Los Alamos Downwind Neighbors Opposed to Caja del Rio Transmission Line

By KAY MATTHEWS

A newly formed organization called Los Alamos Downwind Neighbors (LDN) recently met at the Embudo Valley Library in Dixon to strategize on how to prevent implementation of the proposed Caja del Rio Transmission Line from Los Alamos to Santa Fe. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) released an Environmental Assessment (EA) for the proposed 14-mile, 115 Kilovolt electric line in October of 2023. The comment period on what is called Electrical Power Capacity Upgrade (EPCU) was set to expire on January 17, but after appeals to extend the comment period from the Caja del Rio Coalition and the New Mexico congressional delegation, the Department of Energy (DOE) extended the deadline to take further comments from January 22 to February 20.

 Members of the Los Alamos Downwind Neighbors attended a DOE public hearing on the transmission line on January 11 at Santa Fe Community College. Janet Greenwald, longtime anti-nuclear activist and member of Citizens for Alternatives to Nuclear Dumping (CARD) told La Jicarita that approximately 150 people, either in person or on Zoom, expressed opposition to the transmission line, including representatives of Tesuque and Cochiti pueblos. They cited the importance of the cultural, ecological, recreational, and historical resources of the Caja del Rio plateau that would be compromised. The line also passes through Santa Fe National Forest, which would have to rule on the EA decision and perhaps amend its Land Management Plan.

 The Los Alamos Downwind Neighbors, like many who spoke at the public hearing, are opposed to pit production—30 per year by 2027—at LANL and connect the EPCU line to that uptick in future electrical needs at the Lab. At the meeting in Dixon the group expressed concerns over existing problems at LANL including treatment of legacy waste, the hexavalent chromium plume, radiation exposure of workers, and radiation related diseases in downwind communities. The group also discussed the impact LANL has on the children and young people of New Mexico, inculcating them from grade school on with the lure of jobs at the LANL without sufficient information regarding the dangers involved. They also noted that the LANL Foundation provides funding for northern New Mexico libraries for self-promoting programming and technologies.

Los Alamos Downwind Neighbors agreed to draft template comments for the January 17 deadline and additional, more detailed comments for the February 20 deadline that call for the DOE to choose a No Action Alternative in the EA. They will circulate the templates to help those who want to comment. You can contact Janet Greenwald to have her add your name to an electronic submission by Tuesday evening at contactus@cardnm.org. The template is printed below.

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Los Alamos Downwind Neighbors opposes the new transmission line proposed to be built in the Caja del Rio NM to support pit production at Los Alamos National Labs (LANL) and support the no action alternative for the following reasons:

The construction of the new transmission line will cause disruption of all kinds in the Caja.  The final result will be opportunities for new erosion and more traffic along the road created to build the transmission line.

The pueblos and the Caja del Rio communities have not been consulted.  The Caja del Rio contains petroglyphs and is an unofficially acknowledged natural extension of Bandelier National Monument.  Our first nations have had many of their sacred places desecrated.  We should not perpetuate this disrespectful practice.  The Caja del Rio Communities pre date the establishment of Santa Fe.  Their traditional use of the Caja for hunting and gathering is undisputed.

The Caja del Rio is one of the few wild areas left bordering the Rio Grande. It’s part of the Western Wild way Priority Wildlife Corridor, supporting movement along the Rio Grande for large mammals including mule deer, elk, coyote, and gray fox.  It is the home of several endangered species including the Monarch butterfly whose numbers are now one tenth of what they were before the destruction of the milkweed plant by pesticides on privately owned land in the United States.

The Caja is an important part of our New Mexican heritage.

The purpose of the proposed transmission line is to supply additional electricity needed for manufacturing plutonium pits which are the triggers of the atomic bomb.  Making atomic bombs is illegal according to international law.  It is also immoral and dangerous to the communities surrounding the labs.  The members of Los Alamos Downwind Neighbors live in communities which are both downwind and bedroom communities to LANL.  There are no health studies of downwind communities, nor of Los Alamos workers.   According to one of our members who is a nurse, cancer is rampant in Dixon NM, a rural, downwind community, despite the fact that most of the farmers there use organic practices.   

The National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA), who supervises LANL’s bomb making efforts, treats its workers and downwind communities as collateral damage.  We are standing up to this cavalier and heartless attitude.  The safety record of LANL is abysmal.  According to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, LANL is currently not following the board’s safety recommendations such as replacing the HEPA filters at their bomb making facility, leaving the air we breathe less protected from accidents at the lab.  Los Alamos Downwind Neighbors have the right to clean air; that is a human right.

 To us the new transmission line represents desecration of what is sacred, damage to our inheritance of wild and culturally significant lands and more contamination for those of us who work at the labs and live down wind, leading to more suffering and early death for ourselves and our neighbors.

Comments and requests for a paper copy of the draft environmental assessment report may be submitted by email to:
epcuea@nnsa.doe.gov  or via U.S. mail to:

NNSA Los Alamos Field Office
ATTN: EPCU Project NEPA
3747 W. Jemez Road
Los Alamos, NM 87544

Addendum: Myrriah Gómez, UNM professor, will read from her book Nuclear Nuevo Mexico: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos  at the Embudo Valley Library on February 4, 2024 at 1:00 to 3:00 pm.