elgatoloco - 2-15-2005 at 02:15 PM
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/tijuana/20050214-9...
Critics slam bill that exempts fence from environment laws
By Terry Rodgers
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
February 14, 2005
PEGGY PEATTIE / Union-Tribune
The move was the political equivalent of a wrestler's body slam. Voting 261-161, the House of Representatives approved a bill this week intended to
deter terrorists and illegal immigrants from breaching the nation's borders.
The move was the political equivalent of a wrestler's body slam.
Voting 261-161, the House of Representatives approved a bill this week intended to deter terrorists and illegal immigrants from breaching the nation's
borders.
Included in the bill was language to exempt the final 3? miles of a controversial fence project along the U.S.-Mexico border from all state and
federal environmental laws, including the Clean Water Act.
"National security is increasingly being linked to many environmental issues," said Brian Segee, a Washington, D.C., attorney for Defenders of
Wildlife. "It's not only brought up in the context of the border, where that link is clear. We increasingly see it linked to energy development and
other instances involving natural resources."
If approved by the Senate, the sweeping exemption provided by the House bill would apply to any future fences and security zones sought by the
Department of Homeland Security anywhere along the nation's 1,933-mile border with Mexico and 3,987-mile border with Canada.
"This bill is incredibly over-reaching," Segee said. "The Border Patrol and Office of Homeland Security can ignore labor laws, civil rights laws and
environmental laws as long as it involves construction of a barrier or road along the U.S. border."
Proponents say an impenetrable triple-fenced surveillance zone with motion sensors and bright lights is essential to the nation's effort to deter
terrorists, drug smugglers and illegal immigrants from crossing into the United States.
Last year, the California Coastal Commission ruled the project was far more destructive to the environment than necessary and pushed for a compromise.
The project, which would have a footprint as wide as a four-lane freeway, includes installation of two new fences along with roads that require
massive grading of rare habitat and filling in steep canyons. Erosion from re-sculpting the landscape could choke the Tijuana River estuary, an
internationally renowned wetland sanctuary.
San Diego Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Escondido, who voted in favor of the bill, said in a prepared statement: "The bottom line is that we must
put homeland security first. We need to know who is coming into our country."
Cunningham blamed ongoing scientific studies for delaying the project's completion, but that assertion is erroneous. In 1996, Congress exempted the
project from the Endangered Species Act.
"It's not a matter of studies at all," said Jim Peugh of the San Diego Audubon Society. "We already know this project would be horrendously damaging.
It's simply a matter of coming up with a project that minimizes damage to the environment and offsets the losses."
Congress has approved limited environmental exemptions for various projects, including the clearing of dead wood from national forests.
In 1998, then-Rep. Ron Packard, R-Oceanside, sponsored legislation exempting the Foothill-South toll road in southern Orange County from a law
prohibiting highway construction on government-owned parkland.
In 2003, active military training ranges, including Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, were exempted from the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the
Endangered Species Act as long as they complete resource-management plans.
Karen Wayland, legislative director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the Department of Defense is seeking additional waivers from
hazardous waste and Superfund cleanup laws enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The border fence exemption, she said, "is part and parcel of a move to get out from compliance of all the laws that ultraconservatives find
offensive."
The House bill includes a provision barring lawsuits challenging border security projects.
"There would be no judicial review, no way for anyone to protest the waivers that the Department of Homeland Security might put into place," she said.
"We're basically allowing one federal official who is not elected to have unprecedented power to get out from under the rule of law."
Adam Keats, a lawyer for the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco, said the measure would preclude the public from having a voice on
homeland security projects in border communities.
"What proposals like this are doing is throwing away 30 to 40 years of good laws that have been enacted to protect the environment and include the
public in these decisions," Keats said.
Environmentalists caught off guard by the swiftness of the House Republicans' victory are circling back to attack the waiver provisions when they are
reviewed by the Senate.
"It's a sad day when environmental destruction is wrapped around the cloak of the politics of fear," said Peter Douglas, executive director of the
Coastal Commission, whose efforts to forge a compromise on the border fence are now in ruins. "Hopefully the Senate will be more understanding of how
environmental protection and security are not that far apart and can be reconciled."
bajalou - 2-15-2005 at 11:04 PM
And some thought the Berlin Wall was imposing.
the name
fdt - 2-16-2005 at 12:07 PM
It already has a name "El muro de la tortilla" the tortilla wall
Braulio - 2-16-2005 at 12:13 PM
The Berlin Wall was built to keep folks from leaving.
Border proposal a risk to marsh, ecologists say
Anonymous - 3-12-2005 at 06:09 AM
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/world/11...
BY VINCENT J. SCHODOLSKI
Mar. 10, 2005
BORDER FIELD STATE PARK, Calif. - (KRT) - The flat stretch of beige-colored mud sits less than half a football field from the Mexican border, with a
somewhat surreal vista that includes a bullring and an adjoining lighthouse.
Greg Abbott points to the muddy field and shakes his head.
"This is our nightmare," he said. "This is what we are terrified of."
Abbott, an ecologist with the California Department of Parks and Recreation, explained that the mud slick used to be a marsh that was the habitat and
breeding ground for scores of species of wildlife, primarily water birds.
That ecosystem is gone, and Abbott worries that the same thing could happen to the nearby Tijuana River Estuary if a new border project being advanced
in the name of national security goes ahead.
The estuary is home to more than 300 species, seven of them endangered or threatened. Those include the light-footed clapper rail, the California
brown pelican, the California gnatcatcher and the San Diego fairy shrimp.
Backed by two House Republicans, the project includes a controversial plan to remove hundreds of tons of soil from the top of nearby mesas and fill in
a canyon appropriately named Smugglers Gulch.
Ecologists worry erosion will carry the soil from the enormous mound of earth in the canyon into the estuary and disrupt the delicate balance that
supports the wildlife.
Those favoring the plan say it is the best way to halt the flow of illegal immigrants into the country from Mexico, including any possible terrorists.
Opponents call filling in the canyon overkill and say they have offered numerous alternatives to Congress. They say they are being ignored and that
laws are being trampled in the name of national security.
Alternatives "are being blown off," said Peter Douglas, executive director of the California Coastal Commission, which regulates coastal land and
water use. "That's what you can do in an era of fear politics."
The Coastal Commission is just one of numerous agencies and interest groups fighting the proposed project and the legislation to make it possible.
That legislation is backed by Reps. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and Duncan Hunter, R-Calif. It recently passed the House and is expected to be
attached to a supplemental spending bill requested by President Bush, in part to pay for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"For Congressman Hunter this is without question a national security issue," said Joe Kasper, a spokesman for Hunter. "There are indications that
al-Qaida operatives and other terrorists are trying to get into the country."
U.S. Border Patrol statistics indicate that about 140,000 people were caught trying to get into the United States illegally through the 66-mile-long
San Diego sector, which includes Smugglers Gulch, in the most recent 12-month period for which records are available.
The patrol does not break those statistics down to cover specific parts of the sector.
Sensenbrenner, a supporter of Bush's national security policies, shares the president's view that the borders of the United States - particularly the
land border with Mexico - remain porous and vulnerable to penetration by terrorists.
Jeff Lungren, a spokesman for Sensenbrenner and communications director for the House Judiciary Committee, said the congressman was tired of the
numerous delays in getting the Smugglers Gulch project under way.
"He wants to get the project finished," Lungren said.
The border between California and Mexico has been guarded by a fence that was erected in 1993-94, when the Border Patrol launched an initiative called
Operation Gatekeeper.
More than 10 years later, however, portions of the fence are woefully inadequate. While repair and improvement efforts have been made, there are many
areas where crossing can be nearly effortless.
One such section includes the southern edge of Smugglers Gulch, where recent heavy rains have caused extensive erosion.
A landslide piled stones over a section of the barrier, clearing a path that makes crossing into the United States as simple as talking a walk.
As a result, Border Patrol agents, always on the move along the frontier, are stationed permanently at that stretch in Smugglers Gulch. But even with
agents circulating, people cross through that sector of the border daily.
During a recent tour of the border, young men and the older men who act as smugglers, so-called coyotes, could be seen sitting on the U.S. side of the
border just across from the Mexican cities of Tijuana and Playa de Tijuana.
At times they lounged in storm drains that pass under the Mexican highway that runs along the border and empty into the United States.
"They can always find a way in," ecologist Abbott said.
The border fence here runs through Friendship Park, opened during the Nixon administration, then down to the beach and out into the Pacific Ocean. At
points the water at the edge of the fence is so shallow that it would be easy to wade around it.
There is no disagreement about the need for improved border security among those on both sides of the plan to fill in Smugglers Gulch. Rather the
discord centers on how to accomplish that goal.
"This is as much earth as would be used to build Hoover Dam," said Carl Zichella, western regional staff director for the Sierra Club, trying to
explain how enormous a volume of soil would be moved.
Zichella said that what is being planned in the name of national security is unnecessary to protect the border. "This is cutting butter with a chain
saw," he said.
The Coastal Commission's Douglas said that opponents of the cut-and-fill plan for Smugglers Gulch had suggested numerous ways to solve the problem of
illegal crossings.
"They can build a fence that works," he said, talking about improvements to the existing barrier.
He also said opponents had suggested road improvements to enable Border Patrol agents to move more swiftly in pursuit of illegal crossers.
But he said those ideas and others had been ignored and that the new border plan - including the earth barrier in Smugglers Gulch - was a wrongheaded
approach.
Critics say it is insulting to Mexicans who are trying to help solve the problem and would damage relations along the frontier.
"If they build the wall around Friendship Park, we can change the name of the park to Alienation Park," Douglas said.
woody with a view - 3-12-2005 at 04:55 PM
they're all full of crap!
our borders should be secure, for the benefit of all-