Last year near the US-Mexico border, a canyon was filled in with about one and a half million cubic yards of soil to accommodate the building of a border fence. The work was completed in May, and already the altered landscape has been blamed for flooding in December; many believe the predicted heavy El Niño storms this winter will cause more erosion and flooding because of the filled-in canyon.
The earthen berm that was built across the canyon, known as Smuggler’s Gulch, apparently doesn’t have the erosion control measures that would usually be required, since some requirements were waived to allow the federal government to go ahead with the project. Hydroseeding has failed to revegetate the slopes. The California Coastal Commission, which opposed the project from the beginning, and other organizations had sued back in 2004 to stop the project because they said it threatened the Tijuana River estuary, but the Department of Homeland Security was granted authority to go ahead, waiving both the environmental laws and the litigation.
The nature of the project—intended to stop the smuggling of drugs into the US from Mexico and the passage of people into the US illegally—is somewhat different from logging projects for which requirements have been waived. Should the federal government have the right in any circumstances to circumvent erosion control and other environmental laws?
You can see more on the situation here.