Bandelier Administrative History

The DOE and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) projects also threatened the monument. Since the 1940s, the needs of Los Alamos had dominated the Pajarito Plateau. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the subsequent initiation of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program, the defensive missile shield proposal of the 1980s, made LANL even more significant, for Federal scientific organizations were expected to handle much of the research in the so-called "Star Wars" program. Its importance and power made the DOE less sensitive to the concerns of other agencies in the region, and during the middle of the 1980s, the department planned a number of projects that would have serious consequences for Bandelier National Monument.

The two most evident of these were the Overblast Program, designed to test the effect of artillery on human hearing, and a proposed firing range near Tsankawi in Los Alamos Canyon. These two cases revealed the difficulty of maintaining preservation values in proximity to a powerful entity that often saw its objectives as the only valid ones in the area. Both the projects were well into the planning stages when DOE officials first contacted the park. In May and June, 1985, the DOE area office in Los Alamos briefed Superintendent John D. Hunter and Chief Ranger Kevin McKibbin on the two projects. Hunter and McKibbin again explained the position of the Park Service and requested documents that explained the environmental impact of the project. [29]

The implications of the two projects were vast. The Overblast Project was scheduled for Technical Area-49, located on the northern boundary of the monument about two miles east of the Ponderosa campground in the Upper Canyon area. The program would include between thirty and one hundred explosive blasts during regular work hours each weekday for a period of up to three years. The DOE hoped to initiate the program by August 1985. Its proximity to the park meant that the noise from repeated explosions would be audible across Frijoles Mesa, at the Ponderosa campground, and most likely in Frijoles Canyon. The proposed firing range in Los Alamos Canyon would be visible from Tsankawi Mesa, and even though the shooting would be directed away from the detached area, anyone on the mesa would hear the sound of gunfire.

From the point of view of the Bandelier administration, the projects threatened the values of the park, but Los Alamos officials did not seem to understand their concern. The DOE and the Park Service brought different value systems to the question, and communicating the perspective of the Park Service became difficult. Engineers could not quantify intangible values. Without a clear understanding of such ideas, DOE tended to ignore the merits of the position of the Park Service. "How do you explain what a tranquil setting is in scientific terms?" a weary John Hunter asked Robert Kerr, the Regional Director of the Southwest Region, as he explained the difficulties in communicating with Los Alamos personnel. [30]

Despite persistent efforts by the Park Service to influence its procedure, the DOE continued with little concern for park values. Although park and regional office staff members repeatedly offered to cooperate to ensure an equitable solution, the DOE ignored them. When Park Service evidence showed that the noise would be audible on Frijoles Mesa, where the majority of monument employees lived, Harold Valencia, the Area Manager for the DOE at Los Alamos, informed Kerr that he was "confident that there will be no health and safety hazards at Bandelier from noise associated with the . . . project." The Park Service had suggested a number of alternative locations; Valencia categorically ruled out other possible locales. [31]

The two organizations were locked in a conflict of incommensurable values. To a degree, their perspectives were mutually exclusive. The Park Service showed the aesthetic merits of the peace and serenity of Bandelier; the cold logic of the DOE could not figure such intangible concepts into its quantitative analysis. DOE officials measured the noise within the park and found that it fell within the range their graphs designated as acceptable. Yet to the Park Service, levels acceptable to the DOE presented a clear nuisance. The DOE simply ignored challenges to its position and proceeded. A power struggle emerged. Because of its vast influence, the DOE looked like an easy victor. [32]

But the DOE had not considered the effects of public opinion. In November 1985, Tom Ribe, who had challenged the mountain route of the Ojo Line Extension, published similar articles detailing the struggle between Bandelier and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in both the High Country News and Santa Fe New Mexican. LANL officials made a number of insensitive comments to Ribe. When referring to the noise levels of the project, one official, Don Peterson remarked that "most of our critics wouldn't know a decibel if they tripped over one." This callous attitude awakened preservationist sentiment in Los Alamos and Santa Fe, prompting an editorial against the project in the New Mexican. Sandi Doughton-Evans of the local newspaper, the Los Alamos Monitor, also began to pursue the story. On November 14, 1985, Hunter reported that conservation groups had begun to respond to the threat and "things (were) heating up." When NPS Director William Penn Mott came to Bandelier that month, he added his voice to the opposition to both projects. [33]

Over the ensuing months, the issue generated so much interest that the DOE changed its plans. By February 1986, LANL had aborted both the Overblast Project and the firing range near Tsankawi. Park Service people rejoiced. "We did it," trumpeted a memo from Janet E. Schmitt, an Environmental Specialist in the Division of Environmental Coordination who played an important part in shaping the response of the agency, to Bandelier Superintendent John Hunter. Russell D. Butcher, the Southwestern and California representative for the National Parks and Conservation Association, found the success "amazing! We are thrilled," he wrote Hunter at the monument. [34] Indeed, carrying a policy debate to the public offered the Park Service a powerful weapon with which to resist the occasional insensitivity of the DOE.