Plan to Waive Environmental Laws to Build Fence Sparks Outrage in Border Region
By David Mclemore, The Dallas Morning News
Apr. 2–The announcement by the Homeland Security Department on Tuesday that it plans to waive 30 environmental laws to expedite construction of 267 miles of border security fence sparked outrage from environmentalists and elected officials in most of the region.
Officials in Hidalgo County, however, called the waiver affecting their compromise with Homeland Security over construction of security barriers atop the county’s flood levee system “a positive step.”
Upriver, Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster, chairman of the Texas Border Coalition, called it the largest waiver of U.S. environmental laws since the Trans-Alaska pipeline.
“The Texas Border Coalition is outraged that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security would overreach and waive any and all laws in the course of building … fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border — without limit and without checks and balances,” Mr. Foster said. “Instead of shredding our nation’s environmental and cultural heritage, the federal government should be working toward genuine solutions.”
Laredo Mayor Raul Salinas said he is disappointed in what appears to be Homeland Security’s unilateral waivers.
“The American people who live and work along this border and whose lives are being affected by decisions reached in Washington should have the right to be heard,” he said.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the agency would issue two waivers to speed up security improvements along the border. He noted that Congress authorized the agency to issue such waivers when necessary.
“Criminal activity at the border does not stop for endless debate or protracted litigation,” he said. “Congress and the American public have been adamant that they want and expect border security.”
Rising public concern over illegal immigration and a perceived lack of border security in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks prompted Congress to approve the fence in a 2006 vote framed as a security-first springboard toward an overhaul of immigration laws that later failed.
Border residents’ opposition to the fence rallied significantly after Homeland Security filed dozens of lawsuits last year against landowners to gain access to their property. Many of the suits, including individuals as well as the city of Eagle Pass and the University of Texas at Brownsville, were in Texas, which has the longest stretch of border and the largest concentration of private property owners.
Mr. Chertoff said Tuesday that the government will continue to seek local input.
Environmentalists, including the National Audubon Society and the Sierra Club, found little to like about the government’s action. The region affected by the two waivers contains a large number of federally protected areas of significant ecological, educational, historic, cultural, recreational and economic value to the U.S. and its people, they noted.
“The state of Texas is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of today’s waiver due to the length of its border with Mexico and the vibrant ecology and economy of its border region,” said Sierra Club state director Ken Kramer. “Waiving longstanding laws that protect the environment and our cultural heritage … would undermine decades of work to establish and preserve a vibrant wildlife corridor and would be a devastating blow to the ecotourism that is so much a part of the Valley economy.”
“They are insisting that we close our eyes and minds to the risks to unique wildlife and ecosystems,” National Audubon Society President John Flicker said, “as well as the communities that depend on them.”
One waiver would bypass specific environmental and land-management laws to build additional pedestrian and vehicle fences, towers, sensors, roads and detection equipment along border areas in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, covering a total of 470 miles.
A second waiver covers the levee-border barrier project in Hidalgo County in the Rio Grande Valley that, Homeland Security officials said, will strengthen flood protection while providing “important tactical infrastructure” for the Border Patrol. The waiver addresses what Homeland Security called “other legal and administrative impediments” to completing the levee project by the end of the year.
Among the impediments are concerns by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that changes in the fence plans to combine the flood levees as part of the security barrier in Hidalgo County would split critical habitats in the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.
The new design, according to a letter from Fish and Wildlife to Homeland Security obtained by The Associated Press, would replace the original “wildlife friendly” fence design with an impermeable wall, 16 to 18 feet tall, built into the levee.
U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison said in a prepared statement that the bypass was the right action “to keep the agreement with Hidalgo County that serves the dual purposes of flood protection and border security.”
Officials in Hidalgo County, which worked out a compromise with Homeland Security this year over construction of security barriers atop the county’s flood levees, hailed the federal action.
“Today’s announcement … is a positive development for the residents of Hidalgo County,” said County Judge J.D. Salinas.
Homeland Security has used its discretionary waiver authority three times earlier in California and Arizona.
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