See those railroad tracks in the photo? They belong to the New York, Susquehanna & Western Railroad (NYS&W), formerly the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad (DL&W). They traverse the flat land of the Chenango River valley. Their railbed was laid down around 1870, long before we had any systematic archaeological investigations here. Our local archaeological group was started in 1950.
Since then, dozens of sites along the river and the railroad have been reported. The overall consensus is that the land everywhere along the Chenango River was used by the Native Americans for thousands of years.
Consequently, the chances are pretty good that the railroad was laid over many sites, some of which could have been burial grounds. Actually, the railbed is preserving these possible sites by preventing anyone from disturbing them.
If the New York Regional Interconnect (NYRI) installs a powerline along these tracks, it will have to drastically disturb the railbed as well as the ground under and around it to construct foundations for the huge towers.
Federal law prohibits the disturbance of Indian burial grounds under the provisions of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. The only way to know whether a burial ground is present is to look for one. Therefore, an archaeological survey would have to be conducted for every tower -- every tower, not just a few arbitrarily selected representative sites. The railbed ballast would have to be removed and the ground under it would have to be carefully examined by licensed archaeologists. This is a delicate process, not one done with a bulldozer or a back-hoe.
NYRI may try to avoid any archaeological surveying by requesting a waiver. Because this land was so heavily used by the Indians, it would be absurd for the government to grant such a waiver. However, government does have a tendency to put corporate greed ahead of the public good, whenever it can get away with it. Awarding eminent domain powers to corporations is a chilling example. It is an old story, but the best way to prevent governmental malfeasance is for citizens to be vigilant and outspoken.
Here is another catch. When a developer contracts with a professional archaeological firm, the findings do not have to be published, that is, put into the public domain. The archaeological firm gives its report to its patron, the developer. When every party is operating on good faith, the reports are distributed to libraries, local governments, and interested citizens. In the absence of good faith, these reports retain their status as proprietary documents; they are not available for public review. Perhaps they could be subpoenaed by some legal process.
Environmental impact statements are a good idea but they are typically useless because the public is often unaware of them and the persons approving them usually have insufficient knowledge of history, archaeology, or biology to know what to look for. The normal procedure is that the developer claims its project has no environmental impact and the approvers agree.
One major factor that now comes to haunt us is that most of our archaeological sites are not registered with the state. Registration is an excellent way of conserving precious places. They have not been registered because none of us has the time, or the required patience, to do it. Volunteers are in short supply and we few are routinely overwhelmed as it is. Moreover, engaging in adversarial encounters with paid professionals, who are supported by big bucks and copious resources, seems daunting.
Nevertheless, emphasizing the archaeological sites under the railbed may provide a substantial obstacle to its being used as a powerline corridor.