U.S. to finish California border fence

WASHINGTON – In a rebuff to California officials and environmentalists, the Bush administration cleared the way Wednesday for completion of a 14-mile-long border fence that will run through coastal wetlands to the Pacific Ocean near San Diego.

Exercising the first waiver of environmental laws since Congress in May gave him the authority to do so, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said that completing the last 3 1/2 miles of the fence – at a cost of about $32 million – would allow the U.S. Border Patrol to create a security corridor between it and the existing border fence. The zone would include two new fences and two new roads for use by border agents, plus stadium-style lighting and surveillance cameras.

In the process, said Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar, the agency would be able to shrink the area agents need to physically patrol from 2,000 acres to 200 acres.

“Bottom line, this is about border security,” Aguilar told reporters. “We’re addressing the vulnerabilities here” in closing a border to potential terrorists.

Compressing the amount of territory the government patrols, he said, also will deter illegal immigration by creating “certainty of arrest in that zone.”

With Chertoff’s announcement, the department formally waived enforcement of environmental and other laws that had delayed the project – or threatened to.

In a statement issued by his office, Chertoff promised to “act in an environmentally responsible manner consistent with the security needs of our nation.”

But environmentalists who fought the project say the government is planning to use soil from a nearby mesa to fill in a canyon, nicknamed Smugglers Gulch, with enough dirt to fill two Hoover Dams. They believe it will trigger severe ecological hardships.

“This will cause a tremendous amount of damage to the Tijuana estuary, particularly downstream,” said Jim Peugh, chairman of the conservation committee for the San Diego Audubon Society. “The waiver means they don’t have to respect water quality or endangered species or labor or child safety laws. It’s a very chilling precedent.”