PRIA, Government Policy, Made Personal

Summary

The Secretary must keep doing research and collecting data at the Division of Cultural Research, Southwest Cultural Resources Center (National Park Service) to support knowledge of the Chaco culture. Within six months of the law taking effect, the Secretary must send a written plan for the Division’s ongoing work to the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs and the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. The Secretary can create an advisory committee of professional archaeologists and other experts, and must include the Governor of New Mexico’s designee, to advise on surveying, excavation, curation, interpretation, protection, and management of park and archaeological sites. Through that Division, the Secretary must build a computer-generated database of the San Juan Basin and share it with federal and private groups when it helps preserve, manage, or develop the basin’s resources. Any federal agency planning a project, spending federal funds, or issuing a permit or license that affects lands or waters in the archaeological protection sites must give the Secretary a reasonable chance to comment in writing before approval and must consider the Secretary’s comments and the project’s effect on the sites’ purposes.

Title 16, §410ii–6

Conservation, Source: USLM XML via OLRC

(a)Consistent with and in furtherance of the purposes of the Division of Cultural Research of the Southwest Cultural Resources Center, operated by the National Park Service, the Secretary shall continue such research and data gathering activities as may be appropriate to further the purposes of this subchapter and knowledge of the Chaco culture. The Secretary shall submit in writing within six months of the effective date of this section, to the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs of the United States House of Representatives and the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources of the United States Senate, a plan for the continued operational program of the Division. The Secretary is authorized and encouraged to establish a committee composed of professional archeologists and others with related professional expertise including the designee of the Governor of the State of New Mexico to advise the Secretary in matters related to the surveying, excavation, curation, interpretation, protection, and management of the cultural resources of the historical park and archeological protection sites.

(b)The Secretary shall, through the Division of Cultural Research of the Southwest Cultural Resources Center of the National Park Service, be responsible for the development of a computer-generated data base of the San Juan Basin, and make such information available to Federal and private groups when to do so will assist such groups in the preservation, management, and development of the resources of the basin.

(c)The head of any Federal agency having direct or indirect jurisdiction over a proposed Federal or federally assisted undertaking with respect to the lands and waters in the archeological protection sites, and the head of any Federal agency having authority to license or permit any undertaking with respect to such lands and waters, shall prior to the approval of the expenditure of any Federal funds on such undertaking, or prior to the issuance of any license or permit, as the case may be, afford the Secretary a reasonable opportunity to comment in writing with regard to such undertaking and its effect upon such sites, and shall give due consideration to any comments made by the Secretary and to the effect of such undertaking on the purposes for which such sites are established.

Notes & Related Subsidiaries

Editorial Notes

References in Text

The

Effective Date

of this section, referred to in subsec. (a), probably means the date of enactment of Pub. L. 96–550, which was approved Dec. 19, 1980.

Statutory Notes and Related Subsidiaries

Change of Name

Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs of the House of Representatives changed to Committee on Natural Resources of the House of Representatives on Jan. 5, 1993, by House Resolution No. 5, One Hundred Third Congress. Cooperative Agreements for Curation and Research Pub. L. 108–413, § 4, Oct. 30, 2004, 118 Stat. 2325, provided that: “The Secretary [of the Interior] may enter into cooperative agreements with the University of New Mexico, Federal agencies, and Indian tribes for the curation of and conduct of research on artifacts, and to encourage collaborative management of the Chacoan archaeological artifacts associated with northwestern New Mexico.”

§410ii–6 Research and Data Gathering