11th Hour Reprieve Today for One Mile of Planet Earth

An 11th hour lawsuit coupled with international outrage have forced the US Border Patrol to suspend their plans to aerially spray one mile of the Rio Grande River with a toxic herbicide to defoliate it today.

An 11th hour lawsuit against the US Customs and Border Protection of the Department of Homeland Security buys time for creatures of 1000 living species that are slated for demolition along a 1.1 mile stretch of the US-Mexico border. Residents of local neighborhoods, whose homes are near the proposed Border Patrol pilot project site targeted to receive an aerial spraying by helicopter of the toxic herbicide Imazapyr, filed suit to impose an injunction on the action.

Tuesday, March 24, officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Border Patrol voluntarily agreed to temporarily delay aerial spraying of herbicide on carrizo along the Rio Grande River pending further international discussion of its cross border implications, according to Wednesday’s report in the Laredo Morning Times. This temporary and indefinite postponement, subject to negotiations, now appears likely to be subject to court action in light of the lawsuit.

The Border Patrol wants to eliminate the tall invasive weed carrizo to improve visibility along the border, thus facilitating their duties. If this spraying project is successful, they hope to extend the spraying across hundreds of miles, from Big Bend to Brownsville, Texas.

Further information is available today at noon at a press conference scheduled to occur at San Francisco Javier Parish in the barrio de Colores, one of the affected Laredo areas. A copy of the lawsuit is available upon request from attorney Israel Reyna of Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, according to information provided by Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr., Executive Director of the Rio Grande International Study Center.

Local news film footage of the controversy, including aerial photography of the Rio Grande, river bank photos of carrizo, reactions from concerned local environmentalists and Mexican political leaders is available at http://www.valleycentral.com/news/video.aspx?id=277287.

The March 2008 photo shows the effects of an aerial spray conducted six months prior on a test site near Laredo. The toxic herbicide Imazapyr is a substance which begins to kill all vegetation immediately upon application. It persists in the soil while its properties make it likely to contaminate the water of the Rio Grande, source of drinking water for Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

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by Forrest Higgs (xxx.xxx.xxx.157) 26 March 2009 21:25

Oh please! Even if you weren’t interested in stopping half of Mexico from moving to the US, the stripping of hydrophilic plant life along Texas rivers has been going on for over 75 years.

If you don’t do it, no water gets to the Gulf of Mexico and the pelagic fish populations collapse. When I was young there was a major federal effort to get salt cedar trees out of the Pecos river which flows into the Rio Grande valley. This species had effectively dried up the river and cut a big chunk of the water that should have been flowing down the Rio Grande completely off by transpiring it into the air through the hydrophilic salt cedar.

As well, if you don’t keep your river banks at least marginally clear you get some pretty awesome flooding when you get rains. All that brush cuts the flood flow way down and backs up the rivers. I see that a lot here in California where the tree huggers can’t get it through their tiny brains that just because something is green doesn’t mean it’s a wonderful idea for the environment.

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  by Billie Greenwood (xxx.xxx.xxx.204) 27 March 2009 00:16
  
  Critics are not opposed to the removal of carrizo, but rather, to the proposed methodology.
  
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by Forrest Higgs (xxx.xxx.xxx.157) 30 March 2009 05:36

"Critics are not opposed to the removal of carrizo, but rather, to the proposed methodology."

Oh yeah, where have I heard that one before? Oh yeah! I remember! We needed to remove underbrush in Calfornia so that fires, when they happen, wouldn’t crown and kill people. Ordinarily, you let lumber companies clear underbrush in exchange for a small tithe of the trees and it doesn’t cost you anything, or, failing that, you let the forest service do controlled burns not unlike what happens in the pristine wilderness.

The "activists" didn’t want lumber companies anywhere near the forests and controlled burns were a complete no-no. What they had in mind is that we had to hire enough state employees at union rates to do the job on the taxpayer’s nickle.

I think that was a "methodology" problem, too.

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