Arizona Trail closed for border wall construction
TUCSON – Preparations to begin installing 30-foot steel bollards through pristine mountain wilderness along the Arizona-Mexico border south of Sierra Vista will begin as early as Monday, according to conservationists critical of border wall construction in protected federal lands.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced Thursday they would close access starting on July 13 to a popular hiking trail located in the Coronado National Memorial in southern Arizona in order to begin pre-construction activities, Matthew Nelson said.
He’s the executive director for the Arizona Trail Association, which looks after the 800-mile-long route that begins at the international boundary in the Memorial and extends north to the Arizona-Utah state line. The nonprofit submitted public comments in opposition to the project, and mobilized its supporters to do the same.
“As an association, our mission is to protect the trail and I feel like we failed in our mission, quite honestly,” he said.
Customs and Border Protection set up a call with the group Thursday to notify them of their construction plans and provide more details about their projected timeline for the project to install bollard fencing near the base of the Huachuca Mountains.
The agency told them they had received more than 7,000 comments from the public specifically about construction at the Coronado National Memorial, Nelson said.
“But it wasn’t enough to stop wall construction,” he added.
The Arizona Republic reached out to Customs and Border Protection for comment. The agency acknowledged the request, but had not responded as of Friday afternoon.
Nelson said that during Thursday’s call, top officials overseeing border wall construction in Arizona told them the project would be moving “very quickly.”
Construction to build two miles of bollard fencing at the Memorial is projected to wrap up in the weeks leading up to Election Day. But a second phase to install lights, sensors and other technology would follow, he said.
“So we’re looking at a closure beginning on Monday, and, I won’t say indefinitely, but there is no date at which time we can let the general public know that the trail would be open again,” Nelson said.
CBP officials also said during the call they had not finalized the alignment of the border wall though the Huachuca Mountains, meaning that it may not follow the international boundary line, which is delineated with a rusting barbed wire fence.
Nelson said the agency also said they would build an additional access road from Montezuma Pass down to the border along Yaqui Ridge, which is what the Arizona Trail largely follows as it winds down to historic Border Monument 102, the official start of the route.
Other questions remain unanswered, including how the construction crews will minimize environmental impacts within Coronado National Memorial or get the steel bollards and other construction materials to the site.
The park occupies 4,750 acres on the southern end of the Huachuca Mountains, a rugged landscape with no paved roads. To reach Montezuma Pass, which at 6,575 feet in elevation towers over the San Pedro Valley below, drivers must take a winding, narrow dirt road.
The Arizona Trail Association proposed a series of proposals to mitigate the impact, such as advocating for the use of technology in place of the fencing or rehabilitating the areas impacted by construction. But Nelson said they agency rejected them all.
Construction of border barriers along the Arizona-Mexico border has continued despite a ruling the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued June 26 saying the administration of President Donald Trump had unlawfully circumvented Congress‘s authority to allocate funds by transferring $2.5 billion from military construction projects to border wall construction.
To date, the U.S. government has redirected $6.1 billion from the U.S. Defense Department for border wall construction.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers already has awarded large parts of that money for ongoing construction projects.