Program has many wonderful facets to it, and our ACES Enrollees come from all professions in the agricultural world. One of our wonderful Enrollees from the Temple, TX office, Debra Desarmeaux, works as an Archeologist under the ACES Program to support the NRCS mission, and we would love to share her story with you!
Alan Stahnke, NRCS State Soil Scientist and Debra’s Primary Monitor gave us an indication of her contributions to their state office:
“Dee has been instrumental in helping to build the Historic Preservation Program at NRCS-TX and has been a delight to work with. Her unique experiences and stories always hold valuable lessons on hard work and fiercely forged friendships.”
Debra explains, in her own words, what she does for NRCS:
(Note: PB = Before Present)
As you can imagine, we feel we are very fortunate to have Debra in our ACES-NRCS Program!
“This federal agency, the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is the one farmers and ranchers apply to for federal money to improve their property. These consist of fence building, pond excavation, brush clearance or excavations to lay water pipelines for thirsty cattle and many other such ‘Practices’. For the Practices that are ground-disturbing, those farmers are required by law, the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, to not destroy any known archaeological sites (the string attached to the federal $). Our ‘Cultural Resources’ Department conveys that information to them.
We process each ‘request’ from an NRCS soils scientist for the farmer asking for funds, by checking a Texas Historical Commission database map (only archaeologists can log into it to prevent site looting). If an archaeological site is shown on that database map to be:-
- On their farm/ranch property
- Located within 0.62 miles or 1 kilometer of their property
- If topographical features like proximity to streams/rivers and fertile soils show a likelihood of archaeological sites present,


