Santa Fe County commissioners were scheduled to meet Wednesday with a coalition for the Caja del Rio plateau to discuss making the plateau near the Los Alamos National Laboratory a monument, one of them said Tuesday.
Commissioner Anna Hansen told the Monitor about Wednesday’s scheduled meeting in an email the week after the local Santa Fe New Mexican reported that the the Santa Fe County Board of County Commissioners drafted a letter requesting that President Joe Biden (D) designate Caja del Rio plateau as a national monument through the Antiquities Act to shield it from a planned powerline for the Los Alamos powerline.
The draft, which said the landscape is “threatened by Los Alamos National Laboratory, illegal dumping, desecration, and irresponsible offroading,” was tabled for approval Nov. 26.
Hansen told the New Mexican that the letter would likely be reconsidered on Dec. 10, and that she hoped national monument status would be secured by Jan. 20 when President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated.
Early in October, Santa Fe County commissioners wrote a letter to the Los Alamos Field Office and to the regional forester in the U.S. Department of Agriculture saying that neither parties consulted “appropriate stakeholders,” including state and tribal historic preservation officers and federally recognized tribes, when finding and approving the route to the powerline.
The high-voltage powerline would run 14 miles through the Caja del Rio Plateau, which the Pueblo tribe and its tribal governments have a growing interest in protecting and designating as a National Monument.
“After years of study, debate and consultation that included the brightest minds at one of the world’s premier science and engineering laboratories, we came to the informed conclusion that the proposed transmission line is by far the best option,” Ted Wyka, Los Alamos’s top federal manager, said in his op-ed to the local paper after the powerline sparked controversy among the New Mexico and Pueblo community.
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has also said that the current electrical supply is forecasted to run out by 2027, which they said caused a need for a new powerline.
