14 March 2007
U.S.-Mexico Border Report Addresses Security, Environment
Focus is on undocumented human crossings, hazardous materials, ecosystems
By Cheryl Pellerin
USINFO Staff Writer
President Bush and Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon appear before reporters Wednesday, March 14, in Merida, Mexico. (© AP Images)
Washington – Increased security at the U.S.-Mexico border drives the need to enhance protection for sensitive ecosystems and wildlife migration corridors, an independent advisory board told the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) March 13. The board suggested a range of approaches.
In Environmental Protection and Border Security on the U.S.-Mexico Border, its 10th bilingual report to the president and Congress, the Good Neighbor Environmental Board focused on undocumented human border crossings and transport of hazardous materials such as industrial chemicals, explosives and gases. It recommended ways to carry out security work along the nearly 3,218-kilometer border in environmentally friendly ways.
“The [Bush] administration will carefully consider your recommendations,” Mitchell Butler, CEQ associate director for cooperative conservation, said March 13 during the official report presentation, “and work to utilize these valuable insights to develop policy and inform our decisions on this extremely important topic.”
Board membership includes senior officials from nine U.S. government agencies, the four U.S. border states (Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas), and representatives from the tribal, local government, nonprofit, ranching and grazing, business, and academic sectors. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) manages the board, which was established in 1992 and whose meetings are open to the public.
The report’s basic premise, said Good Neighbor Environmental Board Chairman Paul Ganster, “is that we can have both environmental protection and security along the U.S.-Mexican border, and both are equally important.”
The board works closely with its counterpart Mexican environmental agency advisory groups and the Consejos Consultivos para el Desarrollo Sustenable (the group for Consultative Advice for Sustainable Development) to stay informed about issues on Mexico’s side of the border.
SECURITY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
The U.S.-Mexico border runs through five main ecoregions, according to the report, each with unique aspects – California’s fire-adapted shrub communities, with rare plants and great biodiversity; the Sonoran Desert’s saguaro cactus and palo verde trees; the Madrean pine-oak woodlands’ unusual bird species; the Chihuahuan Desert’s many lizard species; and two secretive and beautiful cat species of southern Texas and northeastern Mexico, the ocelot and jaguarundi.
In the border region, roads and foot trails created by undocumented migrants, migrant smugglers, drug smugglers and the agencies that pursue them damage fragile ecosystems and harm wildlife.
Trash and other solid waste left behind puts people and wildlife at risk for disease, and impenetrable border fences interfere with wildlife migration patterns and harm the environment.
To protect such areas, the report recommends building stronger partnerships between security agencies and environmental agencies, especially agencies charged with managing public lands, and using a mix of technology and people to do both kinds of work.
For example, using vehicle barriers and sensor technology rather than impenetrable fences could keep fragile habitat intact and allow for species migration.
Greater collaboration is needed among security and land-management agencies to deal with the increased flow of undocumented human crossings, along with integration of land management and security expertise, board member Jennifer Montoya of the World Wildlife Fund said.
HAZARDOUS CROSSINGS
The U.S.-Mexico border region also contains heavily populated urban areas with multilane border crossings.
“As the amount of commerce between the United States and Mexico has increased,” said board member Stephen Niemeyer of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, “so has the amount of hazardous materials flowing between the two nations.”
To ensure these busy border crossings are safe, secure and offer environmental protection from the risks of hazardous materials that ship through the entry points, the report recommends increasing the number of hazmat inspectors at urban crossings and establishing specific locations and hours during which vehicles carrying hazmat are allowed to cross.
The report also recommends removing barriers that prevent emergency responders from being more effective. This could include, for example, resolving insurance issues that keep responders from crossing the border with their equipment to help each other.
“The report also provides examples of projects that balance the need of security and environmental protection,” Ganster said.
A pilot project between the EPA and NASA’s Dryden Space Center in California, for example, will test the feasibility of using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to track hazardous waste shipments. RFID “tags” can be attached or incorporated into such shipments, and radio waves can be used to identify them.
Vendors will contribute tags, readers and technical staff needed for laboratory and field testing, and results will be posted on the Internet. The project’s goal is to track hazardous wastes leaving generators in the U.S.-Mexico border zone across the border and to a U.S. receiving facility. Field testing is scheduled for spring 2007.
More information about the Good Neighbor Environmental Board and the full text of the report are available on the EPA Web site.
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
