SWCA was retained by the High Desert Investment Corporation to provide biological and cultural resource services for the design and construction of a large subdivision, located in Sandoval County near Albuquerque. The subdivision consists of 6,500 homes as well as bike paths, foot trails, and a park.

Services Provided:

• Environmental Planning
• Biological evaluations
• Assisted with Clean Water Act (CWA) permitting
• Completed a jurisdictional water assessment
• Cultural resources surveys
• Tribal consultation
• Data recovery
  

This project illustrates SWCA’s ability to perform a wide range of regulatory compliance services for a large-scale, multi-year housing development project. In addition, this project demonstrates the innovation that was used by SWCA staff. For their data recovery efforts, SWCA staff excavated a sample of features in the field and conducted a full analysis (including radiocarbon dating and recovery of botanical remains) on each feature rather than excavating all uncovered features then sampling them in the lab for various analyses. This approach provided both a significant cost savings for the client and maximized the amount of archaeological data that could be recovered in a relatively short period of time.