First Rains Hit Smuggler’s Gulch Fill-In Area

This entry was posted by harry s truman on Thursday, November 27th, 2008 at 9:37 am.

Since mid-August, contractors have cut more than 1.2 million cubic yards of dirt from surrounding hills and deposited it into Smuggler’s Gulch, creating a 140-foot-tall earthen berm that vehicles can now drive across. The border fence has yet to be built.

The Sierra Club and the San Diego Audubon Society have long opposed the project, and the the California Coastal Commission once concluded that sediment runoff could damage the already fragile Tijuana River estuary, which had cost millions in state and federal tax dollars to restore. The next year, however, Congress passed legislation that enabled the Department of Homeland Security to waive all environmental laws that stood in the way of building the fence.

Now, with start of the winter rains this week and more rain expected, observers on both sides will get to see how well the massive project holds up.

Oscar Romo, a professor of urban studies and planning at the University of California San Diego, spent yesterday afternoon checking the site and a nearby sediment channel for erosion following the previous night’s rainstorm. “I saw what I had expected to see…Everywhere you look at the berm, there is erosion going on.”

The Smuggler’s Gulch fill-in is part of a $60 million federal plan dating to the mid-90s. At a cost of $48.6 million, Smuggler’s Gulch is by far the most expensive, and controversial, part of the project.

via SignOnSanDiego