Trump administration will bypass environmental laws for border project in Big Bend National Park

The Trump administration is once again bypassing federal environmental laws to speed up work on border barriers and related infrastructure in the Big Bend region of West Texas, this time for a project in and around the region’s namesake national and state parks.

According to a preliminary federal notice released Monday, the latest regulatory waiver will apply to more than 100 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border in the region, from near the Closed Canyon trail in Big Bend Ranch State Park through the entirety of Big Bend National Park and into remote parts of southeastern Brewster County.

In the notice, Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin wrote that the administration is bypassing a wide range of laws “to ensure the expeditious construction of barriers and roads” along the southern border.

While U.S. Customs and Border Protection continues to insist it will not build a 30-foot-tall steel border wall in either the state or national park, the agency’s current plans call for a mix of vehicle barriers, surveillance technology and patrol road upgrades in the parks as part of a project dubbed “Big Bend 4.” A CBP spokesperson confirmed that the latest waiver is intended for that project.

This week’s waiver comes after six former superintendents of Big Bend National Park penned a letter to Mullin urging him to not take such a step.

“This is devastating news, giving CBP unfettered authority to do anything they want within the national park,” said Bob Krumenaker, the park’s most recent former superintendent who now chairs the Keep Big Bend Wild advocacy group .

Technically, this latest regulatory waiver isn’t new: It’s a revision of a similar one issued in May for a different stretch of the border.

In Monday’s notice, Mullin wrote that last month’s filing – which initially applied to part of the Rio Grande east of Big Bend National Park – contained an “incorrect” description of the area covered by the waiver. The new filing contains updated GPS coordinates, changing the area of the border where federal laws will be bypassed.

The stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border covered by the Trump administration’s latest regulatory waiver for border security infrastructure is located between these two points on the map, according to GPS coordinates in a preliminary federal notice released Monday.

Park supporters have been particularly concerned about the potential for new road building along the Rio Grande, which Krumenaker said in a statement advocates will “continue to do everything possible to deter.”

“Their utter disregard for the will of the people, the taxpayers’ money, the actual data showing minimal numbers of border crossings inside the park, and the values that Texans and all Americans hold dear as represented by the National Parks leave us without sufficient words to express,” he said.

In a statement, a CBP spokesperson said the agency is coordinating with the National Park Service, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and other agencies.

“While there are priorities for new border wall and detection technology in (the Border Patrol’s) Big Bend Sector, the combination of barriers, roads, and technology (cameras, infrared illuminators, and other detection technology) in the areas adjacent to the Big Bend National Park and State Park are still in the planning stages, while CBP focuses on other higher priority locations,” the agency said.

The latest waiver will allow CBP to ignore a wide range of federal laws as it moves to install or upgrade a mix of surveillance technology, vehicle barriers and patrol roads in the parks, as the agency’s latest map of the Big Bend 4 project calls for.

“These horrific plans are an affront to the millions of Americans who treasure Big Bend,” Laiken Jordahl, an advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “Politicians who’ve never set foot here are signing a death warrant for this wild and beautiful place.”

The Center noted that the latest waiver notice, as written, allows for the installation of new border fencing, barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors.

The latest development comes as Customs and Border Protection is gearing up to begin construction on an actual 30-foot steel border wall through other parts of the Big Bend region outside the parks within weeks.

Amid months of shifting plans and public confusion about what exactly the administration is seeking to build in the region, anti-wall advocates have continued to sound the alarm about the physical wall plan, saying the approximately 175-mile border wall through Hudspeth, Jeff Davis and Presidio counties is still a threat.

Jordahl’s group, along with West Texas residents, has already sued the Trump administration over an earlier federal regulatory waiver intended to speed up the steel border wall. He said the Center for Biological Diversity will fight the new waiver “with everything we’ve got.”

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This story was originally published by Marfa Public Radio and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.