Dive brief:
- Twenty new miles of border wall has been fast-tracked in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas after the Biden administration waived 26 federal laws to spur construction. The exemptions, published in the Federal Register On Wednesday, avoid time-consuming reviews and lawsuits challenging violations of environmental, public health and cultural preservation laws.
- The Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act were among the federal laws that the Department of Homeland Security waived. It’s the administration’s first use of executive power, though former President Donald Trump used the tactic often to build the border wall.
- In the announcement, DHS said the new border wall in Starr County, Texas, will be erected in a busy Border Patrol area with “high illegal entry.” The project will be built with funds from a 2019 congressional appropriation for border wall construction, which stems from a Trump-era disaster declaration. The cost of the project has not been made public.
Diving knowledge:
US Customs and Border Protection first announced the project in June and shared a additional construction map in August The barrier will begin south of Falcon Dam and pass through Salineño, Texas.
The project includes 18-foot-tall, 6-inch-diameter bollards embedded in a movable concrete barrier-style base, as well as gates, lighting, cameras and access roads, according to the CBP announcement.
Last month, CBP detained more than 200,000 migrants crossing the US-Mexico border, the highest figure so far this year. In September, Mexico agreed to deport migrants from its border cities to their countries of origin and take several other deterrent measures.
“At present there is an acute and immediate need to build physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the U.S. border to prevent illegal entries” in the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in the announcement. “It is necessary to waive certain laws, regulations and other legal requirements to ensure the rapid construction of barriers and roads.”
Environmental reviews can add delays and costs to projects of all kinds. Permit review processes it can take up to 10 years and delays make the price go up. The new border wall will cross the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, which is home to endangered plants and animals such as the ocelot.
Building the wall stops wildlife migrations and destroys habitat, environmental advocates say. Last month, the US Government Accountability Office released a report detailing this serious damage than other parts of the border wall have caused to wildlife, public lands and indigenous places.
A U.S.-Mexico wall was a signature issue for former President Donald Trump, with some 458 miles of fencing and other barriers built in several states along the nearly 2,000-mile southern border under his control Much of this involved upgrading or replacing existing barriers; the amount of new wall built by the federal government covered 80 miles, 21 of them in Texas.
President Joe Biden promised during his election campaign to stop all wall construction between the two countries, but since then, his administration has repeatedly funded efforts to strengthen existing barriers and also built new structures in Texas. Last summer, Biden also authorized loopholes in the border wall near Yuma, Arizonato fill
