By Scott Nicol
Newt Gingrich surged ahead of the pack in the South Carolina primary, soundly defeating his Republican rivals as the “anybody-but-Romney” contingent of the party appeared, for the moment, to have settled on him.
Hoping to show that he is serious about border enforcement, and to attract the voting bloc that abandoned Perry when they found out that he favored allowing undocumented students to pay in-state tuition, last fall Newt followed Michelle Bachmann’s lead and signed a pledge to line the southern border with double-layered border walls by 2013.
The pledge was written by Americans for Securing the Border, whose national chairman is the former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, Van D. Hipp Jr. Mr. Hipp’s push for enforcement of immigration laws is ironic, considering his own legal status. He is a convicted felon, who in 1997 pled guilty to accepting illegal campaign contributions. The Herald-Journal of Spartanburg, South Carolina, reported that, “In return for the guilty plea, the government dismissed a 14-count fraud and money laundering indictment stemming from operation of a phone sex business.”
Having lost his job with the Republican Party, Van D. Hipp is now a lobbyist and consultant for defense contractors who want to get work from the Department of Homeland Security. If Newt is elected and follows through on his promise it could mean a lot more business for Hipp’s clients.
To date, close to $3 billion has been spent on border walls. A mile of wall averages $ 7.5 million to build, though some cost much more. Levee-walls in Hidalgo County, Texas, cost $12 million a mile, with the Hidalgo County Drainage District ponying up $44 million, roughly a third of the cost. Walls through the rugged Otay Mountain Wilderness area cost $16 million per mile, and right now in San Diego $4.3 million is being spent to replace a section that runs for just 300 feet across the beach before plunging into the ocean.
650 miles, or around 1/3 of the southern border, already has either single-layered pedestrian walls or vehicle barriers. Adding another layer to the existing walls, replacing vehicle barriers with pedestrian walls, and building 1,300 miles of new wall would cost tens, and possibly hundreds, of billions more, at a time when Congress is trying to cut trillions from existing programs.
President Bush’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, oversaw the construction of most of the walls that now line the southern border. From that vantage he also saw the huge amounts of money that went into them. It is no surprise then that shortly after he left the Department of Homeland Security he founded the Chertoff Group, which helps big defense companies land Department of Homeland Security contracts. Many other top officials have quit DHS to join the Chertoff Group and cash in on their Homeland Security connections.
When the “underwear bomber” attempted to blow up a passenger plane a few months after he left DHS, former Secretary Chertoff granted dozens of interviews in which he gave advice on how the U.S. could prevent similar assaults. Again and again he said that full body scanners were the best solution. The Transportation Safety Administration, which falls under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security, subsequently required that airports install body scanners. Chertoff failed to mention in the first round of interviews that the company that made the body scanners was a client of the Chertoff Group. It is safe to assume that they were pleased with the return on their investment.
Hipp apparently hopes to emulate Chertoff and get his slice of the Homeland Security pie. Anything he can do to make that pie fatter, such as convincing the next president to commit to building more border walls, improves his odds of getting a piece. The hundreds of private landowners, and mile after mile of wildlife refuges, that the new walls would harm are of no more concern to Hipp than the 400 landowners whose property has already been taken or the damage walls have already inflicted on the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge were to Chertoff. In their eyes condemnations and habitat destruction are just the cost of doing business.
Of course those are costs paid by someone else; Chertoff and Hipp only reap the profits.
For Gingrich, signing Hipp’s border wall pledge is just good politics. On the one hand, it helps him look tough on immigration and border security. And following the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, allowing corporations masquerading as people to spend unlimited sums on elections, cozying up to contractors who have made millions off of border security, and might like to see more contracts come their way, could prove to be quite lucrative.
Border walls are all about money and politics, not immigration or drug control. Kiewit does not have to refund the millions it was paid to build walls, even though those walls only take a couple of minutes to climb. Boeing gets to keep the huge sums that it received to build virtual fences that never worked. Like the phone sex business in the nineties, Homeland Security contracts are a sure-fire way for the unscrupulous to rake in big money, and Newt has pledged that if he is elected president the cash will keep on coming.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Monday, January 2, 2012
Frontier Injustice: Not Even the Pacific Ocean is Safe from Our Pernicious Effort to Wall Off the Border
by Char Miller
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a nasty habit of rubbing salt into wounds, fresh and old.
Just ask anyone who lives along the Rio Grande Valley, makes their home in the Sonoran Desert covering large sections of northwest Mexico and southwest Arizona, or inhabits the dense sprawl of those entwined cities, San Diego and Tijuana. Since 2006, wherever DHS has pounded down its infamous Border Wall, it has chopped up habitats human and natural, severing longstanding cultural links and environmental connections between the U.S. and Mexico. It is a haunting reminder that the post-9/11 hunt for national security has generated its own insecurities.
The most recent (and stinging) example of this painful paradox came in late November. That's when DHS began construction of the latest segment of the wall, dubbed the Surf Fence Project. This 18-foot-high barrier, hung on six-inch rust-proof steel piping, is being pile-driven out 300 feet into the Pacific Ocean. The goal is fortify Imperial Beach, making it impregnable redoubt, the first line of defense for San Diego.
"There is a clear operational need for this development," Michael Hance, field operation supervisor with the U.S. Border Patrol, told the BBC. "The southern side of the border is densely populated and in the past many people found an easy way into the US through these beaches. We need physical infrastructure as well as border agents in the area."
As for the urgency to thrust this wall so deep into the pounding surf, local border patrol agents point to the capture in November of several undocumented migrants attempting to swim around the current fencing.
At a cost of $4.3 million, this new wall will be a very expensive form of deterrent. But Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Bruce Parks assured the LA Times that the exorbitant price tag (amounting to $143,333.33 per foot!) is worth every penny, for this stretch of beach "still has the potential to be very dangerous, as beautiful as it is."
I'd like to think that Parks is just being silly: do we really spend this much money building a wall because of the potential that this stretch of seaside can be a dangerous gateway into the U.S.? But he's not being flippant. After five years of listening to the Border Patrol and its parent department, DHS, say similar things every time they have announced the launch of yet another segment to the 670-mile border wall, it is clear that there is a pattern to their patter.
If, as DHS asserts, the land and sea are so threatening; if the people who would cross these stretches of our sovereign territory are judged to be so unsafe, then we must militarize the first while demonizing the second. Every mile of steel pole and three-ply fencing, every searchlight, movement sensor, high-flying drone, and armed guard is a reflection of this American war on nature and the Other. A terrorism that may be as malevolent as the threat this thick bulwark is supposed to repel.
This deliberate violence against land and people is underscored in the title of a new and insightful collection of essays on the geopolitics of the borderlands: Wounded Border/Frontera-Herida. The injuries that its ten chapters probe cover a wide range: the deeply flawed law enforcement and judicial systems on both sides of the border; the inequities and humiliations that migrants face in U.S. labor markets desperate for low-wage, expendable workers (pressure that women disproportionately bear); the environmental despoliation that comes from a globalized economy that created maquiladoras in Mexico, industries whose toxic effluent damages ground and surface waters, pollutes the air, and poisons adjacent neighborhoods. The border is a fraught landscape.
No shock, this contested physical space is also a social construct. As co-editor Justin Akers Chacón argues: "Since its inception as a boundary imposed by war of expansion, the U.S.-Mexico border has functioned in a dualistic manner. It has served both as a gateway to economic opportunity and as a barrier that creates and maintains unequal power relationships." Out of this duality, he writes, flows "the identities of both people in relationship to each other," becoming a "signifier of status that sustains each population in its own form of isolation." Although the proponents of globalization like to argue that this force is flattening the distinctions between counties and cultures, the U.S. border wall stands in stark refutation, a vertical and visible barrier. Bluntly divisive.
Emblematic of the rending of the social fabric that this enforced divide can produce is Friendship Park. Its name once conveyed its binational significance: First Lady Pat Nixon was on site at its ceremonial opening in 1971, there celebrating the site that memorialized the two nation's close relationship. "There should be no more fences," she declared.
That amity turned into animosity when, as a result of the 2006 Secure Fence Act that the George W. Bush administration promulgated, DHS built a series of fences that turned the park into a penitentiary. "New rules for public access to the gathering place leave families feeling like they have entered a maximum security prison on visiting day," writes Jill Holslin at her blog At the Edges. Any who would like to enter the park today must "wait outside the border wall 150 feet away from Friendship Park, seek permission to enter a locked gate, then be escorted by a border patrol agent in a 'security zone,' a five-foot tall pedestrian barrier that confines the space of the concrete circle of Friendship Park." Detention, surveillance, enforcement: these are the markers of a "containment society."
More egregious still is the latest effort to cordon off the United States, our arrogant ambition to split the Pacific Ocean in two.
Char Miller is the Director and W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis at Pomona College, and editor of the just-published "Cities and Nature in the American West." This article originally appeared on KCET, and is reproduced with the author's permission.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a nasty habit of rubbing salt into wounds, fresh and old.
Just ask anyone who lives along the Rio Grande Valley, makes their home in the Sonoran Desert covering large sections of northwest Mexico and southwest Arizona, or inhabits the dense sprawl of those entwined cities, San Diego and Tijuana. Since 2006, wherever DHS has pounded down its infamous Border Wall, it has chopped up habitats human and natural, severing longstanding cultural links and environmental connections between the U.S. and Mexico. It is a haunting reminder that the post-9/11 hunt for national security has generated its own insecurities.
The most recent (and stinging) example of this painful paradox came in late November. That's when DHS began construction of the latest segment of the wall, dubbed the Surf Fence Project. This 18-foot-high barrier, hung on six-inch rust-proof steel piping, is being pile-driven out 300 feet into the Pacific Ocean. The goal is fortify Imperial Beach, making it impregnable redoubt, the first line of defense for San Diego.
"There is a clear operational need for this development," Michael Hance, field operation supervisor with the U.S. Border Patrol, told the BBC. "The southern side of the border is densely populated and in the past many people found an easy way into the US through these beaches. We need physical infrastructure as well as border agents in the area."
As for the urgency to thrust this wall so deep into the pounding surf, local border patrol agents point to the capture in November of several undocumented migrants attempting to swim around the current fencing.
At a cost of $4.3 million, this new wall will be a very expensive form of deterrent. But Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Bruce Parks assured the LA Times that the exorbitant price tag (amounting to $143,333.33 per foot!) is worth every penny, for this stretch of beach "still has the potential to be very dangerous, as beautiful as it is."
I'd like to think that Parks is just being silly: do we really spend this much money building a wall because of the potential that this stretch of seaside can be a dangerous gateway into the U.S.? But he's not being flippant. After five years of listening to the Border Patrol and its parent department, DHS, say similar things every time they have announced the launch of yet another segment to the 670-mile border wall, it is clear that there is a pattern to their patter.
If, as DHS asserts, the land and sea are so threatening; if the people who would cross these stretches of our sovereign territory are judged to be so unsafe, then we must militarize the first while demonizing the second. Every mile of steel pole and three-ply fencing, every searchlight, movement sensor, high-flying drone, and armed guard is a reflection of this American war on nature and the Other. A terrorism that may be as malevolent as the threat this thick bulwark is supposed to repel.
This deliberate violence against land and people is underscored in the title of a new and insightful collection of essays on the geopolitics of the borderlands: Wounded Border/Frontera-Herida. The injuries that its ten chapters probe cover a wide range: the deeply flawed law enforcement and judicial systems on both sides of the border; the inequities and humiliations that migrants face in U.S. labor markets desperate for low-wage, expendable workers (pressure that women disproportionately bear); the environmental despoliation that comes from a globalized economy that created maquiladoras in Mexico, industries whose toxic effluent damages ground and surface waters, pollutes the air, and poisons adjacent neighborhoods. The border is a fraught landscape.
No shock, this contested physical space is also a social construct. As co-editor Justin Akers Chacón argues: "Since its inception as a boundary imposed by war of expansion, the U.S.-Mexico border has functioned in a dualistic manner. It has served both as a gateway to economic opportunity and as a barrier that creates and maintains unequal power relationships." Out of this duality, he writes, flows "the identities of both people in relationship to each other," becoming a "signifier of status that sustains each population in its own form of isolation." Although the proponents of globalization like to argue that this force is flattening the distinctions between counties and cultures, the U.S. border wall stands in stark refutation, a vertical and visible barrier. Bluntly divisive.
Emblematic of the rending of the social fabric that this enforced divide can produce is Friendship Park. Its name once conveyed its binational significance: First Lady Pat Nixon was on site at its ceremonial opening in 1971, there celebrating the site that memorialized the two nation's close relationship. "There should be no more fences," she declared.
That amity turned into animosity when, as a result of the 2006 Secure Fence Act that the George W. Bush administration promulgated, DHS built a series of fences that turned the park into a penitentiary. "New rules for public access to the gathering place leave families feeling like they have entered a maximum security prison on visiting day," writes Jill Holslin at her blog At the Edges. Any who would like to enter the park today must "wait outside the border wall 150 feet away from Friendship Park, seek permission to enter a locked gate, then be escorted by a border patrol agent in a 'security zone,' a five-foot tall pedestrian barrier that confines the space of the concrete circle of Friendship Park." Detention, surveillance, enforcement: these are the markers of a "containment society."
More egregious still is the latest effort to cordon off the United States, our arrogant ambition to split the Pacific Ocean in two.
Char Miller is the Director and W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis at Pomona College, and editor of the just-published "Cities and Nature in the American West." This article originally appeared on KCET, and is reproduced with the author's permission.
Monday, October 24, 2011
A Wall in a River is a Dam
by Scott Nicol
In this week’s Republican debate Bachmann, Cain, and Romney each fought to prove that if elected President they would build longer, taller, and more deadly walls than their opponents. In the run up to the event, Representative Bahmann vowed that the length of her wall “will be every mile, it will be every yard, it will be every foot, it will be every inch of that border.” Not to be outdone, Herman Cain said, “It’s going to be 20 feet high. It’s going to have barbed wire on the top. It’s going to be electrified. And there’s going to be a sign on the other side saying, ‘It will kill you — Warning.’”
In an effort to please politicians by erecting mile after mile of border wall, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) continues to push for new walls in the floodplain between the Rio Grande and the Texas towns of Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos. To convince the International Boundary Water Commission (IBWC) to go along, CBP has tried to paper over the risk of increased flooding with more than a million dollars worth of reports and flood models. Walls in the floodplain are likely to either deflect water into Mexican cities or bottle it up in U.S. ones, and so far IBWC has rejected CBP’s claims to the contrary.
Last June CBP paid Baker Engineering for yet another flood model, which was used over the summer to pressure IBWC to reverse its position. The Sierra Club recently received a copy as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request.
The new flood model makes it clear that no changes in the border walls themselves are being considered. The walls’ locations are the same as those mapped out in a Baker report from 2009. They are still designed to split flood waters, diverting a portion of the flow into these three communities. The only difference is that the newer model uses a different computer program, allowing for more detail.
In 2009 CBP did not know what type of border wall they would like to build, so Baker’s model imagined a solid slab. Now CBP says that they plan to use a bollard design, similar to the walls built to the north of the levees in Cameron county. But in Cameron county the levees would keep flood waters away from the border wall, whereas the new walls would be in the floodplain, where there are no levees, and would be inundated if the Rio Grande were swollen by a major flood.
For this report, Baker assumed that debris in the bollards would block no more than 10% - 25% of the water. That led to the conclusion that walls would have minimal impacts. But the assumption that between 75% and 90% of the water in a major flood would pass harmlessly through the wall seems to be based on wishful thinking at best, or a desire to rig the model’s results at worst.
Flooding rivers pick up large amounts of debris, from trash to trees, and carry it along until they encounter an obstruction. Bollards spaced a few inches apart may allow crystal clear water to pass through, but in a flood debris will pile up. As the debris accumulates it blocks more and more water, and the border wall acts more and more like a dam.
This should not be news to CBP. The border walls that they have already built in Arizona, and which they promised would have no impact on flooding, have caused tremendous flood damage.
On July 12, 2008, seasonal monsoon rains swept through northern Mexico and southern Arizona. In the sister cities of Nogales, Sonora and Nogales, Arizona the border wall acted as a dam. In addition to the wall built above ground it was later revealed that DHS had constructed a wall in a storm drain that passes beneath both cities without informing local officials or the International Boundary Water Commission. Water in the storm drain backed up and burst through the roof, adding to the flooding in the streets. Two people drowned, and millions of dollars of damage was sustained by Mexican businesses and residents.
The same storm caused flooding in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. CBP had stated categorically that border walls crossing washes in the monument, using a design similar to that proposed for the new South Texas sections, would be water permeable and therefore would not impact flooding. Grate openings 6 inches high and 24 inches wide that were built into the base of the wall were supposed to allow water to pass through, but they quickly became clogged with debris. The wall then acted as a dam, with water piling up behind it 2 to 7 feet deep. Backed up flood waters then traveled along the wall in search of an outlet, which was found at the Lukeville, Arizona port of entry, causing millions of dollars in damage to private and federal property.
Following this event, Baker Engineering was paid to run the length of the border wall from El Paso to San Diego and produce a report on the problems posed by the many walls that cross stream beds and washes. They documented “debris build-up which sometimes reached a height of 6 feet.” Their report concluded that, “fencing obstructs drainage flow every time a wash is crossed. With additional debris build-up, the International Boundary Water Commission’s (IBWC’s) criteria for rise in water surface elevations (set at 6” in rural areas and 3” in urban areas) can quickly be exceeded.”
Flood gates were installed, at a cost of over $24 million, in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the 2008 flooding. These gates are massive, and to work require Border Patrol agents to predict a flood, drive into a wash ahead of the water, throw a cable over a bar at the top of the wall, hook it to the top of the gate, and use their Jeep’s winch to pull the gate up. Then the agents need to get out of the wash and get to high ground. If they are not quick enough, they could be swept away or slammed into the wall by raging flood waters. If they manage to get out of the way they may be forced to wait on high ground between flooded washes until the waters recede.
Last August one of the sections of Arizona border wall that CBP had retrofitted with flood gates was knocked over and washed away by the force of flood waters after just over two inches of rain fell. Debris build-up had again turned the wall into a dam, just as it had in 2008. In this case, instead of following the wall to the nearest port of entry, the debris piled higher and higher the water poured over the top like a waterfall. The falling water tore away the wall’s foundation at the same time as the weight and pressure of the water pushed against the wall with increasing force. A forty-foot wide section of border wall fell.
Border Patrol spokesman Lloyd Easterling blamed the wall’s failure on human error, apparently because agents had not gone into washes ahead of the flash flood to open flood gates.
But the problem does not lie with patrol agents who cannot predict the weather, or don’t want to drive into a riverbed during a flood. The problem is higher up CBP’s command structure, with administrators who are so fixated on building walls, and thereby pleasing their superiors, that they overlook a basic fact:
A wall in a river is a dam.
It is time for Customs and Border Protection to face up to the fact that when they build walls in flood-prone areas, they may be able to ignore the impacts on paper, but not in the real world. The walls that they are pushing in Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos will have a disastrous impact on the very homeland that they are supposed to protect. Customs and Border Protection needs to ignore political pressure and give up on these last sections of border wall, before they do any more damage.
The June 2011 flood model for walls in Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos can be downloaded here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/68844504/June-2011-CBP-Hydrology-Report-for-Border-Wall-Sections-O-1-O-2-O-3
In this week’s Republican debate Bachmann, Cain, and Romney each fought to prove that if elected President they would build longer, taller, and more deadly walls than their opponents. In the run up to the event, Representative Bahmann vowed that the length of her wall “will be every mile, it will be every yard, it will be every foot, it will be every inch of that border.” Not to be outdone, Herman Cain said, “It’s going to be 20 feet high. It’s going to have barbed wire on the top. It’s going to be electrified. And there’s going to be a sign on the other side saying, ‘It will kill you — Warning.’”
In an effort to please politicians by erecting mile after mile of border wall, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) continues to push for new walls in the floodplain between the Rio Grande and the Texas towns of Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos. To convince the International Boundary Water Commission (IBWC) to go along, CBP has tried to paper over the risk of increased flooding with more than a million dollars worth of reports and flood models. Walls in the floodplain are likely to either deflect water into Mexican cities or bottle it up in U.S. ones, and so far IBWC has rejected CBP’s claims to the contrary.
Last June CBP paid Baker Engineering for yet another flood model, which was used over the summer to pressure IBWC to reverse its position. The Sierra Club recently received a copy as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request.
The new flood model makes it clear that no changes in the border walls themselves are being considered. The walls’ locations are the same as those mapped out in a Baker report from 2009. They are still designed to split flood waters, diverting a portion of the flow into these three communities. The only difference is that the newer model uses a different computer program, allowing for more detail.
In 2009 CBP did not know what type of border wall they would like to build, so Baker’s model imagined a solid slab. Now CBP says that they plan to use a bollard design, similar to the walls built to the north of the levees in Cameron county. But in Cameron county the levees would keep flood waters away from the border wall, whereas the new walls would be in the floodplain, where there are no levees, and would be inundated if the Rio Grande were swollen by a major flood.
For this report, Baker assumed that debris in the bollards would block no more than 10% - 25% of the water. That led to the conclusion that walls would have minimal impacts. But the assumption that between 75% and 90% of the water in a major flood would pass harmlessly through the wall seems to be based on wishful thinking at best, or a desire to rig the model’s results at worst.
Flooding rivers pick up large amounts of debris, from trash to trees, and carry it along until they encounter an obstruction. Bollards spaced a few inches apart may allow crystal clear water to pass through, but in a flood debris will pile up. As the debris accumulates it blocks more and more water, and the border wall acts more and more like a dam.
This should not be news to CBP. The border walls that they have already built in Arizona, and which they promised would have no impact on flooding, have caused tremendous flood damage.
On July 12, 2008, seasonal monsoon rains swept through northern Mexico and southern Arizona. In the sister cities of Nogales, Sonora and Nogales, Arizona the border wall acted as a dam. In addition to the wall built above ground it was later revealed that DHS had constructed a wall in a storm drain that passes beneath both cities without informing local officials or the International Boundary Water Commission. Water in the storm drain backed up and burst through the roof, adding to the flooding in the streets. Two people drowned, and millions of dollars of damage was sustained by Mexican businesses and residents.
The same storm caused flooding in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. CBP had stated categorically that border walls crossing washes in the monument, using a design similar to that proposed for the new South Texas sections, would be water permeable and therefore would not impact flooding. Grate openings 6 inches high and 24 inches wide that were built into the base of the wall were supposed to allow water to pass through, but they quickly became clogged with debris. The wall then acted as a dam, with water piling up behind it 2 to 7 feet deep. Backed up flood waters then traveled along the wall in search of an outlet, which was found at the Lukeville, Arizona port of entry, causing millions of dollars in damage to private and federal property.
Following this event, Baker Engineering was paid to run the length of the border wall from El Paso to San Diego and produce a report on the problems posed by the many walls that cross stream beds and washes. They documented “debris build-up which sometimes reached a height of 6 feet.” Their report concluded that, “fencing obstructs drainage flow every time a wash is crossed. With additional debris build-up, the International Boundary Water Commission’s (IBWC’s) criteria for rise in water surface elevations (set at 6” in rural areas and 3” in urban areas) can quickly be exceeded.”
Flood gates were installed, at a cost of over $24 million, in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the 2008 flooding. These gates are massive, and to work require Border Patrol agents to predict a flood, drive into a wash ahead of the water, throw a cable over a bar at the top of the wall, hook it to the top of the gate, and use their Jeep’s winch to pull the gate up. Then the agents need to get out of the wash and get to high ground. If they are not quick enough, they could be swept away or slammed into the wall by raging flood waters. If they manage to get out of the way they may be forced to wait on high ground between flooded washes until the waters recede.
Last August one of the sections of Arizona border wall that CBP had retrofitted with flood gates was knocked over and washed away by the force of flood waters after just over two inches of rain fell. Debris build-up had again turned the wall into a dam, just as it had in 2008. In this case, instead of following the wall to the nearest port of entry, the debris piled higher and higher the water poured over the top like a waterfall. The falling water tore away the wall’s foundation at the same time as the weight and pressure of the water pushed against the wall with increasing force. A forty-foot wide section of border wall fell.
Border Patrol spokesman Lloyd Easterling blamed the wall’s failure on human error, apparently because agents had not gone into washes ahead of the flash flood to open flood gates.
But the problem does not lie with patrol agents who cannot predict the weather, or don’t want to drive into a riverbed during a flood. The problem is higher up CBP’s command structure, with administrators who are so fixated on building walls, and thereby pleasing their superiors, that they overlook a basic fact:
A wall in a river is a dam.
It is time for Customs and Border Protection to face up to the fact that when they build walls in flood-prone areas, they may be able to ignore the impacts on paper, but not in the real world. The walls that they are pushing in Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos will have a disastrous impact on the very homeland that they are supposed to protect. Customs and Border Protection needs to ignore political pressure and give up on these last sections of border wall, before they do any more damage.
The June 2011 flood model for walls in Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos can be downloaded here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/68844504/June-2011-CBP-Hydrology-Report-for-Border-Wall-Sections-O-1-O-2-O-3
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Assault on Public Lands and Environmental Laws up for a House Vote
By Scott Nicol
How does waiving the Endangered Species Act in Hawaii help secure the U.S. – Mexico border?
Simple. It doesn’t.
But that obvious fact is irrelevant to Representative Rob Bishop of Utah, author of the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act (HR 1505). Bishop claims that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cannot enforce immigration laws without violating the rest of our nation’s laws, so his bill waives 36 federal laws within 100 miles of the U.S. – Mexico border, the U.S. – Canada border, and all U.S. coastlines, for anything that DHS may want to do.
Most of the laws that HR 1505 tosses aside, including the Endangered Species Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and Safe Drinking Water Act, protect the environment, but it also waives laws like the Farmland Policy Protection Act and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act.
This bill is an expansion of the Real ID Act, which gave the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to waive local, state, and federal laws to build walls along the southern border.
The existing Real ID Act waivers, which HR 1505 expands, have caused tremendous environmental damage. To build border walls 530,000 cubic yards of rock was blasted from mountainsides in the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area; walls have caused serious flooding in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument; and walls fragment the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, which was established for the preservation of endangered ocelots. Without the waiver, these walls would be illegal.
Bishop’s bill would also give DHS the run of all federally owned lands, in all 50 states, with absolutely no restrictions. Has a lack of access to the Everglades, or Hawaii’s Volcanoes National Park, or the lawn around the Statue of Liberty, prevented DHS from securing the southern border?
Not according to the Border Patrol.
The irony is that the Border Patrol, which operates under DHS’ umbrella, has not asked for the power to overrule land managers or ignore environmental laws. Last spring the Government Accountability Office found that, “Most agents reported that land management laws have had no effect on Border Patrol’s overall measure of border security.”
When Rep. Bishop introduced a similar bill last year Brandon Judd of the National Border Patrol Council said, “I would definitely look and see if there are some restrictions that are too restrictive. But to get rid of all restrictions, you would destroy the land.”
Representative Bishop has a long history of attacking protected lands and environmental regulations. He is currently pushing for a repeal of the Antiquities Act and a ban on new National Monuments. HR 1505 is just more of the same.
This Wednesday the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act will be up for a vote in the House Natural Resources Committee, which Rep. Bishop, in a bit of Orwellian irony, chairs. Packed with Tea Party darlings like Bishop, the bill is almost certain to pass and be sent on to the full House of Representatives.
This is the week to contact your representatives and tell them that HR 1505 is not about protecting our nation. It is an assault on federal lands and environmental laws using border security as a convenient cover, nothing more.
For more information, visit www.sierraclub.org/borderlands.
How does waiving the Endangered Species Act in Hawaii help secure the U.S. – Mexico border?
Simple. It doesn’t.
But that obvious fact is irrelevant to Representative Rob Bishop of Utah, author of the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act (HR 1505). Bishop claims that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cannot enforce immigration laws without violating the rest of our nation’s laws, so his bill waives 36 federal laws within 100 miles of the U.S. – Mexico border, the U.S. – Canada border, and all U.S. coastlines, for anything that DHS may want to do.
Most of the laws that HR 1505 tosses aside, including the Endangered Species Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and Safe Drinking Water Act, protect the environment, but it also waives laws like the Farmland Policy Protection Act and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act.
This bill is an expansion of the Real ID Act, which gave the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to waive local, state, and federal laws to build walls along the southern border.
The existing Real ID Act waivers, which HR 1505 expands, have caused tremendous environmental damage. To build border walls 530,000 cubic yards of rock was blasted from mountainsides in the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area; walls have caused serious flooding in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument; and walls fragment the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, which was established for the preservation of endangered ocelots. Without the waiver, these walls would be illegal.
Bishop’s bill would also give DHS the run of all federally owned lands, in all 50 states, with absolutely no restrictions. Has a lack of access to the Everglades, or Hawaii’s Volcanoes National Park, or the lawn around the Statue of Liberty, prevented DHS from securing the southern border?
Not according to the Border Patrol.
The irony is that the Border Patrol, which operates under DHS’ umbrella, has not asked for the power to overrule land managers or ignore environmental laws. Last spring the Government Accountability Office found that, “Most agents reported that land management laws have had no effect on Border Patrol’s overall measure of border security.”
When Rep. Bishop introduced a similar bill last year Brandon Judd of the National Border Patrol Council said, “I would definitely look and see if there are some restrictions that are too restrictive. But to get rid of all restrictions, you would destroy the land.”
Representative Bishop has a long history of attacking protected lands and environmental regulations. He is currently pushing for a repeal of the Antiquities Act and a ban on new National Monuments. HR 1505 is just more of the same.
This Wednesday the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act will be up for a vote in the House Natural Resources Committee, which Rep. Bishop, in a bit of Orwellian irony, chairs. Packed with Tea Party darlings like Bishop, the bill is almost certain to pass and be sent on to the full House of Representatives.
This is the week to contact your representatives and tell them that HR 1505 is not about protecting our nation. It is an assault on federal lands and environmental laws using border security as a convenient cover, nothing more.
For more information, visit www.sierraclub.org/borderlands.
Friday, September 16, 2011
CBP Willing to Risk Flooding to Erect New Walls in Roma, Rio Grande City and Los Ebanos
By Scott Nicol
It was just over a year ago that the rising waters of the Rio Grande prompted the mandatory evacuation of Los Ebanos, Texas. Residents rushed to grab what they could before floodwaters cut off the town.
Before the flood, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was pressuring the U.S. half of the International Boundary Water Commission (USIBWC) to approve the construction of border walls through Los Ebanos, as well as Rio Grande City and Roma, that could have worsened the flooding. CBP had even gone so far as to request that the US half of the International Boundary Water Commission act “unilaterally” and approve walls in the floodplain despite the objections of the Mexican half.
The plans for border walls drafted after the passage of the Secure Fence Act showed South Texas on the receiving end of 69 miles of border wall in 21 disconnected sections. The westernmost three sections, designated O-1, O-2, and O-3, were to be through the communities of Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos.
In 2008 the US International Boundary Water Commission made it clear that any walls built along the Rio Grande must comply with US-Mexico treaties. The Real ID Act allowed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Customs and Border Protection’s parent agency, to waive all federal, state, and local laws, but not treaties. Walls built in the flood plain adjacent to the Rio Grande might deflect flood waters towards Mexico, causing flood damage to Mexican communities. Deflection might also cause the river to settle into a new channel farther to the south, which would effectively change the location of the US-Mexico boundary. Either of these would be a treaty violation.
In Cameron County and most of Hidalgo our treaty obligations meant that border walls could not be built between the existing flood control levees and the river, so walls were constructed on, in, or north of the levees. Those walls are, for the most part, finished. But unlike the downriver sections, Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos do not have USIBWC flood control levees. The border walls in these three communities would therefore be in the flood plain.
Because of the wall’s likely flood impacts USIBWC rejected these three sections of border wall.
A few days after the 2008 elections CBP informed Representative Cuellar, whose district encompasses these communities, that these border wall sections were “on hold.” At the time Cuellar said, “This is a big victory.” He went on to tell the Associated Press, “We're hoping that this will allow us to work with the next president to find ... alternative methods for security."
Representative Cuellar’s constituents also hoped that that would be the last they would hear of plans to wall off their towns from the river, but in a May, 2010 report on the Secure Border Initiative (which includes both solid and “virtual” border walls) the Government Accountability Office stated, “CBP plans to construct an additional 14 miles of pedestrian fencing in the Rio Grande Valley sector.” These 14 miles are the combined Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos sections.
Documents uncovered by the Sierra Club through a Freedom of Information Act request over the last year demonstrate that, in fact, the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection continued to push for the construction of these walls, and were willing to disregard our treaty obligations and likely problems with flooding to do so.
A Customs and Border Protection “Fence Status Brief” dated April 27, 2009 reveals that to build the previously rejected walls CBP had decided upon a new plan. They would not change the design or location of the walls, or, better yet, give up on them entirely. Instead it says, “the new strategy involves developing a new floodplain model” and that, unlike the old model approved by USIBWC that “predicted noteworthy floodplain impacts from the fence,” “this model will demonstrate the impacts of the proposed fence will be minimal.”
The verb tense - "this model will demonstrate" - is important. It appears that CBP determined the outcome in advance, rather than commissioning an honest, unbiased model that would accurately describe the effects of structures built in the floodplain.
The “new flood plain model”, prepared by Baker Engineering, was completed in December 2009. Presented to CBP eight months after their fence status brief forecast its findings, its conclusion fit the earlier prediction precisely. The “noteworthy floodplain impacts” of building border walls in a floodplain that were predicted just a year earlier disappeared; instead, Baker now claimed that walls would have a “minimal effect on the Rio Grande floodplain.”
Baker decided this without even knowing what type of border wall design would be used. In 2008, CBP proposed a number of designs that were touted as either allowing floodwaters to pass through without being dammed up, or able to be removed before rising water reached them. USIBWC rejected all of these unrealistic schemes. In their 2009 report Baker modeled the border wall as an 18’ high, impermeable wall, with the specific design, whether concrete or steel, posts or mesh or slabs, to be determined later. Since CBP apparently told Baker what the outcome of their modeling would be before they began, it seems that such details were unimportant.
One striking conclusion of Baker’s “new flood plain model” was that in the communities of Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos, border walls would “split” the flooding river. It states that for each wall segment, “Downstream of the flow split location, the flow continues in a north branch and a south branch on either side of the fence. The flow combines downstream of the point where the fence ends.”
This splitting is intentional. In the case of Rio Grande City, the wall was modeled with a 500 foot-wide opening in the middle specifically intended to split flood waters and send a portion of them north. Diverting water to the north of the border wall, into property on the US side of the river, means that less is deflected into Mexico. In this way CBP hopes to avoid flooding Mexican communities, and possibly pushing the Rio Grande into a new channel. Walls built in a floodplain will either deflect or divert floodwater, and the only real question is who is going to be on the receiving end.
Each of these wall sections begins upstream of a town and ends downstream of it. They begin close to the river, then the river and wall get farther apart before coming back together. So flood water that might not have reached properties where the proposed wall is farthest from the river will, with a wall in place, have “split” floodwaters channeled directly to them.
This is particularly striking for the Los Ebanos section. The community of Los Ebanos is nestled at the top of a deep bend in the river. The proposed wall would begin next to the Rio Grande at the top of this bend. While the river turns and heads due south, away from homes and the local school, the wall heads due east, directly towards them. That means that water that might have otherwise followed the river and flowed away from Los Ebanos will be split off by the wall, and be diverted into it. On the other side of town, instead of allowing the split flood waters to pour back into the Rio Grande, the wall makes a ninety degree turn, from east to north. Water that had been split off from the flooded river would therefore be bottled up in Los Ebanos.
A Customs and Border Protection Fence Status Brief dated January 20, 2010, written following the presentation of the “new flood plain model” to the Army Corps of Engineers and USIBWC, says that, “[acting USIBWC Commissioner] Ruth agreed no additional modeling is required and to ‘informally’ discuss the fence segments with the new Mexican IBWC Commissioner to determine if he will support.” The brief goes on to state that, “If it appears Mexico will continue to oppose fencing, CBP/DHS and IBWC/DOS [Department of State] to discuss potential unilateral decision to proceed with construction.”
A “unilateral decision” regarding the Rio Grande floodplain, taken by the US half of the International Boundary Water Commission in the face of opposition by the Mexican half, would be a serious treaty violation. The United States would essentially be challenging Mexico to try to stop us from building illegal walls.
On January 21, 2010, acting USIBWC Commissioner Ruth stepped aside, and Edward Drusina became the new commissioner. On his first day in office Commissioner Drusina wrote a letter to David Aguilar, the acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. He stated that, after examining the model that CBP had commissioned, “the USIBWC is not in a position to approve construction of the O-1, O-2 and O-3 fence projects.”
Rather than accept the fact that walls built in the Rio Grande floodplain will have unacceptable impacts, CBP repeatedly pressed the USIBWC to reverse its decision. On February 2, 2010, Aguilar responded to Drusina, “we respectfully request that the USIBWC and Department of State reconsider your position and approve a unilateral decision to allow us to proceed with the design and construction of the O-1, O-2 and O-3 fence segments.”
On July 20, just one week after the flooding Rio Grande forced the mandatory evacuation of Los Ebanos, CBP presented a briefing to the State Department on these three border wall sections. During the briefing CBP claimed that they had already spent “+$1M in “design analysis” costs”, and said that, “we need IBWC and Department of State’s support for an unilateral decision to proceed with the fence construction.”
USIBWC stood firm, and on September 17, 2010, Comissioner Drusina again denied CBP permission to build new walls in the Rio Grande flood plain. CBP continued to push back, and a month later the new CBP Commissioner, Alan Bersin, wrote to USIBWC, asking that they reconsider and complaining about “Mexico’s recent opposition to border fencing regardless of hydraulic modeling results.”
Bersin’s October 2010 letter to USIBWC is the most recent document uncovered by the Sierra Club’s Freedom of Information Act request. The Club was told that to obtain newer documents another request would have to be filed. One has, but it may take months for us to begin receiving more documents.
We have learned through a recent conversation with representatives of the USIBWC and State Department that following the October 2010 letter Commissioners Bersin and Drusina held at least two meetings to discuss the Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos walls. As a result of those meetings Baker Engineering was commissioned to develop yet another flood model. That model was completed last spring, and was reviewed by the Army Corps. of Engineers and USIBWC over the summer. It has not been released to the public.
While we hope that USIBWC continues to act in the best interests of the residents of these three communities and live up to its treaty obligations in the face of pressure from Customs and Border Protection, we have no guarantees. The discussions between these two agencies are being held behind closed doors, with landowners and community leaders kept out of the room. It may be months before we are able to see a copy of the latest flood model, and the only announcement that new border walls have been approved may be the arrival of construction crews.
US Representative Henry Cuellar, who represents Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos in Washington, should ensure that his constituents are kept informed and given a seat at the table when walls that could channel flood waters into their homes and property are discussed. As the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security, he has the power to demand that CBP hold open public hearings in each of these communities. Customs and Border Protection owes residents the decency of a face to face explanation, before they build new border walls that could put people’s lives and properties at risk.
It was just over a year ago that the rising waters of the Rio Grande prompted the mandatory evacuation of Los Ebanos, Texas. Residents rushed to grab what they could before floodwaters cut off the town.
Before the flood, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was pressuring the U.S. half of the International Boundary Water Commission (USIBWC) to approve the construction of border walls through Los Ebanos, as well as Rio Grande City and Roma, that could have worsened the flooding. CBP had even gone so far as to request that the US half of the International Boundary Water Commission act “unilaterally” and approve walls in the floodplain despite the objections of the Mexican half.
The plans for border walls drafted after the passage of the Secure Fence Act showed South Texas on the receiving end of 69 miles of border wall in 21 disconnected sections. The westernmost three sections, designated O-1, O-2, and O-3, were to be through the communities of Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos.
In 2008 the US International Boundary Water Commission made it clear that any walls built along the Rio Grande must comply with US-Mexico treaties. The Real ID Act allowed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Customs and Border Protection’s parent agency, to waive all federal, state, and local laws, but not treaties. Walls built in the flood plain adjacent to the Rio Grande might deflect flood waters towards Mexico, causing flood damage to Mexican communities. Deflection might also cause the river to settle into a new channel farther to the south, which would effectively change the location of the US-Mexico boundary. Either of these would be a treaty violation.
In Cameron County and most of Hidalgo our treaty obligations meant that border walls could not be built between the existing flood control levees and the river, so walls were constructed on, in, or north of the levees. Those walls are, for the most part, finished. But unlike the downriver sections, Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos do not have USIBWC flood control levees. The border walls in these three communities would therefore be in the flood plain.
Because of the wall’s likely flood impacts USIBWC rejected these three sections of border wall.
A few days after the 2008 elections CBP informed Representative Cuellar, whose district encompasses these communities, that these border wall sections were “on hold.” At the time Cuellar said, “This is a big victory.” He went on to tell the Associated Press, “We're hoping that this will allow us to work with the next president to find ... alternative methods for security."
Representative Cuellar’s constituents also hoped that that would be the last they would hear of plans to wall off their towns from the river, but in a May, 2010 report on the Secure Border Initiative (which includes both solid and “virtual” border walls) the Government Accountability Office stated, “CBP plans to construct an additional 14 miles of pedestrian fencing in the Rio Grande Valley sector.” These 14 miles are the combined Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos sections.
Documents uncovered by the Sierra Club through a Freedom of Information Act request over the last year demonstrate that, in fact, the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection continued to push for the construction of these walls, and were willing to disregard our treaty obligations and likely problems with flooding to do so.
A Customs and Border Protection “Fence Status Brief” dated April 27, 2009 reveals that to build the previously rejected walls CBP had decided upon a new plan. They would not change the design or location of the walls, or, better yet, give up on them entirely. Instead it says, “the new strategy involves developing a new floodplain model” and that, unlike the old model approved by USIBWC that “predicted noteworthy floodplain impacts from the fence,” “this model will demonstrate the impacts of the proposed fence will be minimal.”
The verb tense - "this model will demonstrate" - is important. It appears that CBP determined the outcome in advance, rather than commissioning an honest, unbiased model that would accurately describe the effects of structures built in the floodplain.
The “new flood plain model”, prepared by Baker Engineering, was completed in December 2009. Presented to CBP eight months after their fence status brief forecast its findings, its conclusion fit the earlier prediction precisely. The “noteworthy floodplain impacts” of building border walls in a floodplain that were predicted just a year earlier disappeared; instead, Baker now claimed that walls would have a “minimal effect on the Rio Grande floodplain.”
Baker decided this without even knowing what type of border wall design would be used. In 2008, CBP proposed a number of designs that were touted as either allowing floodwaters to pass through without being dammed up, or able to be removed before rising water reached them. USIBWC rejected all of these unrealistic schemes. In their 2009 report Baker modeled the border wall as an 18’ high, impermeable wall, with the specific design, whether concrete or steel, posts or mesh or slabs, to be determined later. Since CBP apparently told Baker what the outcome of their modeling would be before they began, it seems that such details were unimportant.
One striking conclusion of Baker’s “new flood plain model” was that in the communities of Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos, border walls would “split” the flooding river. It states that for each wall segment, “Downstream of the flow split location, the flow continues in a north branch and a south branch on either side of the fence. The flow combines downstream of the point where the fence ends.”
This splitting is intentional. In the case of Rio Grande City, the wall was modeled with a 500 foot-wide opening in the middle specifically intended to split flood waters and send a portion of them north. Diverting water to the north of the border wall, into property on the US side of the river, means that less is deflected into Mexico. In this way CBP hopes to avoid flooding Mexican communities, and possibly pushing the Rio Grande into a new channel. Walls built in a floodplain will either deflect or divert floodwater, and the only real question is who is going to be on the receiving end.
Each of these wall sections begins upstream of a town and ends downstream of it. They begin close to the river, then the river and wall get farther apart before coming back together. So flood water that might not have reached properties where the proposed wall is farthest from the river will, with a wall in place, have “split” floodwaters channeled directly to them.
This is particularly striking for the Los Ebanos section. The community of Los Ebanos is nestled at the top of a deep bend in the river. The proposed wall would begin next to the Rio Grande at the top of this bend. While the river turns and heads due south, away from homes and the local school, the wall heads due east, directly towards them. That means that water that might have otherwise followed the river and flowed away from Los Ebanos will be split off by the wall, and be diverted into it. On the other side of town, instead of allowing the split flood waters to pour back into the Rio Grande, the wall makes a ninety degree turn, from east to north. Water that had been split off from the flooded river would therefore be bottled up in Los Ebanos.
A Customs and Border Protection Fence Status Brief dated January 20, 2010, written following the presentation of the “new flood plain model” to the Army Corps of Engineers and USIBWC, says that, “[acting USIBWC Commissioner] Ruth agreed no additional modeling is required and to ‘informally’ discuss the fence segments with the new Mexican IBWC Commissioner to determine if he will support.” The brief goes on to state that, “If it appears Mexico will continue to oppose fencing, CBP/DHS and IBWC/DOS [Department of State] to discuss potential unilateral decision to proceed with construction.”
A “unilateral decision” regarding the Rio Grande floodplain, taken by the US half of the International Boundary Water Commission in the face of opposition by the Mexican half, would be a serious treaty violation. The United States would essentially be challenging Mexico to try to stop us from building illegal walls.
On January 21, 2010, acting USIBWC Commissioner Ruth stepped aside, and Edward Drusina became the new commissioner. On his first day in office Commissioner Drusina wrote a letter to David Aguilar, the acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. He stated that, after examining the model that CBP had commissioned, “the USIBWC is not in a position to approve construction of the O-1, O-2 and O-3 fence projects.”
Rather than accept the fact that walls built in the Rio Grande floodplain will have unacceptable impacts, CBP repeatedly pressed the USIBWC to reverse its decision. On February 2, 2010, Aguilar responded to Drusina, “we respectfully request that the USIBWC and Department of State reconsider your position and approve a unilateral decision to allow us to proceed with the design and construction of the O-1, O-2 and O-3 fence segments.”
On July 20, just one week after the flooding Rio Grande forced the mandatory evacuation of Los Ebanos, CBP presented a briefing to the State Department on these three border wall sections. During the briefing CBP claimed that they had already spent “+$1M in “design analysis” costs”, and said that, “we need IBWC and Department of State’s support for an unilateral decision to proceed with the fence construction.”
USIBWC stood firm, and on September 17, 2010, Comissioner Drusina again denied CBP permission to build new walls in the Rio Grande flood plain. CBP continued to push back, and a month later the new CBP Commissioner, Alan Bersin, wrote to USIBWC, asking that they reconsider and complaining about “Mexico’s recent opposition to border fencing regardless of hydraulic modeling results.”
Bersin’s October 2010 letter to USIBWC is the most recent document uncovered by the Sierra Club’s Freedom of Information Act request. The Club was told that to obtain newer documents another request would have to be filed. One has, but it may take months for us to begin receiving more documents.
We have learned through a recent conversation with representatives of the USIBWC and State Department that following the October 2010 letter Commissioners Bersin and Drusina held at least two meetings to discuss the Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos walls. As a result of those meetings Baker Engineering was commissioned to develop yet another flood model. That model was completed last spring, and was reviewed by the Army Corps. of Engineers and USIBWC over the summer. It has not been released to the public.
While we hope that USIBWC continues to act in the best interests of the residents of these three communities and live up to its treaty obligations in the face of pressure from Customs and Border Protection, we have no guarantees. The discussions between these two agencies are being held behind closed doors, with landowners and community leaders kept out of the room. It may be months before we are able to see a copy of the latest flood model, and the only announcement that new border walls have been approved may be the arrival of construction crews.
US Representative Henry Cuellar, who represents Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos in Washington, should ensure that his constituents are kept informed and given a seat at the table when walls that could channel flood waters into their homes and property are discussed. As the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security, he has the power to demand that CBP hold open public hearings in each of these communities. Customs and Border Protection owes residents the decency of a face to face explanation, before they build new border walls that could put people’s lives and properties at risk.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Congressional Push Continues to Gut Environmental Protections Along U.S. Borders
The Center for Biological Diversity has issued the following press release. No Border Wall is in complete agreement, and urges rational members of Congress to reject McCain's amendment to the DHS appropriations bill, along with similar measures in the House, most notably HR 1505.
TUCSON, Ariz.— Under the guise of border security, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) offered an amendment to the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill today that would grant border-enforcement agencies free rein on federal lands within 300 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. After criticism from colleagues in his own party that the 300-mile limit went far beyond the scope of border-enforcement activities, McCain scaled it back to 100 miles, and the amendment was added to the bill.
“Politicians are playing games with important border-security legislation at the expense of laws that protect clean air, water and endangered species,” said Randy Serraglio, a conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This amendment is unnecessary, unwanted and threatens significant harm to the wildlife, natural landscapes and people of the border region.”
The McCain amendment introduced today, similar to a bill proposed earlier this year by McCain and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), does not specifically name any laws, but its guarantee of unfettered access for border-enforcement agencies on federal lands effectively neutralizes protections afforded by the Endangered Species Act, Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. Existing law permits essential border-security activities even in designated wilderness areas, and an existing memorandum of understanding between Homeland Security and the Department of the Interior provides for cooperation between land managers and border agencies.
“Despite repeated statements and congressional testimony from border-security agencies that they neither want nor need the authority granted in this amendment, radical anti-environment forces in Congress continue to push this hoax on the American people,” said Serraglio. “The losers in this game will be jaguars, ocelots, Sonoran pronghorn and residents of border communities that will no longer benefit from fundamental protections that allow them to live and thrive in a healthy environment.”
The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office concluded in a recent report that access to federal lands has not been limited in 22 of 26 sectors along the border, and that the only problems that have occurred in other sectors have been “minor delays.” Meanwhile, between 8,000 and 20,000 miles of wildcat roads have been blazed through a wilderness area in southern Arizona’s Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, a majority of which, in recent years, has been caused by enforcement activities, according to a July report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
“This amendment pretends to address a problem that does not exist,” said Serraglio. “Clearly, access to federal lands for border-security personnel is not a significant issue in achieving operational control of the border. At best, the McCain amendment is a case of political grandstanding.”
“The false premise inherent in this proposal is that border security and a healthy environment are somehow mutually exclusive,” said Serraglio. “The truth is just the opposite. It has been shown time and again that collaboration between land managers and security agencies enhances both border security and protection of the diverse and vibrant landscapes of the borderlands.”
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2011/border-security-09-14-2011.html
TUCSON, Ariz.— Under the guise of border security, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) offered an amendment to the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill today that would grant border-enforcement agencies free rein on federal lands within 300 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. After criticism from colleagues in his own party that the 300-mile limit went far beyond the scope of border-enforcement activities, McCain scaled it back to 100 miles, and the amendment was added to the bill.
“Politicians are playing games with important border-security legislation at the expense of laws that protect clean air, water and endangered species,” said Randy Serraglio, a conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This amendment is unnecessary, unwanted and threatens significant harm to the wildlife, natural landscapes and people of the border region.”
The McCain amendment introduced today, similar to a bill proposed earlier this year by McCain and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), does not specifically name any laws, but its guarantee of unfettered access for border-enforcement agencies on federal lands effectively neutralizes protections afforded by the Endangered Species Act, Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. Existing law permits essential border-security activities even in designated wilderness areas, and an existing memorandum of understanding between Homeland Security and the Department of the Interior provides for cooperation between land managers and border agencies.
“Despite repeated statements and congressional testimony from border-security agencies that they neither want nor need the authority granted in this amendment, radical anti-environment forces in Congress continue to push this hoax on the American people,” said Serraglio. “The losers in this game will be jaguars, ocelots, Sonoran pronghorn and residents of border communities that will no longer benefit from fundamental protections that allow them to live and thrive in a healthy environment.”
The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office concluded in a recent report that access to federal lands has not been limited in 22 of 26 sectors along the border, and that the only problems that have occurred in other sectors have been “minor delays.” Meanwhile, between 8,000 and 20,000 miles of wildcat roads have been blazed through a wilderness area in southern Arizona’s Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, a majority of which, in recent years, has been caused by enforcement activities, according to a July report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
“This amendment pretends to address a problem that does not exist,” said Serraglio. “Clearly, access to federal lands for border-security personnel is not a significant issue in achieving operational control of the border. At best, the McCain amendment is a case of political grandstanding.”
“The false premise inherent in this proposal is that border security and a healthy environment are somehow mutually exclusive,” said Serraglio. “The truth is just the opposite. It has been shown time and again that collaboration between land managers and security agencies enhances both border security and protection of the diverse and vibrant landscapes of the borderlands.”
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2011/border-security-09-14-2011.html
Monday, August 29, 2011
New Study: Border Hysteria Imperils Wildlife
by Dan Millis
In a Congress plagued by immigration hysteria, none is more gravely afflicted than South Carolina’s Republican Senator Jim DeMint. Twice in two weeks he added border pork to Senate bills, both times calling for 300-plus miles of walls to be imposed between the U.S. and Mexico. These are the fourth and fifth times in less than two years that he has made such attempts.
Delirious and angry lawmakers like DeMint seem oblivious to the 650 miles of barriers and walls that already occupy the Southwest’s borderlands, exacting high costs on taxpayers and public lands. Another side effect these lawmakers suffer is an acute indifference to the impacts caused by their border madness.
A new study in the Diversity and Distributions journal identifies 49 species put most at risk by border walls and areas of intensive human land use along the U.S.-Mexico border. The study only considers amphibian, reptile, and non-volant (don't fly) mammal species, and identifies California, the Sky Islands, the Gulf Coast as the three regions most heavily impacted.
One unique aspect of this study is that it doesn’t just look at current impacts wrought by existing border walls and areas with a heavy human footprint. Potential future impacts from border wall expansions such as those proposed by DeMint are also taken into consideration, and the results are sobering:
This graph from the study shows a horizontal base line representing our 2,000 mile border with Mexico. The three faint vertical lines in the left half of the graph represent the state borders between California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. The fatter horizontal line sitting atop the baseline shows where the taller “pedestrian” (10-25 feet tall) border walls are located along the border.
Then there is the vertical ‘species’ scale, which includes only species from the sample set that have already been listed as threatened, either binationally or by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. The dashed line represents how many of these already-threatened species are put in grave danger by existing “pedestrian” border walls in each geographic location along the border. You’ll notice that there are few such species, which may be expected when working with such a small sample set of species to begin with.
However, the solid line is much less benign, with the number of vulnerable species spiking most dramatically here in Arizona (to the right [East] of first faint vertical line [CA-AZ border]). This line represents the number of already threatened species that would be pushed to the brink if proposals like DeMint’s were passed and border walls came to occupy even more precious habitat.
A key finding of the study states, "The REAL ID Act should be amended to reinstate environmental regulation of border security efforts." The REAL ID waiver of more than 30 vital federal protection laws along the border allowed walls to be built in violation of the Wilderness Act, the Endangered Species Act, and more.
Dan Millis is a Sierra Club Borderlands campaign organizer. To learn more about the Sierra Club's Borderlands Campaign visit http://sierraclub.org/borderlands/
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