Border Patrol hopes to repair and expand the road, which is currently dirt and runs about 10 to 12 feet in width.
At Thursday’s meeting of the Laredo Community College Board of Trustees, the board will discuss granting a temporary work easement to Border Patrol so they can move in large equipment to finish the 36-foot-wide road.
Although the Border Patrol already has an easement for the 36 feet, they need another, temporary easement, to bring in heavy equipment 20 feet around the road.
Border Patrol Spokesman Jason Darling said that the road is part of a “comprehensive strategy” that is needed for the agents in the area to “work safely and efficiently.”
But local environmentalists are calling it a hassle.
Jim Earhart of the Rio Grande International Studies Center, who is studying natural ways of eliminating the invasive carrizo that grows along the riverbanks, will find his studies without a home once construction on the road begins.
He pointed out a big, muddy pothole on the dirt road that runs by his study center.
“We don’t have any problem with getting this fixed,” Earhart said.
In fact, Earhart said that he would like to see caliche used to pave the road to create a more permanent, reliable fixture.
But he questions the Border Patrol’s methods.
He worried that the road may create erosion.
It will also force him to move the study into the feasibility of using animals such as goats to eat carrizo, an invasive species that Border Patrol also wants to do away with.
Besides Earhart’s studies, the area, known as Paseo del Indio, is an LCC walking trail used by students and naturalists to watch birds and other natural phenomenon.
“It’s inconsistent to have a 55-mph Border Patrol road blazing through a walking trail,” said Jay Johnson-Castro, executive director of LCC’s Lamar Bruni Vergara Environmental Science Center.
“This is not the right message.”
Johnson-Castro called it “militarized nature.”
There are about 1,000 species that inhabit the area.
Darling had few specifics about the project. He did not specify whether the speed limit on the road was, in fact, going to be 55 miles an hour.
He did say that “the United States Border Patrol takes into account respect for the public who may be in that area.
Part of that respect is paying the utmost attention to the safety of ... persons who may be walking in that area.”
Whatever the speed limits are, Darling said that the agents driving on the road will abide by them, not only for the safety of the public but for their own safety.
The project will be discounted for Border Patrol, thanks for the cooperative effort of a military detachment that will be helping out.
The military unit will use the construction as a training exercise. In total, it will cost about $750,000.
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