Bandelier Administrative History

Surrounded to a large extent by national forest land, Bandelier also faced the threat of visual pollution. During the 1980s, the Caja del Rio section of the Santa Fe National Forest, across the Rio Grande from the park, remained largely undeveloped. A large section of the area was designated wild horse and burro territory. Although the USDA Forest Service permitted wood harvesting, the foresters restricted permits for the tract so as not to disturb the wild horses and burros. In 1985, however, officials of the Santa Fe National Forest came under increased pressure to open up the area for more wood cutting. Stands of piñon trees on the tract caught the attention of New Mexicans as the prized wood became harder to find.

Dorothy Hoard, the National Parks and Conservation Association representative for Bandelier, began to stress the protection of the Caja section. The building of roads and the noise of vehicles, she wrote, would be "devastating" to the backcountry. Hoard, a long-time supporter of the park, also communicated with Forest Supervisor Maynard T. Rost of the Santa Fe National Forest. After her intervention, Rost included a statement that recommended protecting the visual quality of areas adjacent to Bandelier in the revised draft of the Environmental Impact Statement for the Santa Fe National Forest. [47]

Other Federal agencies had the ability to affect Bandelier. During the 1980s, the flood easement that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers held for the Cochiti Dam presented a substantive threat to the park values of Bandelier. The legislation that established the dam granted the Corps of Engineers the right to flood as much as 361 acres of Bandelier National Monument. Because the easement came from Congress, the Park Service had little recourse. In 1979, runoff backed up into Bandelier; reaching an elevation of 5,388 feet above sea level, within the legal limits set by Congress. The water threatened the Kiva House ruin at the base of Alamo Canyon. Prior to the dam, the elevation of the river was 5323 feet above sea level. [48]

As early as 1958, the Park Service had recognized the potential of damage from the proposed dam. On November 14, 1958, Southwest Regional Director Hugh Miller, members of his staff, and Superintendent Paul Judge of Bandelier met with representatives of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. Miller raised his objections to a portion of the proposal that allowed the dam to impound water to a level of 5,473 feet, backing water up each of the canyons in the monument. Although the engineers did not change the proposal, the Park Service entered its objection in the record.

The tenor of the late 1950s supported wholesale economic development of the Southwest, and Miller recognized the precariousness of the objection of the NPS. Throughout the 1950s, dam projects sprouted along western rivers; the billion- dollar Colorado River Storage Program and the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam typified the era. Nor did the Park Service have compelling grounds to oppose the easement. Regional Archeologist Charlie Steen assessed the prehistoric sites within the area of the easement and pronounced them "not particularly significant." In the late 1950s, the Cochiti Dam also underwent a transformation from flood control dam to "multi-purpose" dam with an emphasis on attracting tourists to northern New Mexico. Miller opined that "our position will be difficult to maintain when the economic benefits of the project to Albuquerque are considered." [49] The Corps of Engineers received its easement, putting a portion of the monument permanently at risk. The flooding in 1979 was only a precursor to a more severe threat.

During the summer of 1985, the Corps of Engineers announced plans to use its easement and flood the lower reaches of Capulin, Alamo, and Frijoles Canyons in Bandelier National Monument. A warm spell in April, causing an unusually high amount of snow melt early in the year, prompted their decision. By early May, Elephant Butte and Caballo reservoirs in southern New Mexico had reached ninety percent of capacity, the highest levels in forty-three years. The Bureau of Reclamation asked the Corps of Engineers to store additional water in the Cochiti and Abiquiu reservoirs. In the opinion of the two Federal agencies, the level of water in the southern reservoirs threatened to flood a portion of the town of Truth or Consequences, five miles from the Elephant Butte Dam. The Corps carried out the request, and water began to back up into Bandelier. [50]

The array of water regulations in the arid Southwest further complicated the situation. The Riò Grande Compact of 1937 set up a commission to regulate water use along the river. Its members—New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas—developed an intricate system to divide the resources of the river. The terms of the compact granted the extra runoff to farmers below Elephant Butte, most of whom were in Texas. But the Rio' Grande Compact Commission could not release the extra water from Cochiti, for the courts had not established the rights of farmers in the Middle Riò Grande Conservancy District (MRGCD), between Cochiti and Elephant Butte. As a result, the commission asked Congress to limit the flow of water through the district between July 1 and November 1 of each year to 1,500 cubic feet of water per second (cfs), the traditional amount tapped by farmers in the middle district. With as much as 8,300 cfs entering the northern reservoirs, and only 5,000 cfs before July 1 and 1,500 after leaving, Cochiti and Abiquiu dams filled beyond capacity, and the portions of Bandelier nearest the Rio' Grande were inundated. [51]

The creeping ascendance of the water throughout May and June posed serious environmental problems. When the water receded, the inundated areas would be, in the words of John Lissoway, an "aesthetic mess." A "bathtub ring" of drowned vegetation would remain. Lissoway thought the natural recovery of the region might take four to five years. Tree species like juniper and ponderosa pine were particularly vulnerable. If inundated for more than several weeks, they were unlikely to recover. Among the ponderosa pines that were threatened were a group of 450- year old trees that provided a winter roost for about twenty- five bald eagles. The park staff wondered whether the eagles would return after the flooding. The area would become "a vegetative wasteland," lamented Terrell Johnson, a contract biologist for the Park Service who studied the eagles. [52]

The date of July 1 loomed especially large for the NPS. Many of the threatened areas could survive inundation for a few weeks. But if the water stored in Cochiti did not go over the dam before July 1, the terms of the compact held it there until November 1, after the end of the irrigation season in central New Mexico. This protected the interests of farmers below the Elephant Butte and Caballo reservoirs, but threatened Bandelier. If the water remained in the Cochiti Reservoir after July 1, there was no chance of saving the inundated flora.

Throughout late May and early June, water backed up into the canyons. By early June, it reached within two vertical feet of the Kiva House ruin, and the hiking trails along the Rio' Grande washed away. The Park Service watched in dismay. "We hate to see it," Chief Ranger Kevin McKibbin told the press, "but there's not much we can do about it. . . . Our hands are tied." John Hunter pointed out that resistance was futile. Congress had made the decision during the 1960s, and as much as he did not like the situation, he had little recourse. [53] The Park Service had nowhere to go with its complaints.

The flooding of Bandelier in 1985 attracted local, regional, and national interest. A vocal portion of the public expressed outrage. In a symbolic gesture of opposition, a bucket brigade went to Cochiti Dam to throw buckets of water over the top of the dam to flow downstream. Phone calls lit up the switchboard at the monument, many asking if the ruins in Frijoles Canyon were underwater. The New York Times ran a feature story on the issue, as did The Denver Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a number of other daily newspapers across the nation. [54] Although some of the excess water was released from the dam, the lower reaches of the monument remained flooded.

Even after 1985, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers retained the easement to fill the lower reaches of Bandelier with water. By June 8, 1987, high water was estimated to reach 5,444 feet above sea level. Despite public outcry at local, regional, and national levels, the law allowed the flooding of the monument. The presence of the dam and its potential to affect the monument presented a major long-term problem for the administrators of the monument. It offered one of the first cases of actual overlap between the groups that managed the Pajarito Plateau.

Yet the flooding was only the first of many similar collisions. The collection of threats to Bandelier offered a microcosm of the problems facing the park system. The limited space on the Pajarito Plateau and the needs of various constituencies created a matrix of conflict. Protecting the park from a variety of threats required constant vigilance, broad public support, and occasional Machiavellian politicking. At Bandelier, the Park Service held its own. But as the Pajarito Plateau became more crowded and more people sought to live, work, and play there, the problems continued to escalate.

The lesson of Bandelier was not its problems per se; the real story was in the exponential increase in the severity of threats to its integrity. The sheer onslaught of threat after threat by powerful individuals, corporations, and Government agencies was unparalleled. They appeared almost simultaneously in a brief period in the history of the park. Nor was there any guarantee that new threats would not arise. The story of Bandelier and its surroundings served as a barometer of problems and responses. As the amount of open space in the U.S. decreased, more and more park areas faced similar levels of pressure and layers of threats. The story of Bandelier will likely be repeated throughout the park system.