Judge Grants Temp. Delay on AZ Section of Border Fence

SUZANNE GAMBOA

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge temporarily delayed construction of a 1.5 mile section of a U.S.-Mexico border fence in a wildlife conservation area on the Arizona-Mexico border on Wednesday.

The Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club had requested a 10-day delay in a motion alleging the Bureau of Land Management and other agencies failed to conduct a thorough study of the fence’s effects on the environment.

U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle said she granted the delay because the federal government did not explain why it hurried through an environmental assessment and quickly began construction of the fence.

She repeatedly asked the government’s attorney, Gregory Page, to explain why the agencies took only three weeks to do the environmental assessment.

Huvelle said that amount of time for such a study was unprecedented and said the government was trying to “ramâ€