Thread: Border Trash.... Eco-system Alert...

Apparently the government of Mexico is now complaining about the potential harm to "eco systems" that both countries share... if the US continues to build the fence as mandated by Congress and by the will of the majority of US citizens..

Even the (leftist) President of Argentina, visiting Mexico this week, called the fence an insult to all nations..... He is traveling with his wife so foreign nations so as to "expose" his wife to foreign experience, since she is scheduled to be a candidate to replace him after his mandate expires...

As Lou Dobbs pointed out, the worst damage has already been done by those good-hearted immigrants who force themselves across our borders and destroy private and public property in the proces.... leaving an estimated 25 million tons of trash along the US border....

What Lou should be proposed is this: demand that DHS and EPA organize some of those "illegals" in the US to pick up their trash on the way back to Mexico...

Maybe they would like to come over here and pick up all the trash that the illegals drop on the way to the highway here in CA, we usually pick up about 5 pickups full when we do a trash run at the border here in CA!

Lets DUMP it back into MEXICO!

Maybe next time we will just do that! Throw it back over the fence line! See how they like it!

Ken

If I lived near the border I would gather up bags of the trash and send it to our southern neighbors leaders with a note "I am working on your environment concerns near the border by removing your illegal immigrants trash...Enjoy" !!!!

What Lou should be proposed is this: demand that DHS and EPA organize some of those "illegal" in the US to pick up their trash on the way back to Mexico... [/quote]


They would find enough bones of wild animals stripped bare of flesh by the teeth of border crossers and tortoise shells scraped clean for the meat to feed hungry illegal Aliens making the crossing to fill four large oil tankers holds.

That is about all that is left of the wildlife there.

Border trash troubles
http://www.yumasun.com/news/trash_34497 ... esert.html
FROM STAFF AND AP REPORTS
June 6, 2007 - 9:43PM
Despite cleanup efforts by various agencies and the federal government in the desert along the border, southern Arizona, including Yuma County, still faces the problem of trash left behind by illegal border-crossers.

Although trash is found all over the desert, larger quantities found in Yuma County are along the Colorado River and in designated "lay-up" spots or desert areas where undocumented immigrants await to be picked up, usually near interstate freeways and highways, said Ruben Conde, chief ranger for the Bureau of Land Management Colorado District.

Over this year, the Yuma sector Border Patrol has seen less trash, due possibly to the 68 percent decrease in the number of entries, although littering remains a problems, said Border Patrol spokesman Lloyd Easterling.

"I'm sure it's not all illegal aliens (leaving all the trash) but a great majority of it is," Easterling said.

The BLM Yuma Field Office sees a large amount of trash such as "lots and lots" of water bottles, food containers and clothing, plus items that help aid illegal crossings like carpet, foam and abandoned smuggling vehicles, Conde said.

"It runs a gamut depending on which area, which part of the border," Conde said.

When driving in the desert, smugglers not only violate regulations by driving off established roads and trails on public land but also destroy the landscape and vegetation, Conde said.

"They don't care if they're tearing up the landscape, if they're causing land erosion, if they're running over protected plants or cactus or anything like that. So that's a problem we're left with. The results of that: a scarred landscape and it looks terrible."

The amount of personal trash left behind also causes a "huge problem" because there are not enough people and resources to keep up with the area's desert cleanup. The trash that is never picked up is left and harms the environment.

"There's so much of it (trash) there's not enough volunteers to go to all these different places," Conde said.

Even Border Patrol agents have helped out in community projects to help clean up the desert, and individual agents occasionally fill up a plastic bag and bring it back to a city trash bin, Easterling said.

Nonbiodegradeable plastics, other man-made materials and other disposables left along the river bottom can get into the river channel, causing harm to fish and birds, Conde said.

Animals get tangled up in items and swallow objects that kill them, in addition to being disrupted in their natural environment by all the human activity.

Among the animals living in the area are two endangered species, the Southwestern Willow Flycatcher and the Yuma Clapper Rail, which primarily live along the Colorado River along the border, Conde said.

"It seems like a rare and minor thing but it's not, it's pretty serious. We're not
talking casual littering by a few people."

Not only does the trash do damage to the environment, but the cleanup is "extremely expensive, extremely expensive. We've spent tens of thousands of dollars just out of the Yuma field office over the past couple of years cleaning up trash related to illegal border crossers," Conde said.

Authorities estimate the 3.2 million-plus immigrants caught by the Border Patrol dropped 25 million pounds of garbage in the southern Arizona desert from July 1999 through June 2005. The figure assumes that each illegal immigrant discards eight pounds of trash, the weight of some abandoned backpacks found in the desert.

The trash is piling up faster than it can be cleaned up. Considering that the Border Patrol apprehended more than 577,000 illegal immigrants in 2004-05 alone, the BLM figures that those people left almost 4 million pounds of trash that same year.

That’s 16 times what was picked up in three years. And that doesn’t include the unknown amounts of garbage left by border-crossers who don’t get caught.

In 2002, the United States estimated that removing all litter from lands just in southeast Arizona — east of the Tohono Reservation — would cost about $4.5 million over five years. This count didn’t include such trash hotbeds as Ironwood Forest National Monument, the Altar Valley, Organ Pipe and Cabeza Prieta.

Since then, Congress appropriated about $3.4 million for a wide range of environmental remediation measures in all of southern Arizona. This includes repairing roads, building fences and removing abandoned cars.

The five-year tab is $62.9 million for all forms of environmental remediation for immigration-related damage across southeast Arizona, including $23 million for the first year.

Tuesday, July 29, 2003
THE BORDER: Illegals turn desert into trash dump
$2M to be spent on cleanup in S. Arizona
LUKE TURF

Tucson Citizen
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/news/local ... rder_trash

HUACHUCA MOUNTAINS - Stepping over bear and mountain lion dung with birds singing and snakes rattling nearby, three retiree hikers take a rocky trail a few miles into the backcountry. They go all the way to a once-beautiful ravine - now filled with a disheartening sea of trash.
A cool breeze worries one of the hikers, 69-year-old Alexa Cottingham. She knows that winds carry trash from a nearby illegal immigrant campsite over a cliff and into the ravine. There it will sit until the next breeze pushes it farther down the stream of waste.

Discarded pants and plastic bags are caught in a sotol plant. Hundreds of discarded water jugs are only the beginning of the problem. Jumex drink cans, tuna tins, Coca-Cola containers, pants, shoes, women's underwear and discarded feminine hygiene products, chips and bread bags, emptied canned fruit containers, hats and a tequila bottle blanket the landscape.

"We're used to the trash along the road and all of that," says Cottingham, who lives in Hereford near the border. "But having it this extensive, it was just as if they brought all of Mexico here. ... I didn't know how people could have that much trash."

It's been a problem as long as people have illegally crossed the deserts. It increased in southern Arizona in the late 1990s when the U.S. Border Patrol cracked down on illegal immigration into Texas and California, pushing illegal immigrants - and their trash - into Arizona's remote deserts.

To Cottingham and her fellow hikers, the problem seems overwhelming. It's just one example of pristine Sonoran Desert turned into a trash dump. Many southern Arizonans see it every day. About $2 million in newly approved federal funds should help address - though admittedly not solve - the problem in the short term, according to the Arizona congressman who helped secure the money. But some fear it's like trying to dam a river with a wine cork.

To combat the trash, Republican congressman Jim Kolbe of Tucson helped secure the money, half in this fiscal year's budget and half in the next one. At least $695,000 is already being put to use, according to Beau McClure, special assistant for international programs for the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency dispersing the funds.

It's just a fraction of the $20 million a congressional report estimates is needed to remove trash in southeastern Arizona's deserts. McClure says he's putting together a statewide estimate of how much money is needed for the border region, because the problem isn't limited to one corner of the state.

The Tohono O'odham Nation, where trash piles up as quickly as officials can measure it, is ineligible for any of the $2 million, McClure says.

An environmental specialist with the tribe, Ken Cronin, says about 1,500 immigrants sneak through the reservation daily. Each leaves an average of eight pounds of trash - totaling six tons - a day, he said.

"It's just blanketed," Cronin says of the tribal land. "It's pretty tremendous; there's a pretty severe visual impact."

Many of the trails and campsites used by illegal immigrants are in remote areas, but many of the places where they get picked up are close to residential areas. There they often drop what they're carrying, Cronin says.

Cronin estimates the O'odham need about $1.67 million to clean up their reservation.

Off tribal land, McClure says, the $695,000 he received in March has been put to such uses as an Earth Day cleanup in which about 40 volunteers from 20 agencies picked up garbage in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area near Hereford. He says "considerably more than half" of the money will go to other city, county and private organizations as compensation for cleaning the terrain. Most of the rest will be used for supplies such as gloves and trash bags.

"It's certainly not a solution to the problem; it's just a means to take care of some of the damage that's occurring," McClure says. "And it's going to be trashed again as the thousands of people come through the border - each day, actually."

That worries one of Kolbe's counterparts.

Democratic congressman Ra?ijalva of Tucson applauds Kolbe for bringing the funds to the area. Yet he is disappointed Congress hasn't made any progress on illegal immigration.

"It's a surface issue. The problem is much more fundamentally deep than that," Grijalva says. "The irony is that we continue to deal with the surface problem."

McClure says the wildlife disturbance, habitat destruction and degradation of wildlife health caused by the human waste will continue to destroy the ecosystem.

Beyond the dangers the trash poses to wildlife lies one of the biggest fears of Cottingham's fellow hikers.

Bill Clark, 74, pauses on the trail. He shifts his wooden hiking stick between his hands and bends to pick up a remnant of one of wildlife's biggest threats - fire. Between his fingers Clark holds a cigarette butt. He is also quick to point out nearby abandoned campfires, just three feet below the dry limbs of a tree.

This year's Eureka fire, in the foothills of the Huachucas, not far from here, burned about 40 acres. Officials believe illegal immigrants started a signal or cooking fire that got out of control.

"This is what scares the hell out of me. You see that fireplace there," Clark says. "See, it's hidden so nobody could see it, but it could get away ... and down that canyon real fast."

More trashed sites are likely until illegal immigrants stop coming over the border or start cleaning up after themselves. In the meantime, several groups addressing other border issues also take to the desert to pick up their trash.

Humane Borders, which maintains water stations in the desert for illegal immigrants, heads trash pickups once a month. Groups opposed to illegal immigration - such as Ranch Rescue, an armed group based in Texas that patrols private ranches, and Civil Homeland Defense, a sometimes-armed citizens patrol based in Tombstone - also regularly organize clean-ups.

And U.S. Border Patrol agents in each of the agency's stations organize periodic cleanups.

Until a more concrete solution is found, the federal money will be the biggest funding effort.

Over on tribal land, Jim Fletcher, the federal Environmental Protection Agency's tribal specialist on the border, is trying to get about $50,000 in grants to combat the problem.

The money would go toward cleanups, recycling, warning signs and even trash cans.

"We're about ready to try anything at this point in time," Fletcher says.

More than one way to skin a cat..
I’m against illegal immigration. Conversely, I support legal immigration. After all, I am a product of the legal immigration process. I am convinced that this really is the elephant in the living room that no one really wants to talk about. Yeah, they just passed a bill. The President thinks its great. Whoop-de-doo. Hardly anyone else thinks it’s great. I am absolutely convinced that unless you live in Arizona (or Texas, California, or New Mexico) that there is no way you can even begin to fathom this problem. No way.

A person could devote a whole blog to illegal immigration and its effects. The thing is, statistics can be skewed to favor one point of view or another. The whole debate may be too abstract to be clearly “winnableâ€

That's exactly what should be done. Load it up and take it back to Mexico for their disposal!!!!!!!!!!!!! If there is that much trash just in southern AZ, think how much there is in 2,000 miles. That would be quite a sight to see a CONVOY of trucks a couple miles long returning their garbage.......

LET'S BUILD WALLS INSTEAD OF BRIDGES
PART 6 of 11
http://www.newswithviews.com/Hayes/gianni14.htm
By Gianni DeVincent Hayes, Ph.D
July 16, 2006
NewsWithViews.com

The previous article offered documented facts on the impact of illegal aliens. This article is a continuation of it. It is the third article of four in Part II of 11 articles in all.

Noted immigration researcher, Frosty Woodbridge, reports the following [1]:

In 2003, 57,600 cars were stolen in Phoenix alone by illegal immigrants …at a conservative average of $15,000 per vehicle, and owner losses exceeded $864 million….Illegals use vehicles for smuggling people and drugs from around the world into our country

Arizona is the temporary home of 500,000 illegal aliens…costing [taxpayers of that state alone] over $1 billion annually in services for schools, medical care, welfare anchor babies, loss of tax base, and prisons.

Illegal aliens displaced American workers at a cost in excess of $133 billion last year according to Harvard Professor George Borjas.

Americans are paying taxes for many illegals who aren’t paying taxes.

Annually, 75% of drugs arrive from Mexico at a net cost of $120 billion hard currency that leaves our country for good….our tax dollars pay $80 billion for the War on Drugs each year.

When alien criminals get caught for rape, murder or drug distribution, we pay $1.6 billion annually in prison costs to house, feed and clothe those filling 30-percent of our federal and state prisons.

Over 300,000 women annually arrive pregnant and drop their babies [called anchor babies] on U.S. soil…we pay food, housing, medical, and school for them to age 18-plus…[the] average annual cost per child K-12 is $7,161.00 and exceeds $109 billion annually per cycle of anchor babies.

$56 [to $69] billion in pure cash was sent by illegal migrants to their country—Mexico--last year alone, after their kids received free education, free lunches, free medical care paid by U.S. citizens.

The average bilingual education per illegal alien student costs $1,200.00, also paid for by American tax payers. We educate 1.1 million illegal alien children each year…do the math. Additionally, many states offer â€

Government Estimates More Than 25 Million Pounds Of Trash Left By Illegal Aliens Expects To Spend $62.9 Million For Cleanup
By Digger
http://www.diggersrealm.com/mt/archives/001770.html

From 2002-2005 alone more than 250,000 pounds of trash was picked up in Southern Arizona. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management estimates that there is more than 25 million pounds of trash left out there by illegal aliens crossing the southern border. The estimates are too low though because they don't include certain areas of the border or trash left by illegal aliens who weren't caught.

The costs for picking up all of this trash? An estimates $62.9 million over 5 years. That is just for the current trash of course. As more gets left behind you can increase that bill.

I'm wondering where the environmentalists who opposed the border fence along Otay-Mesa in San Diego are. Shouldn't they be appalled and protesting this with vigor?

Arizona Star



It's even started turning up in smaller amounts in hiking areas closer to Tucson, such as Josephine Saddle in the Santa Rita Mountains on the route to Mount Wrightson, says the Southern Arizona Hiking Club.

"In the Huachucas, you are almost wading through empty gallon water jugs," said Steve Singkofer, the Hiking Club's president. "There's literally thousands of water jugs, clothes, shoes. You could send 1,000 people out there and they could each pick up a dozen water jugs, and they couldn't get it all."

...

Most of the garbage is left at areas where entrants wait to be picked up by smugglers. The accumulation of disintegrating toilet paper, human feces and rotting food is a health and safety issue for residents of these areas and visitors to public lands, a new BLM report says.

...

The trash also isn't good for wildlife, said Arizona Game and Fish spokesman Dana Yost. Birds and mammals can get tangled up in it or eat it, causing digestive problems, Yost said. It's not at all uncommon to find the trash in bears' stomachs, he said. Plastic bags, foil wrappers and certain foods are all problems.



It is constantly brought up by those in favor of illegal aliens that a border fence or enforcing immigration laws would be too costly for this country, but with the continued costs of illegal aliens being reported if you added it all up it would easily cover the costs of stopping this continued invasion of our country. From educational costs to social service costs to health care costs to uninsured motorist costs you can now add this trash cleanup cost. All on the backs of the US taxpayer.