Border wall construction begins
Crews dug trench across riverbed of the San Pedro
Border wall construction has begun across the San Pedro River in southeastern Arizona, raising concerns about debris-filled floods that can sweep through the riverbed during monsoon storms.
Crews have already dug a trench across the riverbed to support 30-foot bollard-style fencing with swing gates to mitigate flooding and plans include a bridge across the river north of the international border.
The design for this 0.3-mile section of border wall came to light last month during an invitation-only online video call hosted by Customs and Border Protection, the agency that oversees border security. Fewer than a dozen representatives from conservation groups and local activists participated and no Indigenous representatives were invited on the call.
After CBP officials presented an illustration of the proposed bridge and fencing design in the June 12 call, questions remained unanswered. Officials said they did not know how high the bridge will be, according to a recording of the call obtained by The Arizona Republic.
The lack of public involvement in the design process has been a major concern for locals and conservation groups in this remote corner of Cochise County, where one of the Southwest’s last freeflowing rivers crosses the border from its headwaters in Mexico.
“Most of us there realized that (the call) was just to placate us and to be able to claim that they actually did reach out to us and give us information,” said Jeff Sturges, a Sierra Vista resident invited to the meeting.
He helped organize a demonstration earlier this year that drew more than a thousand people to the San Pedro border crossing, primarily locals from a variety of political backgrounds, to protest construction across the river.
“We saw it as a farce, really,” he said. “It’s pretty obvious that they’re using our tax dollars to kill our San Pedro River.”
Design includes fencing, gates
The finalized design for the section of border wall that will bisect the river was presented in the June 12 call. Michael Hyatt, patrol agent in charge of the station that monitors this section of river, Tucson Sector Border Patrol Chief Roy Villareal, and Paul Enriquez, the acquisition, real estate, and environmental director for Border Patrol’s Infrastructure Program, outlined the plan.
The new design includes 30-foot bollard-style fencing across the riverbed, installed with lighting and sensors. Southwest Valley Constructors, a subsidiary of Nebraska construction giant Kiewit, has already begun replacing 18foot bollard-style fencing on either side of the river with the new 30-foot fencing.
Last May, the federal government awarded a $646 million contract to the company to replace approximately 63 miles of existing vehicle and pedestrian barriers along the border in Pima and Cochise counties, including the San Pedro crossing.
The San Pedro swells to a deluge during monsoon storms, channeling debris like tree trunks and trash through the corridor. To mitigate that, the 30-foot fencing in the riverbed will be fashioned with two swing gates opening north, according to CBP’s finalized design.
The proposed designs vary in height and width, depending on their location on the river. The largest proposed gate panel is 18 feet high and approximately 8 feet wide. Combined with the adjacent panel, that creates an approximately 16foot-wide swing-gate opening. Those gates will be open throughout the monsoon, said Hyatt, the chief patrol agent.
Currently, Normandy-style barriers designed to halt vehicle traffic mark the international boundary in the floodplain, while Border Patrol agents patrol on either side of the river.
“With the gates I have now, they stay open late June all the way to end of September because sometimes we can’t predict where the monsoons are going to hit and which washes and features are going to get the most flooded,” Hyatt said in the private briefing. “So my plan is that we open the gates during the monsoon season. I’m a bit concerned about having them closed during the monsoon at all.”
The design also includes a bridge just north of the border that runs 550 feet across the river. The design of that bridge is still under review, according to CBP spokesperson Matthew Dyman, who responded to emailed questions from The Republic.
The agency will also clear a 60-footwide swath of land along the mountains to accommodate construction equipment, though in the briefing officials said they would avoid clearing the entire 60 feet at the San Pedro if possible.
The original proposed design included a series of culverts across the San Pedro with a road on top and lift gate on the south side of the culverts. It was rejected by the government based on information provided by stakeholders and after a hydraulic analysis, Dyman wrote in an email.
‘Making it up as they go along’
Still, the new design concerns locals and members of conservation groups, who say the area does not have significant numbers of migrants crossing the area illegally to warrant the cost to taxpayers and the impact on the river and the wildlife that rely on it.
“In the webinar, we only saw a bridge next to a wall and it didn’t have any details,” said Dan Millis, borderlands program manager for the Sierra Club, who also was invited to the private meeting. “It seems like they’re kind of making it up as they go along because they’ll say one thing and a week later they’re doing something else.”
On May 14 the office of Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz., who represents Cochise County, hosted a virtual meeting with environmental groups regarding the San Pedro River border wall design. CBP representatives were invited two days before the meeting, but were unable to attend due to security restrictions about using Zoom as a platform, the agency said.
That’s why CBP offered to host an invitation-only second meeting with those same environmental groups and activists, Dyman said in an email.
Soon after that second meeting, the construction contractor dug a deep trench through the riverbed to make way for the below-ground footers that will eventually support 30-foot bollards across the San Pedro River. Further construction of the bridge and the aboveground portion of the barrier will be dependent on the onset of monsoon activity, Dyman said.
Concerns about gaps for wildlife
Construction of border barriers along the Arizona-Mexico border has continued despite a ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued on June 26 saying the Trump administration had unlawfully circumvented Congress’ authority to allocate funds by transferring $2.5 billion from military construction projects to border wall construction.
The government has redirected $6.1 billion from the U.S. Defense Department for border wall construction and has signaled its intent to divert an additional $7.2 billion.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers already has awarded large parts of that money for ongoing construction projects, including the work at the San Pedro River.
As construction has moved forward in this largely conservative corner of Cochise County, long-cultivated relationships among local ranchers, environmental groups and Border Patrol agents have decayed, the mistrust fueled by a lack of communication and reliable information. Even Tucson Sector Chief Villareal admitted frustration in the recent private meeting.
“Rewarding of contracts, placement of wall and fencing was not communicated to us,” said Villareal in response to a stakeholder during the private webinar.
“We found out about it via public dissemination by the media. We had frustrations also simply because we weren’t in the loop of what was approved and that seems to be an ongoing issue for us,” he said. “We’ll try to wrestle that animal under control but it’s problematic for us.”
Myles Traphagen, who was on the private call, is borderlands program manager for the conservation group Wildlands Network and science coordinator for Malpai Borderlands Group, a coalition of local ranchers and conservation groups. He said he is particularly concerned about how the new barriers across the San Pedro will impact wildlife migration. The river is a “superhighway” for animals like deer, javelina, ocelots and mountain lions.
CBP plans to incorporate about 50 possible locations for small-animal passages along the 63 miles of taxpayerfunded border barrier projects in southeast Arizona. The openings will be 8.5 inches high and 11 inches wide to accommodate species that can’t fit through the 4-inch gaps between bollards, Dyman said.
“That can maybe accommodate a house cat, but that’s about it,” Traphagen said in his comments during the June 12 meeting.
In response, Enriquez, the Border Patrol real estate and environmental director, said the agency has biological monitors on site and has completed biological and cultural surveys for the currently funded sections of border wall, though they have yet to be published on the CBP website.
Sturges, the Sierra Vista resident and activist, visited the San Pedro site recently. When he saw cement blocks cutting through the newly dug-out riverbed, he could only describe the view as “horrific.”
“There’s no way to describe the feeling to have these people come in from out of state and just devastate our river,” he said in a recent phone call.
“Why wouldn’t that money benefit our county?” his wife, Liz Lopez, added. “Or even pay for our local agents who live here. It’s an economic issue as well as an environmental issue.”
“We know that we have a broad coalition of people across party lines who love that river, regardless of what they feel about the wall and border security in general,” Sturges continued. “The wishes of the people here have been totally disregarded. It’s really a crime.”
Erin Stone covers the environment for The Arizona Republic and azcentral .com. Send her story tips and ideas at erin.stone@arizonarepublic.com and follow her on Twitter @Erstone7.
Environmental coverage on azcen tral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Follow The Republic environmental reporting team at environment.azcentral.com and @azcenvironment on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram