Thread: Could Yuma-area wetland secure border?

Could Yuma-area wetland secure border?
Plan would halt fencing along river
Sean Holstege

YUMA - Stopping illegal immigration at the border is often at odds with protecting the environment.

But a group of southwestern Arizona leaders wants to do both and is seeking approval from U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

The idea calls for creating a marshland along the lower Colorado River south of Yuma by clearing thick brush, building steep levees and flooding dry riverbanks.

The Yuma mayor, Yuma County sheriff and Cocopah tribal chairwoman wrote Chertoff about the plan in late September just as conventional riverside fence construction was starting. The leaders asked Chertoff to halt the fence and use the money to flood a 435-acre area known as Hunter’s Hole, an overgrown haven for smugglers and drug dealers and a dumping place for bodies.

Local Border Patrol officials backed the plan in an August letter because the river is the busiest crossing in the Yuma Sector. Smugglers hide in the weeds and cross the water on sandbag bridges.

The plan is to flood Hunter’s Hole by building levees and using groundwater pumps. Smugglers would have to scale a steep, 15-foot levy, cross a 400-foot-wide marsh that is 10 feet deep in places, then scale another levy studded with metal posts designed to halt trucks.

Environmental consultants working on the plan say it would cost up to $7 million and secure 2 miles of border. It also would restore native habitats that have been ruined by invasive plant species and by damming the river, consultants and resource agencies say.

The Colorado River runs east for 23 miles along the boundary between Mexico and Arizona. The Hunter’s Hole concept, if adopted and successful, could be a model for the remaining unfenced frontier on the river.

Chertoff has options

Congress recently passed a bill loosening a 2006 fence law and allowing Chertoff leeway to try alternatives to a physical barrier.

Elsewhere on the border, the government has been spending $1.2 million a mile on military contracts and $4 million a mile on commercial contracts to build conventional fences, according to congressional investigators.

The conflict between letting native animals roam freely across the international boundary and stopping foot and truck traffic has been a nagging concern for Chertoff.

An environmental lawsuit to block fence construction briefly halted work at the San Pedro River near Naco. In parts of Texas, a planned Rio Grande barrier has met vocal opposition. In the vast western Arizona desert, specially designed fences let lizards crawl underneath to reach habitat in both countries.

Recently, Chertoff said legal challenges are the biggest drag on securing the border and enforcing the nation’s immigration laws.

Chertoff told reporters early this month that time is running out to meet the congressional target of completing 680 miles of new fence by the end of 2008.

To get there, he said he has to begin seizing property and building fences over the objections of locals. He said notice letters to affected property owners started going out in early December.

On the San Pedro River project, Chertoff invoked his right to waive environmental laws to complete the bar- rier.

“We want to be open to negotiate,â€

7 million for 2 miles is idiotic. Burn the brush and build a fence.

Dixie

"The area is now being converted into a park. The growing popularity of the place means bicyclists, trail walkers and picnickers report and deter criminals. It is easier for authorities to patrol."

Convert to park area where American Citizens will fear to tread .. Because it will not sstop the smugglers or Illegals from crossing the border just a way to waste money and make it a safe haven for the drug cartel..