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| Trump to waive environmental rules to construct border wall | |
| 2017-08-03 | |
The announcement underscores the commitment from DHS -- now without a permanent leader after John Kelly's ascended to become White House chief of staff -- and theTrump administration more broadly making good on the president's signature campaign promise, despite not yet having a plan for the wall in place nor funding for its construction approved by Congress (though that is in the pipeline). DHS issued the environmental waiver for a 15-mile stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border near San Diego, starting at the Pacific Ocean and extending eastward, that the department describes as one of the busiest for illicit border crossings. "The sector remains an area of high illegal entry for which there is an immediate need to improve current infrastructure and construct additional border barriers and roads," DHS said in a statement. Under normal circumstances, a federal agency must complete an environmental impact study before beginning a major infrastructure project on public land. But a 2005 law grants the federal government broad authority to waive such environmental examinations and other legal requirements in order to expeditiously build a border barrier. Michael Chertoff, homeland security secretary under Bush, used the waiver five times, the department said. In this case, the waiver will be used to construct prototype walls, along with roads and other infrastructure, called for in a January executive order signed by President Trump. Brian Segee, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said his organization "will definitely pursue any judicial avenues we have available to us however limited they may be." The center — along with Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), ranking member on the House Natural Resources Committee — sued the Trump administration last month for failing to analyze the environmental impact of erecting a wall that they say will slice ecosystems in half. Last week, House Republicans approved a $1.6 billion down payment on the border wall over the objections of Democrats. Segee admits that Congress has granted DHS sweeping authority. "It's an uphill battle," he said. "It's a broad waiver." He added the center will review its options once DHS's decision is officially published in the Federal Register. -- By the numbers: Respondents to a new Pew survey of people around the world collectively finger the Islamic State and climate change as the top two global threats. Concern over the two issues are practically neck-and-neck: 62 percent of people around the world said the terrorist group is among the major threats to world stability while 61 percent said the same of climate change. There's relatively less concern about climate change in the United States: Only 56 percent (still a majority) of U.S. residents consider climate change a top global threat. But the partisan divide on the issue is vast. The survey found that 86 percent of left-leaning respondents in the United States were concerned about climate change while only 31 percent of right-leaning respondents felt the same way. -- Elizabeth Southerland, a 30-year veteran of the Environmental Protection Agency, becomes the latest in a series of federal employees who have publicly resigned over Trump environmental policies. She left her post as the director of the science and technology in the EPA’s Office of Water. Her announcement follows Interior Department scientist Joel Clement, who wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Post charging that the Trump administration reassigned him to another job for speaking out “about the dangers that climate change poses to Alaska Native communities.” | |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #1 Political opposition using environmental handcuffs - won't stop the wall. National Security weighs supreme |
| Posted by: Frank G 2017-08-03 10:55 |