Environmental Impacts of the Border Wall

• Date: 01 June 2017

6-2017 NEWS & ANALYSIS 47 ELR 10477

D I A L O G U E

Environmental Impacts

of the Border Wall

Summary

On January 25, 2017, during his rst week in oce,

President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order

calling for the “immediate construction of a physi-

cal wall on the southern border” of the United States.

Such a wall would span more than one thousand miles,

across many dierent habitats and many dierent com-

munities. Before a wall will be built, numerous ques-

tions must be answered: W hich environmental laws

apply? How might all this work? On February 16, ELI

convened experts to discuss how environmental law

and policy may interact with the Executive Order, and

to spark discussion about important environmental

resources and communities along the border. Below,

we present a transcript of the event, which has been

edited for style, clarity, and space considerations.

David Roche (moderator) is a Sta Attorney with the

Environmental Law Institute.

Dan Millis is Borderlands Program Coordinator with the

Sierra Club.

Andy Gordon is a Senior Litigator for Coppersmith

Brockelman PLC.

Sarah K rakof is the Raphael J. Moses Professor of Law at

the University of Colorado Law School.

Sarah Burt is a Sta Attorney with Earthjustice.

David Roche: Welcome to the very rst ocial installment

of our new webinar series, the Environmental Accountabil-

ity Project. For this pilot webinar, we have a fascinating

and diverse group of panelists and a similarly amazing mix

of attendees from law, policy, government, and the press.

And we couldn’t do any of this work without the Naomi

and Nehemiah Cohen Foundation, which has funded our

webinar series for many years.

Prior to the 2016 election cycle, when I thought of “the

wall,” having never practiced in this area, I thought of Pink

Floyd. Now, I t hink about tweets and politica l rallies. e

wall has entered the mindset of the general public after

Donald Trump made the border wall a central campaign

promise. Essentially discussions of the border wall were

like the old quote from Field of Dreams, but turned on its

head: “If you build it, they will not come.” Ostensibly, it’s

to prevent illegal immigration over the U.S.-Mexico bor-

der, but the wall took on a life of its own.

Today, we won’t be tal king in detail about the human

rights issues associated with immigration. W hat we’re

focusing on instead is the environmental and tribal rights

impacts and how they could play a role in the wall going

from a ca mpaign slogan to what it’s turning into now, an

infrastructure project.

e Nature Conservancy’s Texas Director Laura Hu-

man said, “e fence is the very denition of habitat

fragmentation, the ver y denition of what inhibits free

movement of wildlife within its natural habitat.”1 is

quote lays out much of the environmental ta ke, and that

fragmentation is not limited to wildlife. It extends to com-

munities, ecosystems, and even cultures. We’ll delve into

those issues today.

So, where are we now? On January 25, 2017, President

Donald Trump signed an Executive Order for the construc-

tion of the wall.2 He laid out his intentions, but ground

isn’t quite ready to be broken yet. Lots of hoops have to be

jumped through, like how it’s going to be funded, and dif-

ferent people have lots of dierent thoughts on that.

Let’s briey touch on some frequently asked questions

and areas th at we’ll be exploring today. Is it possible to

construct a wall on the border? A nd the answer is almost

certain ly yes. We have already established that, as our

panelists will be talking about today, and so this isn’t some

abstract th ing that denitely can’t happen. How long

could this process take? It’s uncertain, but these things

can move fast sometimes, if the U.S. Congress acts. So,

we need to be prepared to discuss environmental impacts.

And nally, there are the three big areas—human costs,

environmental costs, and environmental law—that are

really open to debate.

Our rst presenter is Dan Millis from the Sierra Club.

Dan has been one of the foremost experts on border issues

for many years. We’re really fortunate to have him.

Dan Millis: ank you very much for t hat introduction.

I’ve been working with the Sierra Club on border issues

since 2008. I’m origina lly from Flagsta, Arizona, and so

for me, this is an issue that really impacts my state and the

place where I grew up and the place where I still live today.

1. Melissa Gaskill, e Environmental Impact of the U.S.-Mexico Border Wall,

N (Feb. 14, 2016), http://www.newsweek.com/2016/02/26/

environmental-impact-us-mexico-border-wall-426310.html.

2. Exec. Order No. 13767, 82 Fed. Reg. 8793 (Jan. 30, 2017).

Copyright © 2017 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. Reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120.