A map of the proposed power line Los Alamos National Laboratory would like to build across the Caja del Rio. Courtesy Caja del Rio Coalition.

A group opposing a proposed power line that would cut through 14 miles of the ecologically significant Caja del Rio Plateau recently wrote to the U.S Forest Service to urge it to reject the project.

A recent letter submitted to the Forest Service marks the Caja del Rio Coalition‘s latest attempt to stop a proposed transmission line to bolster Los Alamos National Laboratory’s power supply that, federal officials say, is needed because the two lines that now power the lab are becoming strained and will reach their capacity by 2027.

“It’s kind of like sounding the alarm a little bit,” said Reyes DeVore, a member of the Jemez Pueblo.

The high-voltage line would include transmission towers and a 100-foot-wide swath along its path from the lab through White Rock Canyon, south across the Caja del Rio plateau and then east through the Santa Fe National Forest to a substation.

DeVore, the program director of the Pueblo Action Alliance, is among those who signed the letter to the Forest Service urging the agency to encourage the National Nuclear Security Administration to call off the proposal.

“We also strongly feel that maybe they are also not sharing what the next steps are because they might just omit all of the opposition that is coming from tribal leaders, from community stakeholders, from communities that are also impacted by the harmful legacy of LANL,” DeVore said.

In the letter, Tesuque Pueblo Governor Milton Herrera is quoted as saying, “we are opposed, and we will always be opposed” to the proposal.

Toni Chiri, public affairs specialist at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Los Alamos field office, wrote in an email “most of the proposed new transmission line would cover existing transmission corridors or roads, minimizing the impacts to the landscape” and that “there would be no impact to private property or Tribal-owned lands.”

But some conservationists, community groups and Indigenous advocates argue otherwise, maintaining it would harm culturally and ecologically important land.

“The proposed ... Project will carve a massive new electrical corridor across the heart of the Caja del Rio and will create a new swath of destruction across undeveloped portions of the Caja, including the [Santa Fe National Forest’s] Caja del Rio Cultural and Wildlife special management area” the letter says. “Heavy trucks and machinery from this project will threaten Western Burrowing Owls, Pinyon Jay, the Tesuque Elk Herd, and other sensitive wildlife species.”

The U.S. Department of Energy, the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management were all involved in planning the route and how to ease the effects. The Energy Department released a 207-page draft environmental assessment of the project in November.

The Caja del Rio Coalition has said it collected 23,215 public comments in opposition to the proposed transmission line.

“There have been multiple robust public engagements beginning with public scoping for the EA in May 2021. We have paid special attention to engaging local Pueblos. We appreciate the input we have received through those processes, and have adjusted our approach in response,” Chiri wrote.

“Los Alamos National Laboratory is home to world-class supercomputers and other advanced technologies, which enable the lab’s national security mission and power cutting-edge scientific research,” Chiri continued.

According to LANL’s website, the Department of Energy and NNSA with a few other agencies are preparing a final environmental assessment that includes public comment.

“NNSA’s review of the Final EA is ongoing. When the review is complete, NNSA will announce its decision on whether to issue a Finding of No Significant Environmental Impact or prepare an Environmental Impact Statement in early 2025,” Chiri wrote. “We will consider objections provided during the Forest Service’s objection period in our decision.”

The coalition’s letter is signed by three local elected officials: Santa Fe County Commissioners Anna Hansen and Hank Hughes, as well as former Santa Fe city councilor Carmichael Dominguez. At a town hall held at Hilton Santa Fe Buffalo Thunder in July, Hansen called the proposal “unworkable.”

Numerous speakers at the town hall lambasted the transmission line proposal, drawing massive applause when they did so. Several dozen people also spoke out against the project at a public meeting in January.

“It is a bit disappointing to kind of just hear the silence after the town hall meeting,” DeVore said. “We haven’t heard any kind of immediate response from NNSA about the environmental assessment that needs to take place.”