Border wall fuels water fight

0:00Support for Here and Now Anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. It's going to pump us dry. That's a problem that becomes an immediate disaster. You've got livestock, you've got water, they can't wait. Everyone needs water. People, animals, farms, even President Trump's border wall.

0:43It's Friday, July 17th, and this is Here at Now Anytime from NPR and WBUR. I'm Chris Bentley. Today on the show, we check in on the drought-stricken West, where some ranchers are saving bathwater to keep their trees alive. It's pretty dire. My alfalfa production is nil. Another year like this is almost unsustainable. But that's not stopping the federal government from tapping New Mexico's aquifer to mix cement for Trump's border wall. More on that in a few minutes. But first, if you want to get a sense of just how dire the West's water situation is right now, a good place to go is Utah. Utah's Commissioner of Natural Resources, Joel Ferry, told us his state is in a drought emergency.

1:33This year, we saw the lowest snowpack on record that we've ever seen. You know, we're struggling with that. And so almost every system throughout the state of Utah is on, you know, like mandatory reductions. That is certainly the case in Emory, Utah, where Mayor Jack Funk has asked the 521 people who live in town to conserve whatever they can. Their lawns and trees, I told them they can keep them alive, be smart, and everybody seems to be just above and beyond the call to just do their best. I see them hauling bathwater and stuff out to the trees and quick showers, you know, that type of thing.

2:13Emory is an agricultural community right in the middle of the state. But rancher Kirk Christiansen told Peter O'Dowd it won't last long without water. The adjustments are really going to hit us this wintertime. My alfalfa production is nil. I usually do three crops of alfalfa. We got half of one crop. What's going on with the water? Do you have any? Well, not really. The ditch is running at 6 % of normal. Currently, I'm sharing water with my two sons, my son-in-law and my brother-in-law. So we've combined five ranches to run about an eighth of what we would normally run at any given time on one ranch.

3:03So it's pretty dire. We're looking really hard. I think I've got enough hay located to get us through the winter. Fortunately, we did have a few spring rains that brought the grass on our winter ranges. But those of us who don't have winter range are in a bad way, right? Yeah, you know, I can hear a little one in the background there. I don't know if that one belongs to you or not. That's the grandson. Your grandson makes me wonder if the family's had some sleepless nights. This is your livelihood we're talking about. Needless to say, we have, yes. But, you know, you can only worry about things you can do something about.

3:46So our goal is to just make a game plan to move forward and get through it. Another year like this is almost unsustainable for our folks. You know, it's tough. have you ever seen anything like this in your ranching the last big drought we had was in the early 2000s when hay went up to 230 a ton it's now at 250 so this one's pretty ugly you know my average uh feed budget's gonna more than quadruple you know it's gonna be it's gonna be tight have you had to trim your herd back because of that just to pinch pennies we've trimmed a little bit and we're planning on probably trimming some more unless we can unless we can make things work that's a catch-22 because right now the cattle market's very high which looks good for a cattle rancher in theory but when you can't afford to feed the animal it doesn't matter how far high the price goes you can't afford to feed the animal you know you know kirk we we were hearing from the mayor there who said that folks in town are saving their bath water to water their trees that sort of thing.

4:55I imagine as you gather in church on a Sunday, you're all talking about this. I mean, how's it affect the community? Yeah, we're praying for rain each week and each morning and each night, you know, we get on our knees and pray a lot. And we have seen a few little storms, which have helped keep some of our trees alive. Nobody's lawn's alive. It looks pretty dire. All the grass is brown and crackled up and waiting for the water to get warm. When you're in the other end of the house from the water heater, you store it and take it out and try to keep one tomato plant and a couple of trees alive. You know, that's just our reality right now.

5:30It's crazy. I'm thinking that praying for rain is a tough strategy. You got to do what you got to do, right? How concerned are you long term? Because conditions across the West haven't looked good for years now. Yeah. Well, it is what it is. You know, we love this lifestyle. And if we were all in it for the cash dollar, we'd get out and do something else, I'm sure of it. You know, our long term plans, we're working really hard with the state legislators and the national legislators to try to get some red tape moves so we can get some long term reservoirs figured out so that we don't find ourselves in this situation again.

6:16Kirk Christiansen, a rancher in Emory, Utah, he and his family are praying for rain as this drought across the western United States continues. Kirk, best of luck to you and your little grandson there. Thanks for talking to us. Thank you so much. You have a good one.

6:33Coming up next, when Peter O'Dowd got a tip that U.S. Customs and Border Protection was drilling deep, high-pressure wells into aquifers along the border with Mexico, he had to find out more. That story in just a minute.

7:01Support for this podcast and the following message come from strawberry.me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job? Are you stuck in a job you've outgrown or never wanted in the first place? Are your reasons for staying really just excuses for not leaving? Let a career coach from strawberry.me help you get unstuck. Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your corner and get 50 % off your first coaching session at strawberry.me slash NPR. Construction crews are busy trying to finish hundreds of miles of new barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border, but building a wall requires a lot of water.

7:41According to the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer, the federal government is drilling unpermitted wells into already depleted aquifers. State officials say they've counted at least six wells under development in New Mexico along the border. One of them is on Russell Johnson's cattle ranch. And that's where they're currently drilling right now. Looks like they've hit water, too. Johnson's ranch shares an eight-and-a-half-mile border with Mexico. He says a new well recently appeared on his ranch and another on his neighbors. Johnson relies on a natural spring to supply water for his cattle and his home.

8:15But with the federal government drilling new wells along the border, he's concerned the aquifer is about to drop fast. These wells that they're drilling for border wall construction, they're talking about trying to attain 300 plus gallons a minute. And it's going to pump us dry. And that would be a big problem. When you've got livestock, you've got water, they can't wait. And you can't haul enough water to keep them in good supply. So it becomes an immediate disaster. Johnson is also president of the Luna County Farm and Livestock Bureau. He says a punishing drought across the western U.S. has already forced him to significantly reduce his herd.

8:56Groundwater makes up more than half of New Mexico's water supply, and that reserve is shrinking. Most all of our wells are kind of struggling. In fact, the well that feeds my house, the pump is sitting on the very bottom of the hole. So why does Customs and Border Protection need groundwater to build President Trump's signature wall? This is used to mix concrete. Miles Traphagen is a borderlands biologist who's been documenting border wall construction since it began in President Trump's first term. What a lot of people don't understand is that the border wall is not just steel, but it uses a significant amount of concrete and Portland cement.

9:34And so that requires a tremendous amount of water. In neighboring Arizona, Traphagen says he's documented six wells along a 27-mile stretch of border construction. During the first Trump administration, ponds at the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge dried up after crews pumped millions of gallons of water to mix cement for the wall. The wetlands are home to endangered fish. Now, construction across the region has started again. Workers are building a 30-foot wall in places they didn't get to the first time. and a second barrier is going up where a wall already exists. Congress gave the administration nearly$47 billion to finish the project.

10:13It includes new sensors, lighting, cameras. This is a staggering amount of money and a staggering amount of resources that are being used for a border wall, and it's largely out of sight and out of mind. The issue is certainly on the radar of state officials in New Mexico. The wells are on federal property within a 60-foot strip of land that runs along the international boundary known as the Roosevelt Reservation. In April, Customs and Border Protection sent a letter to the state engineer's office that said the federal government is immune from state law that requires a permit to pump groundwater.

10:49We do disagree with that. Nat Chakeris is general counsel for the state engineer, the agency that regulates groundwater. In New Mexico, and it's the same in all Western states, it doesn't matter really if you're on federal land or land of other ownership. To drill water wells need permits from the state engineer. Chakras says CBP did exactly that for border wall construction in the first Trump administration. But without permits this time, it's impossible to know how much water the government is using and what kind of impact it would have on local ranchers. The Department of Homeland Security also maintains it has the authority to waive environmental laws to get the wall built.

11:29I reached out to DHS and Border Patrol for a statement. They haven't responded. Meanwhile, rancher Russell Johnson says he's all for security. He's a former Border Patrol agent, and he doesn't want people crossing illegally through his ranch, which he says used to happen all the time. We've seen a significant amount of destruction. The trash that's been left behind, several of us have had our homes broken into. Fortunately, I haven't. But he doesn't understand why the government needs to build a second wall in places where one has already been built, especially if it puts his water supply at risk.

12:03To me, it almost seems a little bit overkill. You know, they've been talking about there's going to be, you know, fiber optic sensor systems that are put in, cameras, different lighting and everything. It seems like if everything is working properly and you've got the Border Patrol agents back on the border where they're supposed to be, a secondary wall seems a little redundant. Johnson hosted a public meeting last night in Deming, New Mexico. He says more than 160 people showed up to express their frustration that border security might come at the expense of water security.

12:48Chris Bentley back with Peter O'Dowd. And Peter, we just heard your story about U.S. Customs and Border Protection using Western groundwater to mix cement for its border wall. At the heart of it was this disagreement between New Mexico and the federal government about getting permission to pump groundwater. The feds say they're immune from state permit requirements and New Mexico disagrees. So is there like a legal fight brewing here? Well, the state of New Mexico, the state engineer's office, I asked that very question as a lawsuit coming from their point of view. And I think they were being diplomatic here because it's kind of early in this controversy.

13:23I think they say they do not want a legal fight. What they want is for the federal government to listen to them and to recognize that this is a problem and to work with them so they can figure out how much water is actually getting used. But the response from the general counsel was eventually, yeah, if that doesn't work, all options are on the table, including lawsuits. So I think it's a possibility. But as we heard from the feds, they say they're working with the ranchers and with the state, but we'll see. Right. You got this letter from the federal government sent to the state of New Mexico, to the state engineer's office.

14:04And in that letter sent in April, CBP said, state law doesn't apply to them in this case. And that quote, some of the wells that are used for construction will be decommissioned, but not all of them. And they said that in their experience, maintenance of the barrier system does not require substantial amounts of water. So they could keep pumping water for quite some time to come, sounds like. They will. Yeah, no, not only they could, they are going to. I think that letter was an admission that they will continue to be pumping groundwater without filing for permits in the state of New Mexico, or most likely in other states as well, along the border, Texas, Arizona, that sort of thing.

14:43So yeah, it's an issue. And it was an issue during the first Trump administration to the extent that they were drilling wells. And as we heard in the story, there were pretty serious complaints of the water table dropping sharply in places along the border. So I think you can continue to believe that it will keep getting pumped from the ground. Right. And like you said, I mean, other border states could have a similar situation, Texas, Arizona, California. Is it just not possible or economical to mix the cement elsewhere or to bring in water from other sources and mix it on site? Well, it's very convenient to do it right there.

15:23Think about how many pilings you need to dig into the ground to build a 30-foot steel fence. I mean, it's a lot of water. We have drone footage of a water tanker getting filled from one of these basins in the desert. The water's getting pumped into one of these trucks, a water truck. I don't know exactly how many gallons of water are going into that truck, but it's a lot. And that's one truck. I mean, you'd need thousands of these loads all up and down the border, maybe more, in order to build a wall. And so the demand for the water is really high. And to have it right there at hand at the construction site, I think probably most likely makes the most economic sense, whether it's great for the aquifer or not, is to be determined.

16:08Yeah, fair enough. It's not just a nominal amount of water. You're talking about a flow here, a need for a constant supply in a very remote area. The fact that a wall requires so much water in the first place, I think it's just a reminder that everything is dependent on this resource that's increasingly scarce in the West. And this disagreement over permitting just seems to underscore that we don't really have a clear system to regulate groundwater in the U.S. No, and groundwater is a state issue. And so each individual state is going to say how they want to regulate it. In a place like Arizona, where I am, only about I think it's like 18 percent of the state is regulated, which means in every other place you can pretty much pump whatever you want to if you're sitting above an aquifer.

16:55And so it is a little bit like the Wild West. not a lot of rules and it's increasingly a valuable asset because as water becomes more scarce in rivers and reservoirs people are going to start looking at groundwater with ever hungrier eyes and so i think that's the concern that a lot of ranchers across the western united states have because in these rural areas i'm not talking about cities we're talking about rural areas where there's not a lot of other options for water and so once the aquifer drops it drops and it's going to be really hard to get that back up. And I think that's why there is a certain degree of panic going on for the folks who have relatively shallow wells.

17:36Well, we'll keep an eye on it and listen to more of your reporting as it comes soon. So Peter O'Dowd, you can read more of his story at hereandnow.org. Peter, thank you. Thank you, Chris. By the way, while you're at hereandnow.org, we've got lots more stories about water, including how desert states like Arizona are pushing back on AI data centers that use water to cool their servers. There are places where they make sense and where they're not sucking the groundwater and overtaxing the utilities. You can find that story and a whole lot more at hereandnow.org. And you can keep up with us, as well as see videos and photos from Peter's reporting along the border on Instagram at hereandnowradio.

18:24But that's it for the podcast today. Here and Now Anytime comes from NPR and WBUR Boston. Today's stories were produced by Peter O'Dowd and Lynn Managon. They were edited by Todd Munt and Chico Theori. Michael Scotto edited the podcast. Technical direction from Caleb Green and Matt Reed. Our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman, and me, Chris Bentley. Our digital producers are Alison Hagen and Grace Griffin. And Here and Now's executive producer is Alan Price. If you like this show, make sure you're following us in whatever podcast app you're listening to us on right now. We've got new episodes every single weekday of the year, so click that follow button.

19:03And thanks for listening. We'll be back with you on Monday.