Archaeology Southwest Statement on New York Times Guest Essay by Robinson Meyer

Archaeology Southwest Statement on New York Times Guest Essay by Robinson Meyer, “It Takes Too Many Studies for the Government to Do the Right Thing” (previously titled “Liberals Are Accidentally Smothering the Clean Energy Revolution”)

Tucson, Ariz. (July 13, 2024)—On January 17, 2024, the San Carlos Apache Tribe and the Tohono O’odham Nation, joined by Archaeology Southwest and the Center for Biological Diversity, filed suit against the US Federal Government in the US District Court of Arizona. Our complaint alleges that the US Bureau of Land Management (USBLM) failed to complete steps required by the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) prior to authorizing construction of the SunZia Southwest Transmission Project (SunZia).

Archaeology Southwest joined this lawsuit because of USBLM’s many failures to use its discretion to spare the San Pedro Valley—a place of exceptional beauty and historical, cultural, spiritual, and ecological importance—from industrial fragmentation. As a Tucson-based nonprofit with deep ties to the valley community and deep interests in regional history, Archaeology Southwest has consistently urged USBLM to route the transmission line alongside existing infrastructure and, yes, to study the San Pedro Valley before allowing Pattern Energy to use it as a convenient shortcut to California energy markets.

In our capacity as a plaintiff in this ongoing litigation—the substance of which is mischaracterized by Meyer in the opinion piece—we assert the following:

• Regarding the original title of Meyer’s essay, we unequivocally state that there is nothing “accidental” about the opposition to USBLM’s and Pattern Energy’s failure to consider and invest in a powerline route that does not eviscerate the San Pedro Valley, one of the few non-industrialized and still-living riparian landscapes in the Southwest—a landscape Life Magazine has characterized as one of America’s Last Great Places.
• SunZia is emblematic not of overanalyzed projects, but of the current corporate “Green Rush” to harness public lands, funds, and Climate Crisis anxieties. As with all previous economic booms in the American West, Tribal Nations are bearing disproportionate burdens from profit-driven landscape-level harms and impacts. For reasons unknown, and at the risk of supporting Meyer’s inflated claims of corporate victimhood and overstudy, where’s the comparison of the much-touted climate benefits of interstate transmission projects to the greenhouse-gas footprint, at least for SunZia, of hundreds of miles of new roads and thousands of gargantuan towers, copper cables, and bulldozed acres of wildlands?
• The assertion that the affected Tribes and Archaeology Southwest “have spent years and millions of dollars bickering over environmental analysis” is false, misleading, and suggestive that “opponents” have financial or political assets in any way comparable to the SunZia proponent and its backers.
• We do not dispute the necessity of permitting reform or judicious placement of solar and wind generation and transmission infrastructures. We do, however, submit that stakeholders need as much access and involvement in decision-making as industrial proponents, and for rights-holding Tribes, funding from the proponent or federal agency to even the playing field and make that happen.

We are honored to support the Tohono O’odham Nation and San Carlos Apache Tribe in demanding that USBLM revisit its harmful decisions to route the SunZia power line through the San Pedro Valley. The valley is replete with places that are significant in O’odham, Apache, Hopi, and Zuni culture and religion and in Hispanic and Anglo history and community development. The only things being “accidentally smothered” here are the facts regarding the opponents and the mandate to temper our collective anxiety about our contributions to the Climate Crisis with careful commitments to protecting vulnerable places and the people who depend on them.

For further information:

Project page

Media resources

About Archaeology Southwest

Founded in 1989, Archaeology Southwest is a private 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Tucson, Arizona, on the homelands of the Tohono O’odham Nation and the Pascua Yaqui Tribe. We are privileged to work across the US Southwest and into northwestern Mexico on the Lands and Territories of many Indigenous Tribes and descendant communities. 

We practice Preservation Archaeology, a holistic and conservation-based approach to exploring and protecting heritage places while also honoring the diverse values these places hold for people. We gather information, help make it accessible and understandable, share it with the public and decision-makers, advocate for landscape-scale protection, and co-steward heritage preserves with people who share interests in their conservation. We are committed to real and ongoing collaboration with Tribes in all areas of our work. 

Learn more at archaeologysouthwest.org.

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