Don’t bypass law

Friday, April 4, 2008 | 2:06 a.m.

The Bush administration is bypassing federal environmental laws to move forward with construction of about 500 miles of fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has extended waivers for swaths of land in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, allowing fence construction to move forward without studies of how the project will affect protected wildlife, sensitive habitats or cultural and historical sites.

The Homeland Security Department has issued such waivers before in 2005 for a section of fence in San Diego and last year for two sections of fence in Arizona, USA Today reports.

But this latest waiver encompasses hundreds of miles in four states significantly more area than was involved in the previous waivers and includes ecologically sensitive and historical cultural sites, environmentalists and residents of the region have said.

Homeland Security officials issued a statement saying the agency “remains deeply committed to environmental responsibility” and will work to “ensure impacts to the environment, wildlife and cultural and historic artifacts are analyzed and minimized.”

We wonder how thoroughly construction’s effects on the border region’s natural and cultural treasures will be “analyzed and minimized” without following the federally regulated environmental review process.

Without the formal review, there are no requirements for the public and scientific scrutiny that would allow the government and the American people to determine whether the project’s effects have, indeed, been “analyzed and minimized.”

What Chertoff and other Homeland Security officials have minimized is the value of hundreds of miles of sensitive habitat, the wildlife it sustains and the historical and cultural sites it possesses. Although we believe that the nation’s borders should be safeguarded, a nation in which government officials waive laws whenever they feel like it isn’t secure.