Greetings from Sierra Club Borderlands
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On Friday, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in our favor in the Sierra Club v. Trump case challenging border walls! The ruling is a slam-dunk courtroom victory, but doesn’t stop border walls: The Supreme Court has stayed an injunction that would have stopped the building of these border walls until they hear the case. That means traditional Indigenous lands, border communities, wild places and -- perhaps most importantly -- water, will continue to suffer until the Supreme Court acts to protect democracy and equal protection under the law.
It’s a hot, dry summer in the borderlands, and border wall profiteers such as Kiewit, Fisher, Barnard and SLSCO are making it worse by illegally sucking up scarce groundwater and building walls across fragile rivers and streams. Water is life. Border walls bring death by depleting people, wildlife, rivers and the Earth herself of precious, life-sustaining water. Gracias por cuidar el agua,
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Sierra Club Beats Trump in Court!
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Photo courtesy of Pedro Rios, AFSC.
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The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today ruled that the administration’s attempt to circumvent Congress and transfer $2.5 billion in military pay and pension funds for border wall construction is unlawful. The ruling came in a lawsuit, Sierra Club v. Trump, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the Sierra Club and Southern Border Communities Coalition. See the decision here.
However, last year the Supreme Court stepped in after our similar victory at the District Court level, issuing a stay against the injunction that we won, allowing wall construction to resume. That stay is still in effect, meaning new walls will continue to be imposed.
In addition, because of the waiver of laws and because Congress granted Trump billions for his racist wall, projects being built with Congressionally-approved funds will also continue moving forward. These projects are mostly in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, where many traditional Indigenous lands, wildlife refuges, and private properties are being seized by the administration right now in order to impose more walls. Please see our release and share on social media!
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Border Rivers and Groundwater in Peril!
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I often tell people, when you think of the border, don’t think of stereotypes about walls, sand dunes, white ranchers or drug smuggling. Instead think of water. Yes, water. Most of the México-U.S. border is defined by the Rio Grande River, known as the Río Bravo in México. The other third of the imaginary line frequently crosses arroyos, rivers and streams. Water is life, and that’s why there is so much precious community and ecology in the border region.
Today, that life, that water, is under threat by wall construction whose endless thirst for concrete depletes already stressed groundwater stores. Borderlands waterways are being dammed by poorly thought-out and hastily-built walls and structures, blocking the natural flow of water and wildlife, without the consent of local communities. All this to provide a racist backdrop for a racist candidate in a time of unparalleled violence against Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC).
The Department of Homeland Security and its profiteering border wall contractors refuse to tell the public how much groundwater they are sucking up to mix concrete for border walls. These greedy enablers of racist politics are tapping new or existing wells at the border, regardless of the fragility of local aquifers:
- California’s Jacumba Mountain Wilderness is meant to be a pristine and roadless desert oasis, with groundwater so fragile it is listed as an EPA Sole-Source Aquifer. Trump’s bulldozers, driven by Barnard Corporation, are demolishing the ecosystem at the Jacumbas, criss-crossing the valley floors with new roads and wells feeding a 12-inch plastic water pipeline that snakes for miles, with many leaks spilling water across the desert floor.
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Photo courtesy of Nick Ervin.
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- Kiewit Construction is now sucking up untold millions of gallons of water from beneath Arizona’s San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge, where painstakingly-restored wetlands host endangered species such as the Yaqui topminnow and the Yaqui chub. Walls built through here will block wildlife movements and are likely to be washed away at Black Draw and other flash flood zones nearby.
- Kiewit is also depleting groundwater beneath Arizona’s Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, walling off and drying up Quitobaquito Springs, a pond sacred to the Hia-Ced and Tohono O’odham, and home to endangered species such as the Quitobaquito pupfish. For these projects, Kiewit is pocketing $1.2 billion in money Trump stole from military personnel accounts.
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Quitobaquito (Rio Sonoyta) pupfish, credit Dennis Caldwell.
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- If that weren’t bad enough, Kiewit’s bulldozers have already made their way to the banks of the San Pedro, one of Arizona’s last free-flowing rivers. They intend to build a mystery structure across it, likely damming intermittent flows and blocking the last remaining north-south wildlife migration corridor along this 50-plus-mile stretch of racist, unnecessary, wasteful border wall.
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- Arizona’s Santa Cruz River is also slated to be dammed up and walled off. Trump awarded $1.3 billion to his contractor buddies of Fox News fame - Fisher Industries - after waiving numerous contracting laws that prohibit this type of corruption. Soon, Fisher will be sucking up groundwater from God-knows-where in order to wall off the Santa Cruz River just a few miles east of Nogales, Arizona, part of an enormous project that will wreak havoc on the Coronado National Forest and Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. Fisher has a long criminal history and its executives wear Trump campaign hats on their border wall jobsites.
- Fisher illegally built another border wall on private land in South Texas, within the floodplain of the Rio Grande, threatening to deflect floodwaters into local communities.
- SLS Co already pocketed more than $1.5 billion in Trump wall contracts, and did not consult local flood control authorities before removing the flood levees, in the middle of hurricane season, that they are replacing with border walls.
- Other communities being harmed by ongoing or upcoming massive new walls include Laredo, Texas, Columbus, New Mexico, Sásabe and Yuma, Arizona, El Centro, California, and many more.
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Hooray for Brave Zapata County!
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Meanwhile, a tiny county in Texas is resisting the Goliath Department of Homeland Security! Zapata County authorities have disallowed border wall surveyors from accessing a riverfront bird sanctuary that DHS intends to wall off. Learn more here.
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Black Lives Matter Worldwide Map
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Shout-out to Sierra Club Borderlands Team GIS volunteer Alex Smith, who was recently featured on NPR’s Here and Now for the amazing map he made showing the nearly four thousand cities and towns where Black Lives Matter protests happened all over the world! Listen to the story and view the map.
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