Wall trails Rio Grande, not private land

In a bid to overcome angry resistance to the government’s planned border barrier, federal officials have agreed to run a contested section close to the Rio Grande rather than slice through miles of private land.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the agreement with Hidalgo County officials Friday, hailing it as a precedent that could be echoed in other parts of the state where resistance to the barrier has been most intense.

“It’s a great model for what we can do,” he said.

“We are always interested in blending community needs and security.”

The idea to build a combination of 18-foot walls and levees along the Rio Grande in the southern Texas county began as a quick sketch on a napkin. The final plan was the result of collaboration between federal and local officials, some of whom initially opposed a physical barrier.

Lawmakers and Texas officials gathered at a Border Patrol station in McAllen to praise the arrangement for meeting national security requirements without strangling the close economic, social and cultural links between Mexican and U.S. border towns.

“This is a city named after a Scottish man in a county named after a Mexican war hero,” said Rick Perry, the state’s Republican governor, who also cited Texas’ 34% Latino population to illustrate the rich cultural mix that binds the border region and Mexico.

Perry praised Chertoff for his willingness to listen but chided others, particularly conservative radio and TV hosts, for touting simplistic solutions to a complex problem. “To them the border is a line on a piece of paper, a problem that is easily solved. The fact is: They’re just wrong,” he said.

Even as officials celebrated the agreement, local groups continued to raise concerns.

The day before, a local coalition opposing the barrier called on the Department of Homeland Security to delay the plan until a thorough study could be conducted on the environmental effect. “We are concerned that DHS intends to push through the idea of a wall-levee combination in the Rio Grande Valley before it has been thoroughly evaluated,” Stefanie Herweck, a spokeswoman for the No Border Wall Coalition, told local media.

Texas accounts for more than half of the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border.

Homeland Security has committed to building 670 miles of barriers along the border by the end of the year. (The agency already has about 107 miles of pedestrian fence and 130 miles of vehicle barriers.)

But pockets of strong resistance in Texas, where landowners bristled at government intrusion on their private property, have forced the agency to go to court to conduct preliminary land surveys.

The state’s two senators, Republicans John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, and Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar have stressed the need for the federal government to seek local input. Cornyn, who attended Friday’s event with Cuellar, said the way to approach the fence was not “in a one-size-fits-all way that Washington dictates.”

Hutchison added a provision to a spending bill that would require Homeland Security to consult with local officials if it wanted to get funding for fence construction. Department officials said they responded vigorously, holding more than four dozen meetings, town halls and open houses.

Federal officials characterized resistance to the fence as isolated, if strong. The department asked about 400 Texas landowners for access to their land to see whether it was suitable for a fence. About 370 gave the department permission to enter.

The Border Trade Alliance, which promotes trade between communities at the country’s northern and southern borders, praised the collaboration. But, said Matthew Howe, the group’s director of public policy, “we would like to see more accommodation on the part of the department to address the many serious concerns of local governments, private landowners and others.”

One official who initially opposed the idea of a fence was at the podium with Chertoff. Hidalgo County Administrator J.D. “Juan” Salinas admitted that he had “felt uneasy.” So he sketched out the basic levee idea with the administrator of neighboring Cameron County while they sat in the back of a Chevy Suburban.

The two men took the idea to Cornyn, then Perry, and eventually found themselves in Washington talking through the concept with Homeland Security and other federal agencies.

The county has raised $100 million through a bond and has begun work on a barrier-levee, which will extend over 20 noncontiguous miles. “If anyone wants border security, it’s us. We’re the ones who live three miles from the border,” Salinas said.

He added that building the barriers on federal property helped avoid conflict: “If we didn’t have that, they’d have to start going through private property and suing people, and we didn’t want that.”

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nicole.gaouette@latimes.com