Feds backtrack on border wall water after public outcry

0:02WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Well, to me, it's kind of like, all right, you caught your kid with the hand in the cookie jar, but they're still eating the cookie. Customs and Border Protection says it will stop drilling new wells in New Mexico after Here and Now reported they were pumping groundwater without permits to build Trump's border wall.

0:34It's Wednesday, August 5th, and this is Here and Now, Anytime from NPR and WBR. I'm Chris Bentley.

0:43Today on the show, a family escapes the Washington wildfires just in time. The garage door opened at 2.53. We officially left our house, and we have video of the house on fire at 3.15. And, want to know why there isn't a full-blown global energy crisis because of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran? You can thank China for slashing its oil imports. We expected China to do something, but not this big. So that was by far the unexpected swing that the market didn't see coming. All that coming up in a few minutes. But first, we have an update on a story we broke from the U.S.-Mexico border. Ranchers in southern New Mexico were outraged that construction crews with the federal government were drilling wells without permits to pump millions of gallons of groundwater.

1:32They're using that water to mix cement for President Trump's 30-foot border wall. New Mexico's Democratic Congressman Gabe Vasquez brought this issue to the House floor last month. Our ranchers follow the state's water laws. DHS doesn't, and it appears that they don't care either. DHS contractors today are drilling deep new wells in Luna County for border wall construction, depleting this vital water source with no regard for permitting state law or the impact to border ranchers. Now, Customs and Border Protection has responded to the outcry, ordering contractors to stop drilling new wells. And the state of New Mexico is threatening to shut those construction companies down.

2:14Peter O'Dowd shared some updates in this conversation with Anthony Brooks. Well, I just got off the phone this morning from a Republican state lawmaker who covers this area, and she said really it was the outcry from public citizens that tip the scales here. So here's what CBP has said. It has told the contractor that's building the wall to pause the installation of any new groundwater wells. The idea is to minimize the impact on the water supply. And the government says it is trying to work with local landowners to make sure that construction of this border wall doesn't leave doesn't leave people in this area without water.

2:51So that's a pretty significant about face. Right. Sounds like it. So what's the immediate impact on the ground? What's going to happen? It's hard to know because that's pretty much all the government has said. I spoke with one of the drillers who is doing some of the work in this area. He says that drilling has stopped. A local rancher that I've been in touch with says that the wells on his ranch have been capped. But, Anthony, there's a lot of wells out there. From New Mexico to Arizona, we've counted about 14 new wells that have been drilled in the past few months. And the fact is, these are like industrial scale wells.

3:28They can produce a ton of water. Right. And in fact, speaking of a ton of water, last July you spoke with a rancher, Russell Johnson, who had one of these wells on his ranch. And he said the wells were designed to pump about 300 gallons a minute. That sounds like a lot. Why so much water? It is. Well, because there's a lot of wall. So the Trump administration got$47 billion from Congress to finish what the first Trump administration started. So you've got like more than a thousand miles of wall that's either under construction or in the works. This is they're calling it a smart wall. So it's got like new sensors and new lights and new roads.

4:07And a lot of the construction is actually a double wall. So you've got like 30 feet of steel where there's already a 30 foot wall in existence. And you need cement for that. You need new roads. You use it for dust suppression, as you said. So there's just it's a huge construction job. Now, speaking of that rancher who you spoke to last July, Russell Johnson, you spoke to him again yesterday. So I want to listen to him. Here he is. Well, to me, it's kind of like, all right, you caught your kid with the hand in the cookie jar, but they're still eating the cookie. You know what I mean? They've acknowledged that they're not going to drill any more new ones, but the ones that they do have, they're going to use, continue to use.

4:50and then the ones that, like I say, on our ranch and our neighbor, they capped them, but it's just a temporary deal, and those wells are still on the table if they decided they wanted to use them. All right, so how concerned are ranchers along the border right now? Russell Johnson's not satisfied. His point is that if they start using these wells that are already drilled again, if they take those caps off, the water level is going to go down. He can't provide water for his livestock. If he can't do that, they're going to die. This is a former border patrol agent who's also a rancher. He is not satisfied with the government's answer here.

5:27Right. And obviously, Peter, lingering in the background here is the fact that New Mexico is in a severe drought. Can the state afford to lose water to border wall construction? Well, I think the short answer is no. New Mexico gets more than half of its water supply from underground aquifers. And as I've been reporting for weeks and months now, like this water supply is under tremendous pressure, not only in New Mexico, but across the western United States. You've got things like the Colorado River and the Rio Grande and others that are pushed to the brink. And as the surface water supply experiences more pressure, the pressure on the groundwater supply is only going to get that much worse.

6:08And, of course, that's the savings account for these states. Right. Right. Herein now is Peter O'Dowd reporting from Phoenix. Thanks. Thanks so much for your reporting, Peter. Important story. Thanks. If you missed Peter's story from July, you can scroll back in this podcast feed and listen to it now. It's on our episode from July 17th. And you can find a lot more about this story at hereandnow.org. Coming up next, Robin Young speaks with a family that survived the Washington wildfires but lost their home. They talk about escaping the blaze with their dogs in tow and turning to their community for support.

6:43in just a minute.

6:54We're hearing of families who crept along gridlocked roads ahead of the fires in Spokane, Washington, escaping with their lives. The Herzog family we're about to speak with, they left their home behind and lost it. Everyone is safe now, thankfully, even their two dogs. Husband and wife Ryan Herzog and Annie Voy, Are you there? Yes, I'm here. We understand we've got your son, Ben Herzog, there as well. Ben, are you there? I'm here. Well, we appreciate all of you because even as you're going through, you know, not even having a toothbrush or whatever, you know, you want the country to understand what you've been going through.

7:32So thank you all so much. Ryan, let me start with you. What happened? I mean, did someone knock on your door? Did you get an alert? How did you know? I had come home at about 1.30. Where our house is, it kind of overlooks where the fire had started. So just for reference, the fire started about five miles from our house. So it wasn't close by. And we then saw an EVAC 3 notice, which was go now. Now, part of the problem with the evac notices is that we'd been getting evac notices all day for different locations. So I think most people kind of got immune to the notifications because you had got them in areas that didn't really fit where you were.

8:17And so then I went in. Annie had already been starting to grab a few things. And by 2.45, we were out the door. I think we officially left our house. The garage door opened at 2.53. and we have video of the house on fire at 315. Wow. So, yeah, we had a few neighbors that stayed way too long that got burns. One of them had said that the fire came up the hillside with the 40, 50-mile-an-hour winds to the point where there were 30 to 40-foot flames coming above our houses. Well, I have to just – the neighbors that were burned, you mean their house? Well, their house was burned, but there were a couple of neighbors that left late that had their shirts burned and from all the flying embers and stuff.

9:01So I think we all just saw it in the distance and could not imagine the speed at which it was jumped the river and made it up the hill to where we were. People talk about that. Annie, was there some disbelief on you? Could you believe this was happening? No, it was. We've seen fires all summer and watched them from our deck. And so this seemed like just one of the other ones. and it seemed far too far away to even be a risk. I told my youngest son, he asked, well, what do you think the chances are that it's going to get to us? And I said, like, zero. And it obviously came very, very fast. Well, and thank goodness you left as fast as you did.

9:43I'm stunned to hear that people, you know, their shirts were burning. Ben, can I bring you in? Yeah. So how old are you? I'm 18. Yeah. Were you home? I was not. So I was at a volleyball tournament at this park called Dwight Merkle. It's this big volleyball tournament Spokane has every year. And it's just like a bunch of pickup teams. And it's a lot of fun. And while I was playing, I saw like a little cloud of smoke come up. And I kind of just, oh, man, what's that? You know, I wasn't really worried about it at all. Even on the announcements, like the speakers, the people were like saying, oh, don't worry about it.

10:20Fire department just said we're safe. You know, we're all safe. if it has across the river or anything. And then maybe five, ten minutes later, they come on again saying, hey, we're in evac three now. We have to leave. And so that was tough just because I was worried about getting out. But it was pretty intense. Yeah, yeah. And not knowing how the, you know, each not knowing how the other's doing, how to be hard. And you have another son too. So, Ben, I want to stay with you. Do I understand you have the clothes on your volleyball playing back? That was it. Yeah. So all I had was a shirt with a, I don't know if I can say this, but the team name was balls in your face.

10:58Okay. Oh God. Well, let me just say you got a laugh and I actually, I'm glad to hear that because now you have a son walking around with that t-shirt that you probably don't want him walking around in. No, I was at, we're at the hotel. I'm wearing this graphic t-shirt you know and it's like people are looking at funny i'm like i had no choice i was playing in a volleyball tournament but but there's but there's some ability to smile given yeah you know yeah you've lost everything yeah yeah well and i think that's the ongoing joke of why ben doesn't have headphones is annie was sitting there grabbing stuff and just grabbing what she couldn't and just the naivety of us is she sees his headphones sitting on the kitchen counter and grabs a bag of chips for us to have for food, thinking this is going to be like a temporary evacuation.

11:52So we chose food, you know, a bag of chips, thinking we were just going to be, you know, displaced for a few hours and would come back. Yeah. Well, Ryan and Annie, you're both economics professors at Gonzaga University right there in Spokane. The school has been putting up displaced employees and their pets in temporary housing on campus. It's even housing National Guard members called in to help with fires. Their school's offering food, emergency loans, extra leave time, counseling. Has that helped you? Is that something you've taken part in? The youngest son's asking to go up and see the therapy dog today.

12:29So we might go up and see the therapy dog that they brought onto campus. We did temporarily check into the apartments, but knowing our situation was different. I mean, with nearly 70 ,000 people being evacuated, a lot of the people are doing the temporary housing for a couple nights, two, three nights. We went to look for something more permanent right away, knowing our situation was vastly different. And with 615, 700 homes being lost, we knew it was going to be hard to find something. So we kind of went more of the permanent route right away. We've been fortunate that we haven't had to dip into a lot of the resources that the university's had.

13:14But I think that's also a testament to the support we've had from the Spokane and Gonzaga community across the board. And Ben, you know, Ben, I'm thinking you're going to college, starting your freshman year, going to Rhode Island. And is there, you know, OK, excitement. But I'm wondering, though, you know, it might be interesting that you come, you know, having had this incredible experience and you're going to be meeting a whole bunch of freshmen who want to party. Yeah. You know, and I mean, I've had people I know reach out and, you know, just making sure I'm OK, like checking in on me. And so, you know, a little bit I was thinking, like, you know, I'm kind of sitting here surrounded by people I love.

13:56I'm like, it's going to be tough to just, you know, leave them all in two weeks. Yeah. You know, but kind of know that I have all them, you know, on my backs and I can call friends and text them. And I can always still kind of stay in touch with them. You know, it sounds like all three of you are having that adrenaline that kicks in after you realize you've survived something. Ryan, do you think you're done with this part of the country that is susceptible to these fires? Or what's your, yeah. No. Every, you know, my youngest son's like, well, where do you live and not have to deal with some natural disaster?

14:33And I was like, I don't know. Annie grew up in California. I grew up in Washington. So the West Coast is our home. That's what we keep hearing. The Herzogs, Ryan, Annie, Benjamin, thank you so much. And we wish you the best. Thank you. Thank you.

14:54coming up gasoline may not be cheap but it could be a whole lot more expensive considering the strait of hormuz has been mostly closed for more than five months one reason there is not a severe global energy crisis is because china has significantly cut its oil imports but how and why it's done this is a bit of a mystery more after the break

15:25Support 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. The U.S. and Israel's war in Iran has sent oil prices up. No surprise if you've been to a gas station lately. But it's all relative. Oil prices have mostly stayed under$100 a barrel.

16:09They have not soared to the$200 a barrel mark many feared they would. And one major reason for that is China. which has slashed its oil imports since the war began. But how can China afford to do that? And why is it even bothering? That's what we asked Rory Johnston, an oil market researcher and founder of CommodityContext.com. He told Scott Tong China's move came as a surprise. We never expected this scale of swing from China in the import market. And just for the kind of round numbers, three months prior to the start of the war, China was importing, say, 11.5 million barrels a day of crude on tankers that we can kind of verifiably and independently confirm.

16:50And that had fallen through June to around 6, 6.5 million barrels a day. And that was by far the largest kind of salve or kind of solve, if you will, for the unmitigated supply loss out of Hormuz. And we expected China to do something, but not this big. So that was by far the unexpected swing that the market didn't see coming. And let me just kind of pause you. So in a way, should we kind of think about we might have China to thank for gas prices being just north of four bucks because it could be north of six or seven bucks. That's entirely correct. So how could China be doing this since the Iran war began?

17:28China's been purchasing a lot less crude oil from the international markets. and you all are kind of looking for where it might be. But the critical question is, does it still have a lot in storage, which might be good for global supply, or is it starting to run out of storage, in which case it might start buying a lot again? Is that the question? More or less, yes. I see. So I'm hearing these various China mysteries, right? If it is holding on to a lot of crude oil, where is it? If it has a lot of refined product, diesel or gasoline, Where is it? I mean, those are important questions, but I guess a more maybe fundamental question I want to ask you is, why?

18:12Why might China want to be holding all of this? I don't imagine it's because we want to help the world keep oil prices stable. How do you think about why China might be doing this now? There's a bunch of theories as to why they're doing this. I think the most plausible and the least conspiratorial is that China is a deeply globally integrated, export-oriented nation that would be very, very bad for its economy and its prospects right now, particularly given the slump in its property market. If all of its potential customers suddenly went into recessions or depressions. Least of all that it's trying to diversify away from the United States towards, you know, the other major economic blocs, which would be East Asia and Europe.

18:55The two areas that were going to get hit hardest by the Hormuz shock, while North America were going to be relatively more insulated by domestic oil and gas production. Another theory that's more kind of nefarious is that maybe there was some kind of deal struck between President Trump and President Xi Jinping when they met a couple months ago when the Trump administration traveled to China. After that was when we started to see Chinese imports particularly fall off. Now, that could be just coincidental, but I think the timing lines up. What could China have gotten in return if Trump's looked at Xi Jinping and said, you've got to help us out, you've got to support, whatever?

19:30Well, maybe the U.S. will hold off on this trade war, a hold off on these tariffs, right? Exactly. Or even going further down the line, what is the overwhelming security concern of Beijing? It's Taiwan. And I think what you've seen through this crisis, particularly now that it's drawn out, You saw reports earlier today or yesterday that was talking about the near total depletion of U.S. kind of high precision munitions. Right. That's the question if the U.S. has maybe has enough right now for Iran, but that means it doesn't have enough in store for, say, something happening in the Pacific. Exactly.

20:04And I think the final thing, and this is, I think, more of an analyst favorite, or at least my analyst favorite theory, which is we've known for a long time that China has been trying to build this massive energy security blanket to defend and kind of shore up its external dependence on imported energy, imported commodities writ large. If something ever happened to the Strait of Malacca, China will be cut off from the vast majority of what it needs in the world. So we know that it had been building up massive crude stocks. We had suspected that it had been building up stocks of these fuels. It's leading the world in electrification of transport, not because of environmental concerns, although those are a peripheral benefit, but core because of energy security concerns.

20:44When you've created such a system, it would be nice to test it, right? But what could possibly simulate the conditions of a closure of the Strait of Malacca? Well, what if the Strait of Hormuz is closed? And like, well, this is a really interesting moment to do a dry run on this system that we've built up over the last decade. And if that is the case, it worked stupendously well because they've been able to basically have their external dependence without any material signs of kind of economic harm within the country, which is just a massive reveal through this crisis. So you talked about what is not very transparent about China and its crude oil, how much supply it has, how much gasoline it might be storing away.

21:23Does that mean going forward we really don't know if this relatively affordable crude oil in the world is going to stay where it is? Absolutely. I think that this massive kind of energy security weapon we have now seen effectively deployed, right now it's being deployed to our benefit. And I think we are all benefiting tremendously from the fact that oil prices are higher, markets are not tighter, et cetera, et cetera. But if we grant the idea that this is largely strategic in some way, that also means that they can reverse at any moment. Which, again, if you were being really, really nefarious, you would say, well, when would this be most painful for Trump?

21:59Well, you're going into the midterms. What if we keep this really, really loose and then hike it the last minute, you know, in September, October, when all of a sudden this is going to basically hammer consumers, the worst possible political moment. We often talk about how China has monopolized and dominated the future of the energy transition. Solar panels, battery tech, EVs. But one thing that North America in particular has always kind of hung its hat on is that, well, we've had this massive fossil fuel renaissance. We've had the shale patch, we've had shale gas, we've had the oil sands in Canada.

22:32North America is arguably as energy independent and secure as it's ever been. But what we just saw demonstrated was that China's energy security superpowers are not just isolated to the energy transition sector, but are clearly dominant also in the fossil sector. This cut is an equivalent swing to the entire policy strength of OPEC. That's the kind of scale of what we're talking about. And that, I think, is a staggering discovery through this. Rory Johnston is an oil market researcher and founder of CommodityContext.com. Rory, good to talk to you. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.

23:28Jake 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. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with you tomorrow.