Trump Is Blowing Up a National Monument in Arizona to Make Way for the Border Wall [View all]

[babylonsister]

Trump Is Blowing Up a National Monument in Arizona to Make Way for the Border Wall
Ryan Devereaux
February 6 2020, 2:24 p.m.


Contractors working for the Trump administration are blowing apart a mountain on protected lands in southern Arizona to make way for the president’s border wall. The blasting is happening on the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, a tract of Sonoran Desert wilderness long celebrated as one of the nation’s great ecological treasures, that holds profound spiritual significance to multiple Native American groups.

In a statement to The Intercept, U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed that the blasting began this week and will continue through the end of the month. “The construction contractor has begun controlled blasting, in preparation for new border wall system construction, within the Roosevelt Reservation at Monument Mountain in the U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector,” the statement said, referring to an area also known as Monument Hill. “The controlled blasting is targeted and will continue intermittently for the rest of the month.”

The agency added that it “will continue to have an environmental monitor present during these activities as well as on-going clearing activities.”

Rep. Raúl Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat and chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources, told The Intercept that he has zero faith that the Department of Homeland Security’s “environmental monitor will do anything to avoid, mitigate, or even point out some of the sacrilegious things that are occurring and will continue to occur, given the way they’re proceeding.”

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https://theintercept.com/2020/02/06/border-wall-construction-organ-pipe/?fbclid=IwAR09n4IJxku5pvJ94P8y17Tdr9bv6UEQLMLqSgQsL1f9jkZxs2oAZVg0qQA