Tempe council plans vote on anti-wall resolution
Environmental, animal concerns are raised
The Tempe City Council decided Thursday to put an anti-border wall resolution to a vote, backing concerns that such a wall could wreak havoc on the environment along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The resolution, which stems from a “No Border Wall” campaign started by the Center for Biological Diversity, was discussed at a Thursday work study session with nearly unanimous support.
The council will vote on the resolution on Jan. 18, a city spokeswoman said.
Tempe has joined a growing discussion among Arizona cities. Tucson and Pima County passed similar resolutions last summer, and Flagstaff City Council will review one on Tuesday.
Councilwoman Lauren Kuby and Councilman David Schapira first introduced the resolution at a December study session.
If passed, the council would send letters to President Donald Trumpand U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.,voicing its opposition to the wall. Unlike similar resolutions passed by other cities, Tempe’s would not commit to stop doing business with companies working on a border wall.
In an interview with The Republic,
Kuby addressed wide-ranging concerns linked to Trump’s proposed bor-
der wall, from dividing the Tohono O’odham Nation, to ensuring the security of Tempe’s immigrant residents, to protecting the endangered and threatened species that depend upon migration routes that a border wall could eliminate.
“The border wall isn’t going to only impact cities along the border,” she said. “Cities, I think, are the last bulwark of democracy.”
Kuby said the wall is “an arbitrary wall that’s going to impact migration patterns” and would slash through wildlife refuges along the border. A potential wall could cut through Texas’ Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge.
Schapira said he and Kuby boiled the wall down to three major impacts:
The message it sends to residents in the U.S. and around the world.
The impact it has on people.
The impact it has on the land and the environment.
“The wall, if it’s ever built, would be designed to impact humans, but the reality is it would impact all species in the region,” he said. “It’s an important consideration; we’re not the only living beings on this planet.”
Tempe City Council received support from Tucson City Councilwoman Regina Romero, who authored Tucson’s resolution.
“President Trump’s border wall would represent nothing more than a wasteful monument that hurts our communities,” she wrote in the letter addressed to the Tempe City Council. “Perpetuating fear, distrust and hatred of one another.”
What’s in the resolution?
Although the national conversation has been dominated by rhetoric both for and against Trump’s potential border wall, about 650 of the border’s 2,000 miles are already fenced.
Critics say a wall would destroy cultures — such as that of the Tohono O’odham Nation, whose people and land span both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border — or that it would hamper or eliminate the migration routes of endangered and threatened species and lead to their extinction in the U.S.
The Tohono O’odham Nation was the first governing body to pass such a resolution, said Laiken Jordahl, who works on the Center for Biological Diversity Borderlands Campaign.
“At this point, there have been (about) 30 different cities, counties, towns and tribal entities that have passed resolutions and that list is growing every month,” he said. “When you have an administration that’s not listening to the public, I think it’s important that local councils use what voice they have to express the will of their constituents and their voters.”
Jordahl said preserving the natural resources along the border is paramount for those who live along it, and for the rest of the country.
“At least over 1,000 miles of our border is made up of riparian areas and water,” he said. “The Rio Grande is, by far, the largest biome on the border. And the Sonoran Desert ... is one of the wettest deserts in the world.”
The Arizona Republic reported in 2017 that jaguars and ocelots would face increasing threats to their habitats if a border wall was built.
“Of course, if you build a wall, depending on the specs of that wall, it’s going to stop most species in their tracks,” Jordahl said. “A lot of people don’t think about it, but that actually includes owls and a lot of birds.”
Some governing bodies that have passed anti-border wall resolutions have included language barring the government from doing business with companies involved in the border wall’s construction.
Tempe city staff found the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona has signed a resolution opposing a border wall on tribal lands without the consent of those tribes, according to a Tempe staff memo.
Tempe’s potential resolution does not have that provision. One of the companies chosen by the Trump administration to build a wall prototype is Tempebased Fisher Sand & Gravel Co.
Kuby said the original draft would have opposed wall-involved companies. However, she felt it would be a lightning rod and detract from the broader conversation. Councilman Kolby Granville was the resolution’s lone opponent.
“I absolutely disagree with the border wall, but I do think this is a matter of federal policy,” he said at the meeting. “While I disagree on the border wall, I’m going to take a pass on this.”
He said he doesn’t want to sour city politics or alienate residents who are Trump supporters.
Many national issues — he cited election policies, U.S. Supreme Court nominations and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ opinions on marijuana — affect city governments, but that doesn’t mean cities have to legislate on each one of them, he said.
“In this case, I think it’s a close call,” Granville said. “I just don’t think it’s the role of city government to comment on every stupid idea the federal government has.”
Along with the draft of the resolution, Tempe City Council reviewed drafts of letters to McCain and Trump.
“We urgently call upon you (to) cease all efforts to build the border wall,” the draft letter to Trump says. “As you know, the border is a unique region with a diverse and rich environment. The existing border wall is doing significant damage to the environment.”
The wall “has caused the destruction of critical wildlife habitat, extensive soil erosion, and led to catastrophic flooding,” the draft says. “Expanding on the wall will only increase the environmental damage done along our border.”
Flagstaff considers a similar resolution
Like Tempe, Flagstaff council members were hesitant to oppose businesses involved with the potential border wall’s construction.
In a video of the Jan. 2 meeting, council members generally supported the resolution and entertained the idea of doing away with the opposition to businesses involved with construction.
However, Councilmen Scott Overton and Charlie Odegaard unequivocally opposed the resolution.
“I am 100 percent not interested in moving this forward,” Overton said at the meeting. “I think we have some significant challenges locally and this is one more example of us not focusing on what we need to do.
“I understand we have the votes, I understand we all have this impassioned plea by the community to respond to this, but I at some point have to speak up and say this is not in the best interest of the city and I’m not in support.”
Likewise, Odegaard said the resolution did not focus on the city’s best interests.
“Every resolution that we’ve had come forward, to this point, had a pretty imminent impact on this community,” he said during the meeting. “Except for this one.”
Neither councilman responded to a request for comment.
Councilwoman Eva Putzova, in a written statement to The Republic, said she supports the resolution and wants to see it go forward.
“I was 12 years old, living in the former Czechoslovakia when the Iron Curtain dividing Europe finally collapsed,” she wrote. “Any physical barrier to keep people in or out and preventing open contact is a tool of totalitarian regimes. As an elected official, I will always oppose any barrier that leads to human suffering and environmental degradation and advocate for divestment from corporations that profit from such humanitarian and ecological disasters.”
Only Putzova responded to requests for comment from The Republic.
At the Jan. 2 City Council meeting, Mayor Coral Evans hearkened back to the days of the Ronald Reagan administration when a president called for international walls to be torn down.
“I’m an ‘80s kid and I remember how the world celebrated the Berlin Wall coming down and that whole celebration that we had,” she said. “And I think it’s very strange that we are in 2018 now and we’re talking about a wall.”
The Flagstaff City Council is slated to review the resolution again at its Jan. 16 meeting.
Tucson and Pima county have resolutions
Tucson and Pima County last summer passed resolutions against the border wall and included provisions against doing business with any companies working on the wall.
Romero, Tucson City councilwoman, was part of the City Council’s unanimous vote in favor of the resolution.
“I think that environmental damages and billions of dollars wasted is in the interest of every city, town and county in Arizona, and, really, throughout the country,” she said in an interview with The Republic.
Although resolutions that leave out the opposition to wall-involved businesses can seem toothless in comparison to those of Tucson and Pima County, Romero said the resolutions can still serve to let council members and their constituents publicly voice their opposition.
Romero said she sees a border wall as an obstacle to trade between the U.S. and Mexico, an edifice that could destroy land inhabited by generations of Arizonans, Mexicans and Native Americans.
But, she said, it could also serve to drive endangered and threatened animals extinct in the U.S.
“Once animals go extinct, they never come back,” Romero said. “Extinction is forever.”
Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in the Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Follow the azcentral and Arizona Republic environmental reporting team at OurGrandAZ on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.