Another Round of South Texas Border Wall Condemnations is about to Begin

By Scott Nicol

If the Border Patrol knocks on your door you might want to have a lawyer present when you answer.

That is because Customs and Border Protection is gearing up for a fresh round of land condemnations to build border walls in Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos.

According to documents obtained by the Sierra Club through a Freedom of Information Act request the new walls won’t just slice through farmland and wildlife refuges.  In Roma “up to 25 residences could be impacted.”  In Rio Grande City the wall’s route will take it through a nursing home, and “If the decision is made to buy the tract out in its entirety, the business will need to be relocated along with 64 residents, potentially up to 90 residents if at 100% capacity.”  In Los Ebanos landowners who went through condemnation three years ago will be hauled into court again to have more of their property snatched away.

This new assault on border communities is the result of the US section of the International Boundary Water Commission’s (US IBWC) decision to allow border walls to go up in the Rio Grande floodplain.

When they were first proposed, along with the rest of South Texas’ border walls, US IBWC stated categorically that walls could not be erected in the floodplain because they posed an unacceptable flood risk to communities on both sides of the river.  Walls north of the river might deflect rising flood waters, worsening the damage to Mexican cities and possibly even pushing the river into a new channel, thereby changing the location of the international border.  For this reason walls in Cameron County were erected north of the flood control levees, and in Hidalgo County there were inserted into them.

 

The new walls will be identical to those built in Cameron County, using six inch wide steel posts that stand eighteen feet tall with four inch spaces in between.  In 2008 Baker Engineering looked at the impacts of this design placed in these locations, and estimated that during a flood the walls would clog with debris, limiting the ability of water to pass between the pillars.  In Roma they estimated an 85% blockage where the walls paralleled the river’s flow; in Rio Grande City a 67% blockage; and in Los Ebanos a 36% blockage.  Where the walls would be erected perpendicular to the flow Baker said CBP should assume that debris would cause the walls to be completely blocked.

In 2011 Customs and Border Protection paid Baker to look at the same wall design placed in the same location, and with no new evidence or explanation they came to a radically different conclusion.  Now “A debris blockage of 10% was adopted where the fence is aligned parallel to the flow and 25% at locations where the fence is aligned perpendicular to the flow.”  Not surprisingly the model that this new estimate was plugged into concluded that walls in the floodplain would not deflect or dam flood water, since 75 -90% of the water would supposedly pass right through.

 

The US section of IBWC accepted this without question.  The Mexican section categorically rejected it. 

One would think that a bi-national organization would require agreement before permitting potentially dangerous projects.  Instead, the new border walls are going up.

In a presentation dated March 1, 2013, Customs and Border Protection laid out a timeline for the construction of these new walls:

Funds:  already received.

Achieve right of entry to survey property for wall construction:  60 days.

Initiate new acquisitions of property, through purchase or condemnation:  180 days.

So if you have property in the path of these walls, now is the time to call a lawyer.

And those lawyers are going to be very busy.  The “gang of eight” immigration bill includes $1.5 billion for new border walls. 

When Congress passed the Secure Fence Act in 2006 Customs and Border Protection walled off big portions of California, Arizona, and New Mexico.  There aren’t too many places outside of inaccessible mountains without walls up there.  What’s left is Texas. 

Unless the bill is changed and the walls are taken out Customs and Border Protection will start filling in the unwalled spaces between South Texas’ existing border walls.  The Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, and the endangered species that it protects, will be utterly decimated.  And every other landowner with property along the Rio Grande from Roma to Boca Chica will stand in turn before a federal judge, before watching construction crews wall off their land from the river. 

Some, like the 25 households in Roma or the senior citizens in Rio Grande City, may even see the their homes fall to these new border walls.

Border Residents Kept in the Dark about New Border Walls

by Scott Nicol

Four members of the Senate’s “Gang of Eight,” the group charged with crafting comprehensive immigration reform legislation, recently paid a visit to the border wall that separates Nogales, Arizona from Nogales, Sonora.

The trip was little more than a photo-op.  The senators did not meet with locals or hear from others who live on the border, who experience border security daily and will be directly impacted by any border security measures in the coming bill.  But their pilgrimage to the wall did send a message that their bill is likely to be heavy on enforcement, possibly including hundreds of miles of new border walls.

Senator McCain (R-AZ) led the tour, and he chose a striking location to give Senator Schumer (D-NY) his first glimpse of the border wall. 

Maybe he just wanted to show off the nearby section of wall that he used as a backdrop for his “Complete the Danged Fence” campaign ad. 

 

It is a safe bet that he did not take his colleagues to the spot, a few hundred yards from where they posed for the press, where last October a Border Patrol agent reached through the wall to shoot an unarmed teenager in Mexico 11 times in the back.  He probably also failed to point out the high water mark left on Mexican buildings when, in 2008, the Nogales border wall dammed floodwaters, causing millions of dollars in property damage and the drowning of two men.
 

Of course those events don’t fit the simple narrative of McCain’s “perfect plan” for border security that he outlined in his TV ad.  Better to stare into the camera and ignore inconvenient facts, then and now.

Senator Schumer likely sees more “danged fence” as the cost of immigration reform, the burden that border communities will have to bear to bring undocumented immigrants out of the shadows.  That was also the idea in 2006, when the Congressional push for immigration reform fell apart and all we were left with was the Secure Fence Act and hundreds of miles of border wall.

As the “Gang of Eight” has been horse-trading behind closed doors Customs and Border Protection has been quietly laying the groundwork for the last of the Secure Fence Act’s walls to go up in Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos, along with neighboring farms and the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.

Customs and Border Protection wants to build these walls in the floodplain, but over the years the International Boundary and Water Commission repeatedly rejected them, citing “substantial increases in water surface elevations and deflections of flow at several points of all three projects.”  Were the Rio Grande to flood after a hurricane or tropical depression, as it did in 2010, walls in the floodplain would deflect water into Mexican cities like Ciudad Aleman, and would stop water from draining out of communities such as Rio Grande City. 

 

Last year, after sustained pressure from Customs and Border Protection, the US section of the International Boundary and Water Commission reversed its decision, rejecting the Mexican section’s objections and allowing these dangerous walls to go forward.  They now officially accept the claim that the border wall will allow flood water to pass harmlessly through, even though in 2008 they forced Customs and Border Protection to build walls in Cameron County of the exact same design north of the levees so that they would be out of the floodplain. 

Homes and businesses, farms and wildlife refuges, could be washed away or inundated by floodwaters as a direct result of these walls. 

Customs and Border Protection says that everything will be fine.  Of course they also said that they would pay to mitigate the damage that previous wall construction inflicted upon the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife refuge, but after years of promises not a penny has been provided.

Just like the “Gang of Eight” on their trip to Nogales, Customs and Border Protection has made no attempt to talk to residents or local officials in the Texas communities that the new walls will tear through. 

I contacted Customs and Border Protection last week and asked for an update regarding the Starr county walls.  Daniel Tirado, with the RGV Sector Public Affairs Office, responded that, "the Office of Border Patrol identified these segments as highest operational priorities in Texas. Though construction of these segments has been delayed, Border Patrol’s requirement remains.”

The assertion that these walls, or any border walls for that matter, are a high operational priority is absurd.  Customs and Border Protection knows better than to think that border walls stop anyone. 

While the Senators were doing their press junket in Nogales they watched as a woman laid a ladder against the 18-foot wall and quickly climbed over.  Senator McCain even tweeted about it as it happened.
 

Visiting Arizona last summer I easily climbed the border wall in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area.  I was wearing sandals and didn’t have a ladder, but it only took a few seconds to reach the top.  The San Pedro wall is identical to the ones planned for Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos.
 

These new walls will go up in Representative Cuellar’s district, and his silence regarding them has been even more striking, and surprising, than Customs and Border Protection’s.  He has not held any town hall meetings to get feedback from, or provide information to, effected communities, and he has not publicly criticized Customs and Border Protection’s plans or their refusal to speak with local residents.

When I asked his office if he had taken any action on behalf of his constituents, he responded,

“I initiated a formal inquiry with CBP as a follow up and update on the status of the proposed fence. CBP has advised that there are no plans for building additional fences in FY 2013 due to the lack of funding.”

Customs and Border Protection also told me that, “Construction activities will commence at such time as funds become available.”

Which sounds good.  Until Congress provides funds for border walls maybe residents can relax.  One might expect that with the sequester gutting the budgets of federal agencies and forcing furloughs from the Environmental Protection Agency to air traffic controllers money for border walls won’t come any time soon.

But tucked into the spending bill that Congress just passed to keep the government running is a provision that says, 

“For expenses for border security fencing, infrastructure, and technology, $324,099,000, to remain available until September 30, 2015.”

Existing border walls are very expensive to maintain, so not all of that money is available to build new ones.  But Customs and Border Protection condemned the land and bought the steel for these walls years ago.  All that is left is to hire the crews, gas up the bulldozers, and start tearing up the land.

And if the “Gang of Eight” includes hundreds of miles of new border walls in comprehensive immigration reform, instead of passing a clean bill that focuses strictly on immigration instead of multi-million dollar handouts to government contractors, the rest of the border landowners and wildlife refuge tracts in Congressman Cuellar’s district will likely suffer the same fate as Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos.

Will Walls Worsen Rio Grande Flooding? U.S. IBWC Can’t Give a Straight Answer

By Scott Nicol

The United States section of the International Boundary and Water Commission (US IBWC) recently hosted a meeting in Rio Grande City to explain their decision to allow Customs and Border Protection to build new border walls in the Rio Grande floodplain.  While they should be commended for reaching out to local residents, they seemed completely unprepared, unable to answer the most basic questions about their decision or the new walls.

When, for example, landowners asked whether there had been any on-the-ground surveys, and what the wall would mean for access and impacts to their property, they got no response. 

The manager for Rio Grande City’s international bridge and port of entry asked how they would be able to access the riverbank to carry out ongoing erosion control efforts.  US IBWC did not know. 

Residents asked whether walls crossing the washes that feed into the Rio Grande might become blocked with debris, preventing normal drainage and causing flooding.  At that point US IBWC admitted that even though they approved these new walls months ago, Customs and Border Protection still has not provided them with the walls’ design specifications, so they could not answer that question either.

2007 Bureau of Land Management photo of debris in the Arizona wall

 

US IBWC was also unable, or unwilling, to answer a key question about the flood model that they are using to justify their approval of border walls in the floodplain. 

Using the Freedom of Information Act the Sierra Club has gotten a copy of the flood model, as well as a number of related documents.

In 2011 Customs and Border Protection paid Baker Engineering to produce a model that claimed that flood water would pass harmlessly through the 4-inch wide spaces between the border wall’s six-inch wide bollard posts.  Baker’s accompanying report stated that, “A debris blockage of 10% was adopted where the fence is aligned parallel to the flow and 25% at locations where the fence is aligned perpendicular to the flow.”

The model’s computer program cannot add to this number, cannot decide that it is too low and that in reality more debris will clog the spaces between bollards.  By telling the computer that 75% to 90% of floodwater will pass through the wall, Baker effectively predetermined the model’s end result.    

At the meeting in Rio Grande City, surrounded by residents whose lands and lives will depend on whether or not these walls will actually let water pass through or will dam it up, US IBWC could not explain where the suspiciously round and suspiciously low estimate of 10% - 25% debris blockage came from.

In earlier reports Baker Engineering came to a very different conclusion about how much debris border walls were likely to catch.

After border walls in Arizona became clogged with debris and acted as dams in 2008, inflicting millions of dollars of damage on both sides of the border and causing two deaths, Baker Engineering was hired to follow the wall from El Paso to San Diego and report back to Customs and Border Protection.  Baker found that, “PF 225 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.” The report included photographs of bollard-style walls nearly identical to those planned for the Rio Grande floodplain filled with debris, and documented “debris build-up which sometimes reached a height of 6 feet.”

 Photo from the 2009 Baker report showing debris in the Arizona border wall

In examining on-the-ground evidence of debris clogging border walls, it bolstered a 2008 Baker Engineering white paper that looked at the likely impacts of the walls planned for Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos.  In discussing the wall’s transfer capacity - the ability of water to pass between the bollards - it stated that,

“The transfer capacity estimate has been shown to include a significant allowance for “clogging” due to the accumulation of debris.  In the case of fence segments O-1 [Roma] and O-2 [Rio Grande City], the transfer capacity was estimated to allow for a minimum of 85% and 67% clogging, respectively.  For fence segment O-3 [Los Ebanos], a minimum allowance of 36% was estimated.  It is important to keep in mind that these estimates apply to portions of the fence that are generally parallel to the direction of flow.  Areas that are oriented generally perpendicular to the direction of flow should (for reasons of prudence) be modeled as completely blocked, primarily due to the hydraulic effects of bollards themselves.”

Map of the three new border walls from the 2011 Baker flood model

 



So how did Baker’s estimates of clogging drop from 85%, 67%, and 36% down to 10% where the wall is parallel to the Rio Grande, and from 100% down to 25% where it is perpendicular?

The US IBWC has yet to give the public an answer to that question.

The new flood model, with its low debris estimate, is cited by the US section of the International Boundary and Water Commission as the basis for its decision to allow these border walls.  The Mexican section has rejected the model’s assumptions, countering in late 2011 that these walls would likely obstruct 60% - 70% of flood flows even before the clogging effect of debris is factored in. 

On February 9, 2012 the two sections of the bi-national organization met to discuss their disagreement.  Meeting notes written by the same US IBWC engineer who was unable to answer questions about the model’s assumptions at the Rio Grande City public meeting say that,

“It was recognized that the Mexican Section may prefer a higher percent debris blockage.  It was explained that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wanted minimum debris blockage and a percentage that was felt to be reasonable was agreed upon in the meeting on February 23, 2011, during which the modeling methodology was finalized between USIBWC, DHS, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Michael Baker Jr., Inc.”

So even when they met with their Mexican counterparts, US IBWC gave no concrete evidence that the lower estimate was more accurate than the earlier, much higher one.  The nice, round, low number was \simply “felt to be reasonable”, despite conflicting with empirical evidence from Arizona, and was adopted because it matched up with the Department of Homeland Security’s desire for a model showing a “minimum debris blockage.”

Not only was Mexico’s estimate ignored, they were not even invited to participate in the 2011 modeling methodology meeting.  And six days after the 2012 meeting the US section, flouting its treaty obligations, unilaterally approved Customs and Border Protection’s request to build walls in the floodplain.

Customs and Border Protection photo of debris backed up behind the border wall

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has not hosted a public meeting on border walls in South Texas since 2007, but they did send a representative to the recent Rio Grande City meeting.  He declined to present any information, and remained silent unless he was asked a direct question. 

When asked when CBP would begin construction he said that at this time they do not have the funds to build these walls.  He failed to mention that CBP bought the steel years ago and currently has it in storage.  More importantly, he failed to mention that the new fiscal year for federal agencies begins on October 1, at which time their bank accounts will be refilled. 

If border residents want answers, we need to demand them now. 

Representative Cuellar and Senators Hutchison and Cornyn need to pressure the US IBWC to reverse its bad decision, and direct Customs and Border Protection to finally give up on these dangerous walls.  They need to take concrete action, and they need to do it now.

But of course they won’t, unless we, their constituents and voters, tell them to.

October is only three weeks away.  The clock is ticking.

IBWC Approves New Border Walls Despite Flood Danger

By Scott Nicol
The U.S. half of the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) has finally caved under pressure from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and approved border walls in the Rio Grande floodplain adjacent to Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos.    

Customs and Border Protection maps of the three new Rio Grande border wall sections

These three border wall sections, totaling 14 miles, were not built when other parts of the Rio Grande Valley were walled off because of the serious danger they pose to communities on both sides of the river.  On the U.S. side they could block the exit of flood water into the Rio Grande, bottling it up in towns and farm land and exacerbating the damage that they suffer.

They could also deflect flood waters towards Mexico, worsening flooding in Mexican communities.  Deflection might even cause the river to settle into a new channel farther to the south, which would effectively change the location of the border.  

In an attempt to lessen the amount of water that these walls will deflect into Mexican cities CBP designed them to channel flood waters north into the U.S. cities that they abut.  The walls will begin close to the Rio Grande, where during a flood water would be split off from the main channel.  As the river bends the mostly straight walls get farther from them, meaning that floodwater, along with all of the debris and garbage it carries, will be channeled into properties in the United States that might otherwise be spared from flooding. 

To make certain that water is channeled into the U.S. holes were planned for the middle of two of these wall sections – a 100 foot wide gap in the Roma wall, and a 275 foot wide gap in the Rio Grande City wall – explicitly intended to direct more water into these communities during a flood.

Existing border wall slicing through the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge

All three of the new border wall sections would also slice through the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.  Established to create a wildlife corridor along the Rio Grande, the refuge provides habitat for critically endangered ocelot and jaguarundi.  Walls that have already been erected downriver repeatedly bisect and fragment the refuge, putting the future of the terrestrial species that it harbors in doubt.  The new walls would further fragment the refuge and cut off animals from the only reliable source of water in what US Fish and Wildlife has described as “some of the best habitat(s) in the U.S. along the final portion of the Rio Grande.”

In a February 15, 2012 letter John Merino, Principal Engineer for the US section of the International Boundary and Water Commission gave CBP the green light, saying, “the USIBWC has no objection to the erection of the fence segments within the limits of the Rio Grande floodplain.”  Merino dismissed the possibility that walls would deflect or obstruct flood waters, and stated flatly that USIBWC did not examine potential environmental impacts.  He also failed to mention the fact that for the previous five years both the U.S. and Mexican halves of the bi-national International Boundary and Water Commission had rejected the idea of placing border walls in the floodplain. 

Throughout 2007 and 2008 CBP tried without success to come up with a wall design for these last three sections that would not impact flooding, and that the IBWC would therefore approve.  Unable to convince the IBWC that walls in the floodplain would not act like dams, a DHS briefing from October 2, 2008, said of these three, “DHS likely to drop fence segments.”  When CBP informed Representative Henry Cuellar a few days after the 2008 election that these border wall sections were “on hold,” Cuellar called it “a big victory” for his district.

It would have made sense for Customs and Border Protection to decide that the Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos walls were not worth risking lives and property to build.  Or, if bureaucracy outweighed humanity in their thinking, they might have called off wall construction in order to comply with the international treaty.

They also could have based a decision to spare them on a June 2008 internal Customs and Border Protection document that stated that “The Rio Grande Valley Sector Chief has determined that operational areas that contain the PF225 fence segments such as O-1 to O-2, O-12 through O-14, and O-17 through O-21 to be in “effectively controlled” level at the current time.”  Segments O-1 and O-2 are the Roma and Rio Grande City walls. 

Segments O-12 through O-14 are in Cameron County, near Los Indios.  Segments O-17 through O-21 encompass all of the wall sections in the vicinity of Brownsville, from the neighborhoods near the River Bend Golf Course west of town past the Sabal Palms Audubon Sanctuary and the Loop family orchard to the east.  Those who live in these areas and had their property condemned for border walls lost their land for nothing, because the local Border Patrol had determined that the area already under effective control before any walls were built.

Border wall segment O-21 under construction with the Sabal Palms Audubon Sanctuary south of it

Of course decisions about who will get walls and who will be spared are made in Washington DC, not the Rio Grande Valley. 

That simple fact helps to explain why Customs and Border Protection continued to push for these walls, shifting tactics from trying to convince Mexico that walls would not worsen flooding south of the border to pushing the US section of IBWC to allow for “unilateral” action – building walls in the face of Mexican objections, and thereby violating the international treaty.

After hurricane Alex roared into the Rio Grande Valley in 2010, followed by a tropical depression, the flooding Rio Grande forced the mandatory evacuation of Los Ebanos and parts of Rio Grande City.  With homes underwater and the evacuation order still in place, CBP hosted a meeting for the USIBWC and the State Department in Washington DC. 

At the DC meeting Customs and Border Protection did not mention the ongoing floods that were inundating the sites of the proposed walls, or the Border Patrol sector chief’s assessment that the area was “effectively controlled.”  Instead, CBP said that the three remaining walls were “critical to our Nation’s security,” and since Mexico continued to insist that they posed a flood hazard “we need [US]IBWC and Department of State’s support for an unilateral decision to proceed with the fence construction.”

Throughout 2010 USIBWC consistently rejected unilateral action, pointing out the likelihood of “substantial increases in water surface elevations and deflections of flow at several points of all three projects.”

But in late 2011 USIBWC reversed itself.  John Merino, the US section’s Principal Engineer, wrote to his Mexican counterpart to say that US IBWC had “concluded that the project will not cause significant deflection or obstruction of the normal or flood flows of the Rio Grande.” 

The Mexican section of the IBWC responded in December of 2011, saying,

"...the location, alignment and design of the proposed fence represent a clear obstruction of the Rio Grande hydraulic area, since in the towns of Rio Grande City and Roma, TX, the fence would occupy nearly all of the hydraulic area on the U.S. side, causing the deflection of flows towards the Mexican side. If you consider that, given the design characteristics, the fence obstructs 60-70% of the hydraulic area in a direction perpendicular to the flow, and if you add to that the effect of the current retaining trash and debris, the significant length that is located in the floodplain, and the position of the fence relative to the direction of flow, the fence constitutes a serious obstruction and deflection of the Rio Grande flows towards Mexico. […] We reiterate our opposition to the construction of the proposed fence in the Rio Grande floodplain given the impacts stated above."

Because the IBWC is a bi-national body, the rejection of one party should have brought this project to a halt.  Instead the US half of the IBWC approved the walls, allowing Customs and Border Protection to undertake the unilateral action that it had been pushing for.  This is a clear violation of the treaty that created both the IBWC and the border that Customs and Border Protection is supposed to protect.

But a treaty is just paper.  The real harm will come after the walls go up, when the next big storm roars into the Rio Grande Valley and the river floods. 

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

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.

Homeland Security may Squander $40 million on Environmental Lip Service

By Dan Millis

In 2010 Congress allocated $40 million to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for the purpose of "minimizing adverse environmental and other negative impacts" of border wall construction. Environmental mitigation and monitoring work is best done by agencies such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, part of the Department of the Interior (DOI). In fact, the allocation language made it very clear that congress "expects CBP to use these funds to work in coordination with the Department of Interior and other government agencies with responsibilities for environmental policy on the border."

However, it is feared that DHS could instead decide to keep the money, and use it to fund ill-advised and half-hearted attempts to address some of the environmental havoc wreaked by their walls, roads, and infrastructure.

Take Arizona's San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, a U.N. World Heritage Natural Area known for its huge diversity of migratory bird species. Ostensibly to address flooding issues that arise from walls recently built across washes and riverbeds, DHS has been busily constructing and installing "flood gates" such as the one seen below.

The idea is that someone at DHS will predict a storm event in advance, and send a crew of Border Patrol agents or DHS workers out to the dozens of flood gates that have been installed immediately east of the San Pedro, have them toss their winch cables from their jeeps over the pulley at the top, hook on to the eyelet, and winch up these gates so that the water and debris can pass through. Maybe you can give the planners the benefit of a doubt on these small gates. But...

Local rancher Bill Odle shows off DHS's "flood gates" and debris piles

What about these huge gates?!?! They are massive. Locals report that Border Patrol vehicles attempting to open them instead end up winching their own front ends off the ground! Once open, the holes are large enough to drive a pick-up truck through them, which begs the question, why build the wall in the first place?! Of course, predicting the weather in the Southwest is a crapshoot at best, and once the storms begin, access to many areas is often cut off by flash flooding. Debris piled high against the gates indicate to us that these things haven't been opened during recent stroms, which locals say have been relatively mild. It's an example of a half-hatched scheme launched by an agency whose expertise is in security, not environmental planning. The funds sunk in this scheme would have been put to much better use by the experts within the DOI.

Notre Dame students frolic atop a DHS jungle gym

The "flood gates" are one example of mitigation gone wrong. Another is the "cat hole" project in Texas. Concern over the blockage of wildlife migration corridors prompted DHS to retrofit a section of border wall near the Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife Refuge with a series of doggy doors, each about the size of an 8.5 by 11 inch sheet of notebook paper. For more info on the "cat holes," download our flier:

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/369702/cathole.pdf

Mitigation and monitoring needs to be done by the professionals at DOI, which is why DHS needs to give them the funds which have already been appropriated.

Dan Millis is an organizer for the Sierra Club's Borderlands campaign. To read more about the border wall's environmental impacts, and to view the Club's 20-minute documentary Wild vs. Wall, go to http://sierraclub.org/borderlands/

Following flooding in Nogales and the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument the Border Patrol commissioned a report on the walls that cross washes and rivers from El Paso to San Diego. It found that the poorly designed walls were not only damming them, but in many instances their foundations were being undermined. The report is available here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/41500057/Customs-and-Border-Protection-report-on-border-walls-crossing-washes-and-streams