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 News from Around the Americas | October 2007 
Alternatives to US Fencing Proposed
 Lynn Brezosky - San Antonio Express-News
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| Opposition to fence on the Border, and ideas to counter it:
• Brownsville Mayor Pat Ahumada has already denied Homeland Security Department officials a request to access city land for surveying for the fence. He says a long-debated reservoir on the Rio Grande would raise water levels, deepening an existing natural barrier into a 'virtual' fence. But environmentalists oppose the idea, and it hasn't gotten needed backing from Mexico.
• Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos plans to fly over the aging Rio Grande flood control levees with U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in hopes the government will use some of the fence money to shore them up. 'Let the levees be the wall,' Cascos said.
• The McAllen Chamber of Commerce is selling black 'No Border Wall' wristbands and plans to take out newspaper ads urging people to speak out against the fence. City business leaders fear it will insult Mexicans and harm trade relations and commerce.
• Grass-roots group No Border Wall has staged protests at border crossings and places that would be cut off by the fence, such as the 1899 La Lomita chapel, built on the banks of the Rio Grande near Mission. The group has circulated No Border Wall bumper stickers and has gathered hundreds of signatures protesting the fence's environmental implications.
• The Texas Border Coalition, made up of mayors from Brownsville to El Paso, last week approved a resolution decrying the government's lack of candor on the fence and demanding 'smart, effective border security that does not include the betrayal of our history and the giveaway of Texas territory.' |
Brownsville, TX — Leaders, trade associations and environmental groups in Texas border cities are scrambling for ways to stop, stall or at least alter the Homeland Security Department's plans for border fencing.
Ideas range from using fence funds to raise crumbling river levees into 18-foot-high reinforced earthen barriers, substituting a long-disputed lower Rio Grande reservoir for some of the fence, suing the government, or just refusing access to federal engineers and construction workers.
Hopes have been buoyed by the department's recent disclosure of the fencing's planned locations and announcement that it will conduct a full environmental impact assessment, to include collecting comment and ideas for alternative barriers.
"I am cautiously optimistic what will happen," Laredo Mayor Raul Salinas said. "I think when you have dialogue, you have opportunity. We have to stand tall. If we pick up our tent and leave, we don't have a chance."
Yet others say Congress mandated the fence and the reality is that it will get built.
"Most people along the border don't want the wall," said Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos, who plans to take a stab at getting the government to shore up Rio Grande levees in lieu of the fence. "But you go one state over — there's a preponderance of people that want this wall."
El Paso Mayor John Cook has reportedly gotten hate mail and a death threat after news reports listed him as one of a list of border mayors who were against the fence.
President Bush announced the fence in May 2006, prompting an outcry among locals who fear it will hamper a thriving cross-border economy, cut farmers and ranchers off from their land and slice through wildlife refuges in one of the world's most ecologically diverse places.
Opposition intensified this spring, when a Customs and Border Protection fence map surfaced that had been drawn up without local input.
Officials with Customs and Border Protection have since pledged to take local concerns into account. But there are now "No Border Wall" bumper stickers and wristbands, and the cause has generated several small demonstrations and petition signing events near international bridges.
On Sept. 24, the agency announced that it would prepare an environmental impact statement for 21 sections of fencing in the Rio Grande Valley totaling about 70 miles.
The sections were mostly in urban areas because undocumented border crossers are able to disappear into heavily populated areas faster than agents can catch them, which isn't the case in the desert or with empty expanses of ranchland, agency spokesman Brad Benson said.
"It's all geared toward creating the delay (in border crossing) that the Border Patrol needs," he said.
Though the design has not been finalized, an agency-sponsored Web site specifies that the fence is to be at least 16 feet high and capable of withstanding a crash of a 10,000-pound vehicle traveling 40 mph. The criteria also say the fence must be "aesthetically pleasing."
A period of public comment on potential impacts and alternatives ends Oct. 15.
The announcement on the environmental impact statements took some by surprise.
On two occasions in other states, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff used a provision under the Real ID Act of 2005, a defense bill, to waive environmental regulations to expedite fence construction.
Houston environmental attorney Jim Blackburn had been waiting for a similar waiver for the Texas portion of the fence, which he said would allow for a quick legal attack on the basis of the North American Free Trade Agreement and a water sharing treaty with Mexico.
"What happened is a little bit of a curveball. The customs service has decided to go forward with an environmental impact process," Blackburn said. "The good news is the environmental impact process is a public empowerment process."
Benson said that process was being followed because potential environmental impacts already had been identified.
"We're going to address every environmental concern," he said.
Scott Nicol, a volunteer with grass-roots group No Border Wall, said people should participate.
"We think it's important that if they are going to actually do this and hopefully take people's comments into account, we think people should speak out," Nicol said.
"It's just kind of assumed outside the border area that people down here should of course feel they're under siege and be in favor of the wall — I think it's important for people to realize that's not the case," he added.
But the Texas Border Coalition, formed by mayors from Brownsville to El Paso who are opposed to the fence, last week released a resolution panning the fence — and the public comment process. The resolution calls for alternative security measures such as raising Rio Grande water levels with a new reservoir and removing overgrown vegetation from the river banks so undocumented crossers have nowhere to hide.
"The Texas Border Coalition has no confidence in the assurances of the United States Department of Homeland Security that it will work with the communities of the Texas-Mexico border," the resolution states.
In effect, some of the ideas for alternative security measures would use fence money to help with local infrastructure. But at least one such suggestion — damming the Rio Grande with the Brownsville Weir and Reservoir Project to create a 41-mile-long lake — may be doomed from the start.
Environmentalists have said the weir would flood treasured sabal palm groves and disturb a key estuary where the river meets the Gulf of Mexico. The idea also lacks needed backing from Mexico.
Tony Zavaleta, vice president of external affairs for the University of Texas at Brownsville, said the university would not participate in the official public comment period, though it would continue to express its views and stay in touch with Texas senators.
As planned, the fence would create "no man's lands" as wide as a mile because of the river's twists and turns.
The university golf course would end up south of the fence, along with a barely visible landmark that gave the city its name — the remnants of Fort Texas, besieged and shelled in 1846 as the first major battles of the Mexican-American War raged nearby. It was renamed Fort Brown for its fallen commander.
"They should not be taking parts of the United States just because they are proximate to Mexico and walling them off," Zavaleta said.
lbrezosky@express-news.net |
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