By Tommy Hough and Rick Guerrero
San Diego County Democrats for Environmental Action hosted our first Environmental Report on the impacts of the Border Wall this past June, when our panel discussed legal efforts to stop the wall and its effect on ecosystems, watersheds, wilderness, and species in San Diego County where the wall passes through the Jacumba Mountains Wilderness and Otay Mountain Wilderness east of Chula Vista.
Now, as mountaintops are being blown apart with high explosives atop Indigenous burial grounds along the border in Arizona to facilitate even more miles of wall construction, how and when our ecosystems and cultural sites will stop being desecrated and destroyed goes to the incoming Biden administration, which thus far has offered no indication any current contracts signed for wall construction will be cancelled or even reconsidered after the 46th president is inaugurated.
Our organization’s second Environmental Report on the Border Wall and its related impacts is this Wednesday, Jan. 6th, via Zoom. We’ll hear from Scripps Institution of Oceanography graduate student Kristie Orosco, a member of the San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians and Kumeyaay Nation, and a guest lecturer at USD, San Diego State, and Cal State San Marcos. Kristie will discuss the native biodiversity at stake along our borderlands with the wall’s ongoing construction, and the Trump administration’s outright dismissal of environmental requirements and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requirements in doing so.
We’ll also hear from Dan Millis from Sierra Club Borderlands and see a portion of their presentation on the Border Wall, and its related environmental impacts throughout the southwest along the border with Mexico heading into the Sierra Club’s National Day of Actionon the Border Wall on Saturday, Jan. 9th.
As part of our meeting we’ll also get an update on the Binational Friendship Garden of Native Plants and Friendship Park from Daniel Atman with Sierra Club Borderlands, who spoke at our June meeting. A question and answer forum moderated by board members Rick Guerrero and Tommy Hough will follow the presentations of all three speakers.
Join San Diego County Democrats for Environmental Action this Wednesday, Jan. 6th, via Zoom at 6:30 p.m. for our second Border Wall Environmental Report.
Note: Within 24 hours of taking office on Jan. 21st, 2021, President Biden signed an executive order to rescind the Trump administration’s national emergency declaration used to rush the imposition of the Border Wall with money from the U.S. military budget. This does not mean border wall building has ceased, only that the federal government must find another funding source.
Photos courtesy of Daniel Whitman, Sierra Club Borderlands.
