$57.7-million fence added to an already grueling illegal immigration route

February 15, 2009
Los Angeles Times
by Richard Marosi

Some question the cost, effectiveness and environmental effect of erecting a fence on Otay Mountain, where those who hiked three days up a steep, arid peak were often met by border agents anyway.

Reporting from San Diego - The border barrier dips and curves, zigs and zags, hugging the mountain's contours like a slimmed-down version of the Great Wall of China.

Among the costliest stretch of fencing ever built on the U.S.-Mexico border, the 3.6-mile wall of steel completed last fall is meant to block trafficking routes over Otay Mountain, just east of San Diego.

People seeking to enter the country illegally have hiked the scrub-covered, tarantula-infested peak for years, trying to get to roads leading to San Diego.

"We're no longer conceding this area to smugglers," said Jerome C. Conlin, a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman.

But critics are bewildered. Why, they ask, would people determined to scale a rugged, 3,500-foot peak be deterred by an 18-foot-high fence? They also point out that the Department of Homeland Security deemed it unnecessary in 2006.

"I think it's a Bush-era boondoggle that will have almost no consequence in terms of stemming the flow of immigration," said Char Miller, director of the environmental analysis program at Pomona College. "It was a political decision that took in no account of the environment itself, and in the process damages what was once a pretty remarkable landscape."

The $57.7-million project is one segment in the massive expansion of border infrastructure approved by Congress during George W. Bush's presidency. Homeland Security has erected fencing in small towns, remote valleys and high-desert mesas from the Pacific Ocean to Texas.

At about $16 million a mile, the Otay Mountain barrier cost about four times as much as similar border fencing built during this expansion, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

The Border Patrol's San Diego sector was already one of the country's most heavily fortified frontiers before the mountain fence was constructed, with about 40 of the sector's 60 miles lined with vehicle or pedestrian barriers.

The fencing shifted immigrant flows to remote areas in the backcountry east of San Diego. But some migrants decided to climb Otay Mountain because of its proximity to a warehouse district in San Diego and its easy access on the Mexican side, where the Tijuana-Tecate toll road lies only a few hundred yards away.

Immigrants dropped off at staging grounds off the toll road headed up steep trails into the U.S. Their hikes through canyons and over the arid peak could take up to three days. With limited road access on the mountain, agents simply waited for people to descend to make arrests.

The lack of fencing did not seem to be a problem, said then-U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Richard Kite, interviewed in a 2006 article in the Arizona Daily Star. At Otay Mountain, "you simply don't need a fence. It's such harsh terrain it's difficult to walk, let alone drive," Kite said. "There's no reason to disrupt the land when the land itself is a physical barrier."

The agency said it changed course after reevaluating conditions in the area. Daryl Reed, a current Border Patrol spokesman, said strategies are in constant flux depending on quickly shifting migrant flows and smuggler activity.

"As we continue in our mission, we're always reevaluating situations," Reed said. "We're always going to adapt and change."

One analyst suggested that pressure from Congress to complete about 700 miles of fence led federal officials to approve some questionable projects.

"There's no question that there's tactical justification for certain fencing, but when you set up a target like that, it inevitably means that they're going to build fencing where the tactical justification is weak, and this sounds like one of those places," said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

But others doubted that border authorities would spend resources in an area that didn't need it.

"If there were other better places to build fencing, then I'm confident the Border Patrol would build it there," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

When the federal government broke ground last year, environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, said the project would damage the Otay Mountain Wilderness. Portions of the fence and the 5-mile access road lie in the federally protected area.

The federal government, trying to expedite construction of border fencing, waived more than 30 environmental laws in 2008, including the Wilderness Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and others that environmentalists said applied to the Otay area.

Contractors had to cut roads, remove boulders, bulldoze hillsides and remove about 530,000 cubic yards of rock to build the Otay fence, which consists of steel posts 4 inches apart topped with metal plates.

It's not clear whether the fence has been a deterrent.

Since the barrier's completion in October, illegal activity has declined and there have been few signs of people trying to cut or breach the fence, authorities say.

"Having this fence here is definitely going to slow them down. . . . It increases our probability of catching them," said Conlin, the Border Patrol spokesman.

But others say the fence's effectiveness hasn't been truly tested because fewer immigrants have been attempting to cross anywhere on the border due to the economic slowdown.

The funding, they said, could have been better spent hiring more agents or building infrastructure in other areas.

When the economy improves, the mountain will once again draw immigrants, fence or no fence, said Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee in San Diego.

"It seems to me, if someone is able to climb the mountains in the Otay Wilderness, a 15-foot wall will not make a difference," he said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-fence15-2010feb15,0,5691127.story

BORDER FENCE: Smuggler's Gulch project bleeding dirt into Tijuana River estuary

Land Letter
January 7, 2010
by April Reese

Six months after workers filled a canyon south of San Diego to enhance border security, California environmental officials say the controversial project is damaging a nearby estuary.

Customs and Border Protection officials completed the Smuggler's Gulch project in July.

Contractors filled the gulch, long a conduit of illegal activity, and built a new 15-foot-high fence and an access road across it. Once a deep canyon, the gulch is now bridged by a 100-foot-high earthen berm.

Department of Homeland Security officials say the berm allows agents to drive straight across what used to be a formidable obstacle, providing much quicker response times and a safer route to handle law enforcement and public safety emergencies. But while the berm -- as high as some of the West's towering concrete dams -- and accompanying fence may stem the flow of illegal immigrants and drug smugglers, those benefits have come at a significant environmental cost, critics say.

During peak rain events, barren slopes along the newly filled Smuggler's Gulch erode, sending sediment downstream into the Tijuana River estuary.

Like the other drainages in the rugged "border highlands" region, as the westernmost stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border is called, Smuggler's Gulch and other nearby canyons funnel streams from Mexico northward into the Tijuana River and its estuary (Land Letter, Jan. 15, 2009).

The estuary, which has undergone a multi-decade restoration effort, encompasses a national wildlife refuge and state parklands and is home to a number of endangered bird species, including the light-footed clapper rail, the California least tern, the least Bell's vireo and the American peregrine falcon.

California regulators and environmental groups, who warned DHS of the potential adverse effects of the $58 million project when it began, say their fears of damage to the estuary from an influx of eroded sediment are now proving true.

"The river valley keeps getting more and more sediment in it," said Jim Peugh, conservation chair of the San Diego chapter of the Sierra Club. "It has long-term flooding effects and long-term habitat effects for both the river valley and the estuary it flows into."

CBP was able to undertake the project without adhering to state or federal environmental laws due to waiver provisions both in a 1996 law pertaining just to the Smuggler's Gulch area and the REAL ID Act of 2005, which extended the waiver authority to the entire border region (Land Letter, Sept. 22, 2005).

As a result, regulators had little authority to address environmental problems.

"In some places, erosion control practices were not properly employed, in my opinion, and there's been significant erosion," said David Gibson, executive officer of the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board. "Normally I would have issued a violation for failing to meet the [state] standards for construction, but in this case we couldn't do that."

After meeting with CBP and its contractors, however, officials agreed to fix those problems, Gibson added. "Now that they've seen where the weak spots are, they're addressing them," he said.

Most of the sediment choking the estuary is flowing across the border from Mexico, but the fence project has exacerbated the problem, Gibson said.

"This was an extremely large construction project," he noted. "You just can't have that much earthmoving without having major problems."

DHS spokesman Claude Knighten said contractors did employ erosion barriers, such as waddles, and attempted to plant soil-stabilizing vegetation. But some of those efforts did not work as well as officials had expected, he acknowledged.

Some of the seeds that were planted on the newly created slopes, for example, did not take root due to mistimed watering. Contractors have since reseeded those areas and plan to better irrigate the plots to make sure the plantings succeed the second time, Knighten said.

The state is also considering installing trap structures to help keep sediment out of the estuary as part of the larger restoration effort, Gibson added.

Otay Mountain problems

Further east, in the federally protected Otay Mountain Wilderness, another new stretch of fence, along with the new road needed to patrol it, also is causing environmental damage that probably would not have occurred without the waiver.

Construction workers have removed about 100 rare Tecate cypress trees there that survived a 2003 wildfire that wiped out about 68 percent of the tree's habitat. And truck traffic has sent clouds of dust into the air, coating the tree's leaves, which provide food for the equally rare Thorne's hairstreak butterfly.

As the result of a lawsuit from the Center for Biological Diversity, the Fish and Wildlife Service is considering whether to protect the butterfly under the Endangered Species Act.

Knighten of CBP said crews are now wetting the roads to reduce dust. "We'll be monitoring the dust to make sure there aren't any problems," he said.

The Smuggler's Gulch and Otay Mountain projects were part of a far-reaching, congressionally mandated effort to shore up the U.S. southern border with hundreds of miles of new fencing from Texas to California. About 633 miles of new fence have been completed so far, at a cost of $2.4 billion.

Critics say the Smuggler's Gulch project will push illegal border activity further eastward and to the Pacific Ocean, where crossers will take to the water to get around the fence.

A Barren Promise at the Border

Voice of San Diego
October 21, 2009
by Rob Davis

Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009 Had anyone else built this hillside near the U.S.-Mexico border, it would look nothing like it does. The barren hill would be alive with native plants, the earth would be solidly rooted and not a threat to tumble down into the Tijuana Estuary, a lush, 2,500-acre salt marsh that starts 600 feet away.

But along the newly constructed border fence near the Pacific Ocean in Border Field State Park, inch-thick tan clumps of seeds and mulch still blanket the ground. They haven't been watered, so no plants have grown.

Were it anyone else's project, state regulators would've required irrigation to ensure that plants grew. But the federal government is responsible for the $59 million effort to complete and reinforce 3.5 miles of border fence separating San Diego and Tijuana. The Department of Homeland Security exempted itself from eight federal laws and any related state laws that would have regulated the project's environmental impacts.

Because the project is exempt from the federal Clean Water Act, state water regulators have no jurisdiction.Homeland Security officials sought the waiver power in 2005 to accelerate fence construction in San Diego and across the Southwest, saying that national security needs trumped environmental concerns. That power has accelerated construction from San Diego to Brownsville, as the agency has waived laws across 550 miles of the border. To date, 633 miles of fence have been built at a cost of $2.4 billion.

The department made the same promise each time it waived laws like the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act: Though we're now exempt from federal and state environmental regulation, we're still committed to the environment.

But as construction continues across the Southwest, the project's impacts in Border Field State Park and in another federal reserve further east raise questions about the sincerity of the government's commitment.Clay Phillips, the California State Parks superintendent who oversees Border Field and the estuary, said that promise hasn't been fulfilled there. Mitigation of the fence's environmental impacts has "failed miserably," Phillips said.

Phillips worries that winter rains will wash soil off the hills into the nearby estuary he oversees, which is home to several sensitive species and already filling with sediment swept in from Tijuana. Sediment raises the level of the ground, stopping the twice-daily tidal flushing that keeps the wetlands wet.

Army Corps of Engineers contractors completed the fence separating San Diego and Tijuana in July.

They filled in the notorious cross-border canyon known as Smuggler's Gulch, added a second layer of steel fencing and built a road for Border Patrol vehicles running parallel to the fence. The gulch, once a deep canyon, is now filled with an earthen berm more than 100 feet tall.

Though native plant seeds were sprayed across the berm and other newly created hillsides in Border Field State Park, Phillips said the federal government never irrigated them. Only a handful of plants grew. Other hills have none.

"They sprayed it (with seed) and hoped for the best," Phillips said. "It was a waste. A token gesture."

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman, Jenny Burke, said the project was built to Caltrans' erosion standards. The agency will "monitor the situation and is considering other actions as required."

John Robertus, executive officer of the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board, the local water pollution police, said the project doesn't have all the safeguards his agency would've required. He said if the board had jurisdiction, it would've required temporary irrigation to ensure plants grew. Robertus said he, too, is concerned about the project's potential impacts on the estuary.

Fence construction has left a mark on other areas in San Diego County greater than what would've been allowed without the waiver. Further east in the federally protected Otay Mountain Wilderness, a road built along a new four-mile section of fence also left barren hills, said Joyce Schlachter, a wildlife biologist with the federal Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the area.

"When we get any rain, it's going to be an erosion nightmare," Schlachter said. Seeds have been sprayed there, too, but not watered, she said. No plants have grown.

The impacts on Otay Mountain stretch beyond possible erosion. Phalanxes of dump trucks going to work on the fence have rumbled up and down a dirt road, spreading clouds of dust as far as 30 feet away, blanketing Tecate cypress, a rare tree found only on three peaks in San Diego County. (Its range extends into Mexico.) The tree, a bushy evergreen, provides food for the Thorne's hairstreak butterfly, a rare thumbnail-sized insect that feeds only on the cypress and that has been suffering from too-frequent fires on the mountain.

Construction crews cut down more than 100 cypress that survived a massive 2003 wildfire to widen an existing road for construction vehicles, Schlachter said.If laws hadn't been waived, the Bureau would have required construction crews to minimize their impact on the trees, she said.

Homeland Security officials consulted with the Bureau, Schlachter said, then didn't follow all of its advice."When it came right down to it, they did what they wanted to do," Schlachter said. "And they knew they couldn't be stopped. We did not have control over it."

Kathy Williams, a San Diego State biology professor studying the butterfly, said the dust poses "potentially a really serious problem" for the Thorne's hairstreak and the cypress.Williams has reared a small number of Thorne's caterpillars on both dusty and clean leaves in her laboratory.

Results from the on-going experiment so far indicate that more caterpillars survived on clean leaves, she said.Before construction began last year, Williams said the roadside habitat looked much healthier. She saw more butterflies last year than she did this year, though she noted that population sizes vary annually.

"Now it's obviously degraded habitat," she said, noting that rainfall may help clean the leaves. "The appearance of the quality of the site is strikingly different."

Burke, the Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman, said the agency consulted with U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials about the Otay project and routinely wets the road to keep dust down. She said Customs and Border Protection will monitor the dust and maintain the roads "to their construction standard," and could periodically apply "dust-control agents," which include sap.

Those efforts haven't always worked well. Sap was sprayed on trees beyond the road's edge, Schlachter said. Dust stuck on top of the sap, she said, making the trees' survival questionable. "They're creating more risk to the plants," she said. "That's an issue."

On at least one occasion, crews didn't water the road -- even though they had the necessary equipment on hand. One morning in June, a water truck escorted dump trucks to the work site but didn't spray any water. As the trucks wound through the wilderness past Tecate cypress, choking clouds of dust followed.

U.S. Rep. Susan Davis, D-San Diego, whose district includes Border Field State Park, said in a statement that she wants more done immediately to address the fence's environmental impacts."Many people, including myself, expressed strong concerns about the border fence and the implications of exempting the construction of the fence from environmental laws," Davis said.

"Unfortunately, those concerns are becoming a reality. I hope the Department of Homeland Security will continue to work with Congress and local officials in finding an immediate solution and work toward a permanent one."

A representative of an environmental group that opposed the fence because of concerns about erosion said its construction reinforced the reasons for his opposition. Jim Peugh, conservation chairman of the San Diego Audubon Society, said he hopes the fence serves as an example of why environmental laws should never be waived.

"The idea of building something without seeing how you're going to maintain it -- it's just going to fail," Peugh said. "That's an insane thing to do. And this project proves that beyond a doubt."

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2009/10/22/environment/835borderfence102109.txt

Dozens of lawmakers write to Napolitano with concerns about impact of border barriers

Rio Grande Guardian
July 24, 2009
by Steve Taylor and Joey Gomez

McALLEN, July 24 - Forty three members of Congress have sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano voicing concern over the “mounting” environmental and societal impact of the border wall and other security barriers.

The lawmakers have asked the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to cooperate with other applicable agencies to create and fund a “robust border-wide environmental monitoring program” and to provide “sufficient mitigation funding” for damage caused by border security infrastructure and enforcement activities along the Southwest border region.

“It is the Secretary’s responsibility to protect the homeland, not selectively destroy our environment,” said Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, D-Ariz., one of the 43 members of Congress to sign the letter.

Grijalva, who convened a congressional hearing about the border wall at the University of Texas at Brownsville last year, said a review is necessary to “quantify, compensate for and avoid the negative consequences of border security infrastructure and operations.” He said border communities are “open to working on behalf of security - not a selective security, but rather one that includes habitat, national, border, and regional security.”

Grijalva described the hundreds of miles of border fencing constructed by DHS as a “massive federal project.” He said the project has had “serious consequences upon natural and cultural public resources, and has caused hardship for private land owners, whose lands have been condemned and livelihoods have been disrupted.”

Scott Nicol, a co-founder of the No Border Wall group, pointed out that U.S. Fish and Wildlife estimates that 60 percent of their National Wildlife Refuge tracts in south Texas will be impacted by the border wall. The South Texas tracts were established, in part, for the protection of endangered species such as the ocelot and jaguarondi.

“We are pleased to hear that 43 members of Congress are stepping up to the plate and attempting to correct some of the environmental damage that the border wall has done. If former Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff had not been given the power to waive all laws, this would have been addressed before wall construction began. Chertoff used the Real ID Act to waive the National Environmental Policy Act, along with 35 other federal laws, stopping the usual Environmental Impact Statement process in its tracks,” Nicol told the Guardian.

“Before the first bulldozer dug into the earth to clear a path for the wall, many of its impacts had been predicted. The Environmental Protection Agency warned that blasting in California's Otay Mountain Wilderness Area would dump thousands of tons of rock and sediment into the Tijuana River. Defenders of Wildlife issued a report on the Arizona wall's impacts on the ability of endangered Sonoran pronghorn to migrate. U.S. Fish and Wildlife told DHS that Hidalgo County's levee-border wall would be incompatible with the mission of the wildlife refuges that it would slice through.”

The letter from the members of Congress has this to say about the environmental impact of the border wall in south Texas:

“In south Texas, private land owners and agricultural interests have significant tracts of land that have been or will be isolated to the south of border fencing. Yet, DHS has only offered compensation for the exact footprint of the infrastructure – failure to recognize or compensate for fiscal losses of property value and accessibility caused by the construction of border fencing.”

Nicol said the monitoring and mitigation program that the members of Congress are calling for would be a “good first step towards bringing scientific rigor to an understanding of the wall's impacts.” However, he said the No Border Wall group is concerned that DHS will ignore its findings, “just as they ignored the Environmental Protection Agency, Defenders of Wildlife, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife.”

Nicol said this is the reason that no individual or agency should be given the power to “brush aside” the law.

“While this letter marks an important first step, the real solution would be to take back the power granted to DHS by the Real ID Act,” Nicol said.

“With more wall construction called for in Senator DeMint's amendment, and the likelihood that walls will be included in the upcoming comprehensive immigration reform bill, it is important to recognize the terrible toll that walls have already taken on the environment of the border. It is even more important that members of Congress work to prevent any more from being built.”

The move by the lawmakers won immediate praise from the Sierra Club.

“We applaud the representatives who have taken a stand on behalf of the communities and wildlife of the borderlands,” said Michael Degnan, associate representative for the Sierra Club in Washington, D.C. “We agree with these members of Congress and firmly believe that the Department of Homeland Security should, at the very least, work to repair the damage caused by its border walls and security activities.”

Degnan pointed out that the Homeland Security Appropriations bill that passed out of the U.S. House last month included an additional $40 million for borderlands monitoring and mitigation, but that the Senate version did not.

“As you conduct your evaluation of border security initiatives, we encourage you to consider the importance of monitoring, mitigation, and environmental training for border security personnel in order to quantify, compensate for and avoid the negative consequences of border security infrastructure and operations,” the 43 members of Congress wrote.

Every one of the 43 members of Congress that signed the letter are Democrats. Only one Texas border member failed to sign the letter, Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo.

The 43 members of Congress are:

Max Baca, CA
Earl Blumenauer, OR
Lois Capps, CA
Clarke, NY
Steve Cohen, Tenn.
Susan Davis, CA
Norm Dicks, Wash.
Anna Eshoo, CA
Sam Farr, CA
Bob Filner, CA
Gabrielle Giffords, Ariz.
Charlie Gonzalez, TX
Raul Grijalva, Ariz.
Luis Gutierrez, IL
Maurice Hinchey, NY
Rubén Hinojosa, TX
Rush Holt, NJ
Sheila Jackson Lee, TX
Dennis Kucinich, OH
Barbara Lee, CA
Ben Ray Lujan, NM
Edward Markey, Mass.
Michael Michaud, Maine
Jim Moran, VA,
Grace Napolitano, CA
John Olver, Mass.
Solomon Ortiz, TX
Ed Pastor, Ariz.
Donald Payne, NJ
Jared Polis, CO,
Mike Quigley, IL.
Silvestre Reyes, TX
Ciro Rodriguez, TX
Steve Rothman, NJ
Gregorio Sablan, Northern Mariana Islands
Linda Sanchez, CA
Loretta Sanchez, CA
Jan Schakowsky, IL.
José Serrano, NY
Jackie Speier, CA
Pete Stark, CA
Maxine Waters, CA
Henry Waxman, CA

Here is a copy of the letter:

July 23:

Dear Secretary Napolitano,

We write to you today with concern regarding mounting environmental and societal impacts related to border security infrastructure and operations. As you conduct your evaluation of border security initiatives, we encourage you to consider the importance of monitoring, mitigation, and environmental training for border security personnel in order to quantify, compensate for and avoid the negative consequences of border security infrastructure and operations. We ask that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cooperate with other applicable agencies to create and fund a robust border-wide environmental monitoring program and to provide sufficient mitigation funding for damage caused by border security infrastructure and enforcement activities.

As you are aware, hundreds of miles of new border fences and patrol roads have been constructed by DHS along the U.S.-Mexico border in the past several years. This massive federal project has had deleterious consequences upon natural and cultural public resources, and has caused hardship for private land owners, whose lands have been condemned and livelihoods have been disrupted. Considerable annual maintenance operations will be required for border fencing. The Congressional Budget Office estimates annual maintenance costs will amount to 15 percent of initial construction costs, which are averaging $3 million per mile. In addition, with DHS adding significantly more Border Patrol personnel, it is becoming increasingly important that impacts related to off-road vehicles, low-level flights and other interdiction activities be quantified and mitigated for, and that DHS provide training for its personnel in techniques to minimize damage to sensitive resources during enforcement activities.

We understand that in 2008 DHS allocated up to $50 million to the Department of the Interior (DOI) for border fence mitigation. It is our understanding this money will be utilized primarily for off-site mitigation targeted to benefit security infrastructure projects. We believe this first round of mitigation for threatened and endangered species, along with the memorandum of agreement signed by DHS and DOI, demonstrate a positive commitment to mitigating negative impacts. However, there are numerous impacts across the border caused by both security infrastructure and operations that will require significantly more resources to properly monitor and mitigate.

For example, the National Park Service issued a report in August, 2008 confirming that border fencing astride the Lukeville Port of Entry has exacerbated seasonal flooding and has caused accelerated scouring and erosion on the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument – threatening to permanently alter the hydrology of the area if modifications are not made to rectify the inadequate design. A similar problem was identified at the DeConcini Port of Entry, where tunnel barrier and fence-exacerbated flooding caused extensive property and infrastructure damage in Nogales, Mexico. There are also serious concerns related to border infrastructure construction-induced siltation and resulting degradation of sensitive habitats of the Tijuana River Estuary and the San Pedro River, located in southern California and Arizona, respectively. In south Texas, private land owners and agricultural interests have significant tracts of land that have been or will be isolated to the south of border fencing. Yet, DHS has only offered compensation for the exact footprint of the infrastructure – failure to recognize or compensate for fiscal losses of property value and accessibility caused by the construction of border fencing.

To date, there has been a lack of scientifically-based monitoring to quantify the environmental impacts of border security infrastructure and operations. Information from monitoring will provide objective data on impacts, so that efforts to avoid impacts and mitigate for unavoidable impacts can be targeted appropriately. It is our understanding that such a pilot program has been proposed and is to be led by the United States Geological Survey (USGS). We understand the initiation of this program is pending a memorandum of agreement between DIIS and DOI. We are concerned that this monitoring program, currently in a conceptual stage, is not being implemented fast enough; ongoing acute and cumulative impacts continue to go unmonitored. We urge you to ensure that DHS is an active partner in establishing this program and in utilizing the information derived from it to inform a robust, multi-year border mitigation fund.

We appreciate your consideration of this request.

Sincerely,

http://riograndeguardian.com/rggnews_story.asp?story_no=25

Congress Members Urge Napolitano to Restore Rule of Law Along Border

KPBS San Diego
June 23, 2009
by Amy Isackson

Twenty-seven members of the U.S. Congress have asked the Secretary of Homeland Security to respect all laws along the U.S. Mexico border as they build the border fence. As KPBS Reporter Amy Isackson explains, about 40 miles of fencing are still under construction in environmentally sensitive areas.

The more than two-dozen members of Congress want Secretary Napolitano to respect laws her predecessor set aside to make way for the border fence.

Former Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff waived all state, local and federal laws along the border. They include the Endangered Species, Historic Preservation and Clean Water Acts.

The Congress members petitioning Napolitano say the lack of compliance has damaged public lands and public trust.

Matt Clark is with Defenders of Wildlife. He says no one should be above the law and the Secretary needs to abide.

"To minimize and avert potential disastrous consequences for very environmentally sensitive areas like the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area," he says.

The Otay Mountain Wilderness is federally protected and home to endangered species.

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2009/jun/23/restore-rule-law-along-border/

Bulldozing nature

February 14, 2009
San Diego Union Tribune
by Char Miller

President George W. Bush is history. But the past has a funny way of maintaining a tight grip on the present. Just ask anyone who cares deeply about the pristine remnants of Southern California's ancient landscape, such as the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area. Bulldozers are now rumbling through the sanctuary in eastern San Diego County, prepping the ground so that the infamous border wall can slice across its stunning array of desert scrublands, steep canyons and rugged high ground.

The small reserve – it encompasses only 18,500 acres – was established in 1999, but despite its limited size it is of crucial significance. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, San Diego contains the greatest number of threatened or endangered species in the continental United States and its high desert in particular is home to many of them. These include the Quino checkerspot butterfly, the arroyo toad and the Otay Mesa spreading mint. This often bone-dry terrain is also vital for migratory mammals such as the javelina, whose search for food, water and shelter knows nothing of national boundaries.

Sadly, this viable habitat and the rich biodiversity it has sustained for millennia are under attack. In December, Michael Chertoff, then the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, waived the Wilderness Act and a host of other protective legislation so that a contractor could scrape clean this untrammeled area. Site preparation for the border wall's construction, which includes constructing a hardened roadway, has continued ever since.

Already, the impact is pronounced. Even in the unlikely event that the Obama administration quickly issues a stop-work order, and local environmentalists hope he will, the initial cuts for the road and fence are of such a magnitude, observed Nathan Trotter, a local activist who toured the area in late January, "that the resources needed to restore the area would be immense."

None of this destruction needs to occur. The Border Patrol itself did not think the wall was necessary in the Otay wilderness. Richard Kite, a spokesman for the agency's San Diego office, told reporters in 2006 after Congress passed the Safe Fence Act: "It's such harsh terrain it's difficult to walk, let alone drive. There's no reason to disrupt the land when the land itself is a physical barrier."

The EPA also cast doubt on the project. In a February 2008 letter to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, it indicated that the proposed plan was insufficient on two counts. It objected to "the filling of two well-developed riparian corridors in Copper and Buttewig canyons and has concerns regarding high potential for significantly increasing erosion in the watershed from the combination of road widening, new vehicle trail construction, fence installation on steep slopes, and fence installation across intermittent streams." The EPA predicted these intrusions would "have unacceptable adverse impacts under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, especially considering cumulative impacts from other border fence projects that are proposed in the Tijuana River Watershed. These impacts must be avoided to provide adequate protection for the environment."

Wilderness advocates were much more blunt in their denunciation of the administration's decision to savage the Otay – by blasting its canyon walls, trucking out more than 500,000 cubic yards of fill, and grading and leveling a 150-foot-wide swath on which to erect the wall.

Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, lambasted the presidential decision: "Wilderness areas are designated by Congress specifically to protect sensitive places from projects like this road construction. This road sets terrible precedent and clearly demonstrates the dangers of granting the secretary of homeland security authority to waive any law in order to build walls along our international borders." As Matt Clark, Southwest representative for Defenders of Wildlife, asserted: "Such harmful impacts to wilderness characteristics and values are clearly inconsistent with the congressional intent of the law that established the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area in 1999. The waiver and the wall are an affront to our nation's laws and natural heritage."

The Bush administration ignored these principled arguments and in doing so the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area, like countless other sensitive ecosystems along the U.S.-Mexico border, has paid a heavy price.

We are paying, too: By compromising the Otay's historic function as wildlands and cutting off the javelina from its primeval habitat, and by serving as a tool for subverting national environmental regulations, the Bush wall casts a long shadow over contemporary American politics. What a grim and costly legacy.

Miller is visiting professor of environmental analysis and history at Pomona College in Claremont. He is author of "Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism" and "Deep in the Heart of Texas: Land and Life in South Texas."

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/feb/14/mz1sz14mille193035-bulldozing-nature/?opinion

Public Works Contractor Sukut Construction, Inc. Begins Work on Fence Bordering U.S. and Mexico

(This is a press release from a contractor that is proud of the work that they are doing on the border wall in California's Otay Mountain National Wilderness Area.)

Press Release Newswire
December 23, 2008

Santa Ana, Calif. (PRWEB) December 23, 2008 -- Sukut Construction, Inc. has broken ground on a $11.2 million project to help build a strategic section of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Mexican border fence in the rugged foothills of Otay Mesa.

The project calls for construction of 5.2 miles of border fence and an adjacent access road. Sukut has been subcontracted by Granite Construction for the site development and road construction.

The section of border fence will be constructed at the Otay Mesa illegal border crossing in the foothills above the Tijuana River. The site is south of the city of Dulzura and eight miles from the nearest major road, Highway 94. The remoteness of the location and the steep, rocky terrain make this a popular illegal border crossing, and contribute to the complexity of the job.

"Sukut is California's largest mass excavation company with the equipment and knowledge to successfully complete this type of job," said Sukut Construction, Inc. CEO/President Michael Crawford.

Sukut will begin by widening the 2.5 miles of existing dirt road used by the U.S. Border Patrol to make the route safe for heavy equipment, constructing a 32-foot-wide and 5.2-mile border fence access road. The location's steep grade will require switchback roadway with a maximum grade of 15 percent at the steepest points.

Sukut will use extensive drilling and blasting to clear 530,000 cubic yards of rock in the foothills and employ geo-grid slope stabilization to prevent any rock slides across the Mexican border just three feet away. The project is expected to be completed in the summer of 2009.

Sukut Construction, Inc. is California's largest mass excavation and grading contractor, moving 150 million cubic yards of earth per year. Founded almost 40 years ago and headquartered in Santa Ana, California, with offices in Los Angeles, Riverside and Oceanside, California, the company is nationally recognized for its work on residential, commercial, industrial and retail development mass grading; public works; highway, roads and infrastructure construction; flood and storm water pipe and structures; golf courses and resorts; landfill construction and environmental cleanups; and emergency landslide repair and stabilization.

Information is available on the company's website at http://www.sukut.com/ or by calling Sukut headquarters at (888)-SUKUT01 or (888) 785-8801.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/12/prweb1708734.htm