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Washington Post, Sept. 18, 2019
Border fence construction could destroy archaeological sites, National
Park Service finds
By Juliet Eilperin and Nick Miroff
Bulldozers and excavators rushing to install President Trump’s border
barrier could damage or destroy up to 22 archaeological sites within
Arizona’s Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in coming months,
according to an internal National Park Service report obtained by The
Washington Post.
The administration’s plan to convert an existing five-foot-high vehicle
barrier into a 30-foot steel edifice could pose irreparable harm to
unexcavated remnants of ancient Sonoran Desert peoples. Experts
identified these risks as U.S. Customs and Border Protection seeks to
fast-track the construction to meet Trump’s campaign pledge of
completing 500 miles of barrier by next year’s election.
Unlike concerns about the barrier project that have come from private
landowners, churches, communities and advocacy groups, these new
warnings about the potential destruction of historic sites come from
within the government itself.
The National Park Service’s 123-page report, obtained via the Freedom of
Information Act, emerges from a well-respected agency within the
Interior Department as the Department of Homeland Security and the White
House push ahead with their construction plans. While the government
scrambles to analyze vulnerable sites as heavy equipment moves in, the
administration also faces external challenges seeking to block the use
of eminent domain to seize land, as well as lawsuits asking courts to
halt work in and around wildlife refuges and other protected lands.
New construction began last month within the Organ Pipe Cactus National
Monument, an internationally recognized biosphere reserve southwest of
Phoenix with nearly 330,000 acres of congressionally designated
wilderness. The work is part of a 43-mile span of fencing that also
traverses the adjacent Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.
With the president demanding weekly updates on construction progress and
tweeting out drone footage of new fencing through the desert,
administration officials have said they are under extraordinary pressure
to meet Trump’s construction goals.
The Department of Homeland Security has taken advantage of a 2005 law to
waive several federal requirements — including the Archaeological
Resources Protection Act, the National Historic Preservation Act and the
Endangered Species Act — that could have slowed and possibly stopped the
barrier’s advance in the stretch in Arizona.
Trump: Nearly 500 miles of border wall will be completed by end of 2020
President Trump gave an update Sept. 12 on the construction of a wall
alongside the U.S.-Mexico border. (The Washington Post)
Some archaeological features along the border already have suffered
damage as Border Patrol agents zoom through in pursuit of migrants and
smugglers in all-terrain vehicles, according to federal officials and
two experts who have conducted research in the region.
Environmental groups have fought unsuccessfully to halt construction in
protected areas, arguing that more-imposing barriers could disrupt
wildlife migration and threaten the survival of imperiled species.
‘Take the land’: Trump wants a border wall by Election Day
But there has been little mention of the potential damage to
archaeological sites, where stone tools, ceramic shards and other
pre-Columbian artifacts are extremely well-preserved in the arid
environment. Desert-dwelling peoples have populated the area for at
least 16,000 years, particularly around the oasis of Quitobaquito
Springs in the national monument, one of the few places where the
Quitobaquito pupfish and the endangered Sonoyta mud turtle still live in
the wild.
The oasis was part of a prehistoric trade route, the Old Salt Trail,
where northern Mexican commodities including salt, obsidian and
seashells were plentiful, according to the Park Service. The traders
were followed by Spanish missionaries, Western settlers, and other
travelers and nomads who came to drink.
The springs and surrounding desert wetlands are just 200 feet from the
border, where crews plan to bring in heavy earth-moving equipment to
install the giant steel barriers. Scientists have raised concerns that
the springs could dry up if crews pump groundwater from the area for the
barrier’s concrete base.
CBP officials said the agency has looked at “most” of the archaeological
sites identified in the Park Service report and found just five that are
within the 60-foot-wide strip of federal land on the U.S. side of the
border where the government will erect the structure, an area known as
the Roosevelt Reservation, which was set aside along the border in
California, Arizona and New Mexico. Of those five, officials said, one
had a “lithic scatter” — remnants of stone tools and other culturally
relevant artifacts.
Construction crews do not yet have a plan to begin work at that
location, CBP officials said, noting that the agency has had discussions
with the Park Service about collecting and analyzing fragments of
historic significance from that site.
“We’ve been working very closely with the park,” said a CBP official,
who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s
plan for building near archaeological sites along the border.
The officials said they have not delayed or otherwise altered their
construction plans to conduct more detailed surveys or excavations in
the area.
Officials said crews with earth-moving equipment have started installing
barriers in a two-mile section east of the border crossing at Lukeville,
Ariz., a particularly busy stretch for illegal crossings.
CBP officials acknowledged that trucks and earth-moving equipment
driving through the fragile desert risk harming sites outside the
specific construction zones. The officials said they are following Park
Service guidance as to where workers can drive.
With CBP, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and their construction
contractors under pressure from the White House, federal land in the
West has become the easiest place to quickly add fencing. There are few
private landowners in the desert terrain outside Texas, and it is a far
easier place to build than along the winding riverbanks of the Rio Grande.
At least a dozen Native American tribes claim connections to the lands
within the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, especially near
Quitobaquito. They include the Tohono O’odham Nation, which used to
inhabit a large swath of the Sonoran Desert and whose reservation lies
north and east of the park’s boundaries. Members of the nation — who
have revived the practice of following the Old Salt Trail — have
protested the idea of any new construction in an area once inhabited by
their ancestors, the Hohokam, who lived there between 200 and 1,400 A.D.
Tohono O’odham Nation Chairman Ned Norris Jr. said his tribe remains
opposed to any new border fence construction.
“We’ve historically lived in this area from time immemorial,” he said.
“We feel very strongly that this particular wall will desecrate this
area forever. I would compare it to building a wall over your parents’
graveyards. It would have the same effect.”
Rick Martynec, an archaeologist who is conducting volunteer surveys of
sites within the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge along with his
wife, Sandy, said researchers have not had time to properly evaluate the
area now targeted for construction.
“Quitobaquito, as we know it, may be destroyed before anyone has had a
chance to evaluate the consequences of the current actions,” Martynec
said. “What’s the rush?”
He noted that relevant sites within the monument “include evidence of
hunting, farming and home sites” along with “historic cemeteries.” He
added that the adjacent wildlife refuge has other archaeological
artifacts, including a rare intaglio figure spanning several hundred
yards that was probably created for a ritual.
The Martynecs were doing research in the refuge at one point and saw a
Border Patrol agent on a four-wheeler motoring up a road on which the
agency was not authorized to drive, “right over a huge roasting pit”
used by an ancient community, he recalled. They later checked to see if
an incident report had been filed — as would be required if the agency
was traversing that land — but none had been, Martynec said.
In the Park Service report summarizing the results of a survey of 11.3
miles along the U.S.-Mexico border, the agency’s archaeologists note
that previous research had “identified and recorded 17 archaeological
sites which likely will be wholly or partially destroyed by forthcoming
border fence construction.” The park experts, who conducted their survey
in June, identified five more archaeological sites that also would be
imperiled and would deserve to be protected by a National Register of
Historic Places designation.
The report notes that staffers were unable to complete a survey of the
entire length of the U.S. side of the border that lies within the
monument’s boundaries. Park Service archaeologists plan to survey
another 1.7-mile section of the park’s southern border later this month.
Kevin Dahl, Arizona senior program manager for the National Parks
Conservation Association, said that under normal circumstances, the
agency would take steps to protect archaeological sites under its
purview, including a lengthy excavation process if necessary.
CBP has announced plans to complete this section of barriers through the
national monument by January. Those plans call for new fencing in five
or six “non-contiguous areas,” including places within the monument
where the archaeological sites are found, agency officials said. The
sections of new barrier are not necessarily contiguous because the
terrain might be too steep or mountainous to install a single, unbroken
span of fencing.
The project within the monument includes a new steel bollard fence
running continuously for 9.1 miles, reinforced with an 8- to
10-foot-deep concrete-and-steel foundation.
“Archaeology takes time, and they have a deadline,” Dahl said, referring
to CBP. “Putting a wall there is insane. This is just one more reason
why ramming this wall through, using illegal, unconstitutional money, is
damaging to these public resources. We’re destroying what the wall is
supposed to protect.”
National Park Service spokesman Jeremy Barnum said the agency’s mission
“is to preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values
of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and
inspiration of this and future generations.” But he noted that some of
the parks along the U.S.-Mexico border have been subjected to
“cross-border illegal activities” and that the agency has coordinated
with the Department of Homeland Security to address the issue.
In 2002, a park ranger at Organ Pipe was shot and killed as he pursued
members of a drug cartel hit squad who had fled to the United States
from Mexico. The Park Service closed more than half the monument to the
public the following year but reopened it entirely in September 2014.
“The National Park Service appreciates the role of an integrated border
security approach and values the ongoing interagency efforts to address
the multidimensional issue,” Barnum said.
An archaeologist working for a CBP contractor, Northland Research, is on
site every day when crews are working on the barrier fence, according to
federal and tribal officials. The firm referred requests for comment to
the government agency.
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