Fence plan sparks debate

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TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) - A Homeland Security Department decision to waive environmental laws to try to finish building 670 miles of fence bordering Mexico by year-end could significantly impact Arizona's public borderland areas, including the endangered Sonoran pronghorn.

DHS plans to build part of its high-tech virtual fence - officially the Strategic Border Initiative network - on areas including the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and the adjacent Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, their directors said.

DHS has been requesting access to the refuge to install towers and access roads that would damage the environment. The agency's timeline for completion is so close that waivers are needed to avoid protracted environmental assessments.

''We're in a problematic situation, because the SBI towers are slated to go through the middle of the refuge, and it could cause serious impacts to our efforts to recover and maintain the endangered Sonoran pronghorn population,'' said Roger DiRosa, the Cabeza Prieta's retiring manager. ''We hope that DHS will work with us to minimize the impacts.''

Hardened roads would be required within the wilderness-designated refuge for equipment to build and maintain perhaps a dozen towers, DiRosa said.

The Organ Pipe Monument likely would get a comparable number of SBI towers, superintendent Lee Baiza said.

But DiRosa also said Kirk Evans, the SBI project director, ''has met with us, he's open to our concerns, and his office is considering potential options to minimize impact.''

Federal biologists are spearheading a captive breeding program on the refuge to save the pronghorn, North America's fastest mammal. DiRosa said DHS has no plans to put towers near a square-mile captive breeding pen.

DHS' virtual fence contractor, the Boeing Co., installed its pilot program last year - nine 98-foot towers with an array of radars, cameras, sensors and communications equipment along 28 miles of land near the southern Arizona town of Sasabe.

Their intent is detect illegal immigrants, smugglers and potential terrorists crossing the border to help Border Patrol agents capture them.

But ''Project 28'' has been rife with problems, and the DHS and Government Accountability Office officials told a congressional committee in late February that the fence doesn't meet contract requirements for detecting border intrusions. They said technological deficiencies would delay system expansion until 2011.

The acknowledgment came less than a week after DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff announced approval of the first virtual fence.

''We're not comfortable with the fact that Project 28 has not been proven out and yet Boeing wants to build all this technology and lay out all this infrastructure'' on the refuge, DiRosa said.

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