Don't fence them in

I stood on the cottonwood-lined banks of the San Pedro River in Arizona recently and watched it flow freely under a "water gap" fence -- two strands of barbed wire and two of wound cable. Those four strands, which mark the line between Mexico and the United States of America at the edge of the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, are a modest boundary to be sure, as most of the border has been since 1848.

Soon, this border will get a much more powerful and disturbing representation. If the Department of Homeland Security and the Army Corps of Engineers have their way, a "vehicle barrier" made of railroad ties will cut across the river (although it will have to be removed each year before the monsoon floods, which would easily whisk it away). There are plans for permanent vehicle barriers just beyond the riverbed -- steel posts sunk into 3 feet of concrete. And for "pedestrian fencing" made of double rows of concrete-filled 14- to 17-foot-high bollards. And for the "Sandia"-style variant, which uses panels of tight steel mesh. There will be a new "all-weather" road, lighting and electronic surveillance towers.

And a price tag of $7 billion. For starters.

Faraway Washington has forgotten just how much cowboys can't stand fences. And in this case, there are lots of cowboys: artists, students, activists, even politicians.

My guides of the San Pedro, for instance, were Greta Anderson, a Tucson-based environmental activist, and the accomplished painter Peter Young, a longtime Bisbee resident. The barbed wire is bad enough, said the artist, but this new fence would be "an atrocious scar upon the landscape." The environmentalist spoke of jaguars and ocelots, of debris buildups and erosion and the possibility of the river itself "migrating."

The San Pedro River, which runs atypically from south to north, will be virtually dammed as far as most people and many animals are concerned. Human migrants will be pushed from the river valley to torturous trails that cross the 9,000-foot-high peaks of the Huachuca Mountains; it is nearly certain the human death toll will begin to rise in the area.

This will happen because the Department of Homeland Security says so. The Secure Fence Act of 2006 mandates 700 miles of barriers, easily the most ambitious and controversial infrastructure project in border history. And although the department does indeed have the power to say so -- including the authority to waive National Environmental Policy Act rules in the name of national security -- resistance to the "wall" is proving to be a political obstruction Beltway politicos and Homeland Security functionaries hadn't counted on.