Waivers make borders safer

Congressional Republicans have introduced legislation to issue U.S. Border Patrol waivers to certain environmental laws as necessary to secure not only our borders but borderline public lands.

The usual environmentalist suspects have wailed out of knee-jerk myopia.

It’s a mistake to view our borderline public lands as remaining pristine if we keep law enforcement out of them.

That train has left the station.

Those lands have already become immense magnets for smugglers, robbers and rapists of immigrants and illegal drug operations, for the very reason that they cannot now be effectively patrolled due to environmentalist obduracy.

Drug cartels have entire marijuana plantations and meth labs installed, even in our own Washington borderline wilderness areas. Into these they pour enormous quantities of illegal fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides and other toxins, which are left to pollute the ground and water sources indefinitely.

Moreover, they are viciously intolerant of wilderness enthusiasts who stumble into their operations. Some do not stumble out.

What is more a threat to our public lands: minimal, careful tracking and surveillance by U.S. Border Patrol (even if it occasionally gives the spotted owl temporary vapors); or armed drug gangs creating massive chemical hazmat zones therein and sometimes killing to defend them?

William Slusher

Okanogan, Wash.