Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Roca Honda Mine

Chapter 3. Affected Environment and Environmental Consequences
In terms of bounding the mountain from the standpoint of its status as an NRHP-eligible TCP, Mt.
Taylor extends downward from the summit of the peak, encompassing the slopes and contiguous
or adjacent mesas in their entirety. The property’s boundary is drawn at the base of these
landforms, or rather the toe of their slopes, where the land transitions to the valley floors. The
total size of the NRHP-eligible TCP is 442,659 acres and includes Federal, tribal, State, and
private lands.
In 2008 and 2009, the involved tribes prepared, revised, and submitted a nomination of the Mt.
Taylor Cultural Property for permanent listing on the SRCP as a TCP. In this nomination, the
property is also a vernacular landscape site. The outer boundary of the SRCP-listed TCP is the
same as the boundary for the NRHP-eligible TCP with the exception of three small adjustments,
resulting in an overall size of 450,000 acres. However, unlike the NRHP-eligible TCP, 133,544
acres of privately-owned lands contained within the outer SRCP-listed TCP boundary are
considered to be noncontributing resources. The nomination was accepted and the Mt. Taylor
Cultural Property was listed as a TCP on the SRCP in 2009. The listing is being contested through
the court system, and the New Mexico Court of Appeals ordered the case to be considered by the
New Mexico Supreme Court (NM Court of Appeals, 2012). The New Mexico Supreme Court
heard legal testimony on the case on September 24, 2012, and a decision is pending.
Contributing Resources
The contributing resources to the NRHP-eligible TCP are those features associated with the
traditional and ceremonial use of the mountain (Benedict and Hudson, 2008). These types of
resources include shrines, offering places, blessing places, pilgrimage trails, cairns, and springs.
The contributing resources to the SRCP-listed TCP include archaeological sites, shrines, springs,
lakes, boundary markers, trails, blessing places, traditional gathering areas for medicinal plants,
foodstuffs, and minerals, and locations of ceremonial activities (Chestnut Law Offices, 2009).
The four tribes that conducted ethnographic assessments for this EIS do not differentiate between
Mt. Taylor and cultural and natural resources found in the project area. In their view, the
resources contained within the proposed project area are all associated with, or are considered a
part of, the Mt. Taylor TCP. The Mt. Taylor TCP contains some specific places of traditional
cultural and religious significance within its boundaries that have been formally documented
(Benedict and Hudson, 2008; Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson, 2012a). The tribal
ethnographic assessments resulted in the identification of four specific locations that contribute to
the eligibility of the Mt. Taylor TCP and are located within the area of overlap between the TCP
and the physical APE.
Mt. Taylor TCP within the APEs
The NRHP-eligible TCP overlies portions of the physical APE and the setting APE (figures 62
and 63). The property encompasses most of Sections 2, 9, 10, and 11, small portions of Sections
15 and 16, and some of the unplatted private land to the north. Sections 17 and 20 are not within
the TCP. The NRHP-eligible TCP overlies approximately 40,359 acres of the setting APE; put
another way, about 9 percent of the TCP overlies 54 percent of the setting APE.
The boundary of the SRCP-listed TCP is the same as the NRHP-eligible TCP in the northwest
portion of the property (i.e., in the region of the proposed Roca Honda Mine project), with the
exception of moving the boundary slightly upslope behind the village of San Mateo. As a result,
the amount of overlap between the SRCP-listed TCP and the physical APE is the same as for the
328 DEIS for Roca Honda Mine, Cibola National Forest