Border Patrol Plans To Erode the Rio Grande's Banks

categories: International, Pollution, Water

Published July 07, 2009 @ 09:52PM PT

Anyway, that's what the headline of this story should read, though the editors chose the following instead:

Border Agents to Dump Agent Orange-Like Chemical to Kill All Plant Life Among U.S.-Mexico Border

From the article:

(NaturalNews) The Border Patrol has temporarily postponed -- but refused to cancel -- plans to use helicopters to spray herbicide along the banks of the Rio Grande between the cities of Laredo, Texas and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, in order to kill a fast-growing river cane that provides cover for undocumented migrants, smugglers and other border crossers. ...

What happens when you completely defoliate river banks, perhaps with something like a broad-spectrum herbicide, is that the banks themselves start rapidly eroding, which silts up the river, which increases the chance that a freak storm, or one of the Gulf of Mexico's occasional hurricanes, will overrun those banks.

Now granted, we are talking about a river that's so extensively drawn down for irrigation that it doesn't reach the Gulf of Mexico all the time. But sometimes, even on the Texas/Mexico border, it does rain.

As to the particular herbicide planned for use, imazapyr, both Mexico and the European Union consider it more toxic than does the US EPA. The EU has gone so far as to ban it.

I wonder when we'll hear the Border Patrol planning to do something this stupid along the Canadian border. Oh wait, right, that'll be never.

Can't we just take it as a compliment that people want to come to our country looking for new opportunities? We should be flattered. Especially if they're looking for work, because every country needs good workers and hardly anyone can better prove their chutzpah than someone who's willing to come to a whole other nation where the customs are different and they stick out in a crowd.

No sense to be made of any of it.

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Comments (2)

My word, I knew immigration would spill over into sustainable food, I just thought it would have something to do with NAFTA. Your right though, this herbicide is the equivalent of agent orange. I'm not really worried about eroding the banks of the Rio Grande, I would be more concerned about poisoning the water.

Either way, this is a bad idea.

Posted by L.S. hope on 07/08/2009 @ 12:37AM PT
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P.S. You are talking about 2 4 D, right?

Posted by L.S. hope on 07/09/2009 @ 12:13AM PT
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Natasha is an amateur eater with severe snarkolepsy and a c. 2002 blogging habit. She had a fabulous time studying ecological agriculture and policy at The Evergreen State College, and even did her homework while writing at various times for pacificviews.org, boomantribune.com, and mydd.com.