Environmental protection rules may be evaded for wall

NEW YORK: The United States Customs and Border Patrol plans to use a 2005 antiterror law to sidestep an environmental impact study for a section of President Donald Trump’s border wall that will pass through a Texas national refuge for endangered ocelots, according to two government sources familiar with the matter.

Trump’s 2018 budget proposal calls for 51km of new border wall in the Rio Grande Valley sector of the USMexico border, where the 790ha Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge is located.

The area near the southern tip of Texas is home to 400 species of birds as well as a dwindling population of federally protected ocelots. Only about 50 ocelots remain in the United States, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

The sources said Customs and Border Patrol officials had informed them CBP would rely on exemptions provided to the US Department of Homeland Security under the Real ID Act, a law created on recommendations from the 9/11 Commission, so they could start building the section of wall without waiting for the yearslong environmental study.

Environmental impact studies are generally required under federal law whenever a proposal is made to build on public lands, including national forests, wildlife refuges and land managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

The Real ID Act also allows the secretary of Homeland Security to exempt CBP from adhering to the Endangered Species Act, which the sources said would otherwise make the wall’s construction inside the refuge impossible due to the presence of the ocelots. The sources asked not to be named because they were not authorised to speak publicly.

CBP spokesman Carlos Diaz declined to comment on the sources’ assertion directly. He said in emails that plans for constructing the wall were still uncertain and that the wall’s construction depended upon whether Congress authorised Trump’s proposed 2018 budget.

He added, however, that a government contractor has already begun testing soil samples on land near the refuge and that CBP got an official waiver for permission to do so.

Private industry advocates have said National Environmental Policy Act requirements for impact studies take too long. — Reuters