Last month our US Representative Will Hurd coauthored HR 399, a bill that is a threat to border communities and public lands, which authorizes $1 billion each year through 2019. It specifies the following measures for The Big Bend Sector [of Customs & Border Protection, U.S. Department of Homeland Security], which includes 510 miles of the Rio Grande river between Sierra Blanca and past Dryden.
The bill requires 192 miles of road construction, high tech surveillance equipment including balloons, drones and towers. Six miles of new vehicle fence plus an unspecified amount of other barriers.
It also requires three new forward operating bases equipped with security fencing, detention space, and helicopter landing zones.
It waives all laws relating to the administration of Wildlife Refuges, National Parks, the Endangered Species Act, the Historic Preservation Act, Antiquities Act, Wilderness Act, and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.
Among its many mandates, it would allow DHS to acquire private property by means of condemnation.
Depending on where the new roads would be built, along with all of the other activities including drone flights, it could have a very significant impact on Big Bend National Park and its visitors. From the South Rim, we might see surveillance towers with search lights, double-walled fences, and a brand new road paralleling or replacing the existing river road.
More than anything else this is an assault on the residents of the border and the publics lands by people who hate the Federal Government, and it would sabotage interagency cooperation on public land, which to date has been excellent.
I encourage everyone who values our relationships with our friends on either side of the border and our National Parks and Wildlife Refuges to contact our state and federal representatives and ask them to vote no on this bill. Will needs to hear loud and clear from his constituents (us!) that this is not in the best interests of the Big Bend community.
Roger Siglin
Alpine
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