11.3.1.010 Findings

(a) The Pueblo de San Ildefonso is the only tribe to share a boundary with a Department of Energy facility, specifically the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

(b) The Indian Claims Commission determined that the Pueblo de San Ildefonso's ancestral area includes the property currently operated by the DOE at its Los Alamos site.

(c) The Pueblo is a natural resources trustee as defined in federal law, i.e. CERCLA, the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA).

(d) The Pueblo in cooperation with the State of New Mexico and federal agencies initiated the Natural Resource Trustee Council ("Trustee Council") effort for DOE's Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) site.

(e) The Pueblo entered into a Memorandum of Agreement ("initial MOA") in 2007 to establish the LANL Natural Resource Trustee Council ("Trustee Council").

(f) The Trustee Council members from tribal, state, and federal governments are trustees for natural resources that may have suffered injuries resulting from releases or threatened releases of hazardous substances (including radionuclides) and discharges or threatened discharges of oil, in and from the area of LANL.

(g) Trustee Council members currently include the Pueblos de San Ildefonso, Jemez and Santa Clara, State through its Office of Natural Resources Trustee, and federal departments of Energy and Agriculture.

(h) The natural resource damage assessment and restoration ("NRDAR") process will take several years for technical studies to implement the NRDA plan and determine what injury to natural resources occurred, quantify the injuries and lost "services", determine the "pathways' for each hazardous substance, and quantify damages.

(i) NRDAR work is separate from DOE's clean up responsibilities; DOE Policy encourages cooperation between the two activities.

(j) The Trustee Council has overseen a technical team to perform a pre-assessment screen which confirmed LANL damaged natural resources, and have completed work on the final Natural Resource Damage assessment plan for Los Alamos National Laboratory ("NRDA Plan").

(k) The Trustee Council NRDA Plan has prioritized studies of "Pueblo narratives" and "Resource characterization for assessment and restoration of Pueblo services" which require input from the Pueblo and other Pueblo trustees concerning natural resource damage and loss of cultural services suffered by Pueblo members.

(l) The Pueblo staff had input into development of the final NRDA Plan.

(m) All natural resource trustees except this Pueblo have approved the NRDA Plan.

(n) The NRDA process will provide a basis for estimating the monetary damages needed to restore, replace or acquire resources equivalent to the injured natural resources, plus the los of use and enjoyment of the injured resources.

(o) The NRD process does not require giving up any possible claims and Pueblo retains the right to make natural resource damage claims independent of the Trustee Council.

(p) Copies of the final DRDA Plan for LANL have been provided to the Tribal Council and been reviewed by the Council's Natural Resources committee.

(q) Approval of the natural resource damage assessment plan by the Pueblo as a natural resource trustee is in the best interests of the Pueblo.