Fences Structure

The Rio Grande once ran wide and deep behind the four-room house that Pamela Taylor and her husband hammered together more than half a century ago. Migrant workers had to take a ferry upriver to get across from Mexico, and a flood once inundated the family's citrus groves. Over time, the waters receded, the river narrowed and Mexico got closer. Thieves led by a one-legged man stole Taylor's horses from the barn and beans off the stove. Drug smugglers hid marijuana in her bushes. Migrant workers would camp in her front yard and bring her fresh tortillas in the morning.

The Rio Grande once ran wide and deep behind the four-room house that Pamela Taylor and her husband hammered together more than half a century ago. Migrant workers had to take a ferry upriver to get across from Mexico, and a flood once inundated the family's citrus groves. Over time, the waters receded, the river narrowed and Mexico got closer. Thieves led by a one-legged man stole Taylor's horses from the barn and beans off the stove. Drug smugglers hid marijuana in her bushes. Migrant workers would camp in her front yard and bring her fresh tortillas in the morning.

Supervisors plugged an embarrassing loophole in the county's lawbook by adopting an emergency ordinance Tuesday requiring that fences be built around swimming pools. Thomas B. Mathews, county planning director, said a year ago that the board inadvertently killed the requirement that each new swimming pool have a 5-foot high fence with 4-inch vertical slats during a major "house cleaning" of unneeded ordinances.

An ambitious, multibillion-dollar project to hot-wire the new Southwest border fence with high-tech radar, cameras and satellite signals has been plagued with serious system failures and repeated delays and will probably not be completed for another seven years -- if it is finished at all. The system, originally intended to be completed next year, languishes in the testing phase in two remote spots of the border in Arizona. There, the supposedly state-of-the-art system combining sensor towers, communication relay systems and unattended ground sensors has been bogged down with radar clutter, blurred imagery on computer screens and satellite time lapses that often permit drug smugglers and undocumented workers to slip past U.S. law enforcement agents, government officials candidly admit.

Glendale resident Randy Carter has a simple message: Don't fence me in. Not only is it Carter's message, it is the law in Glendale. For nearly 80 years, residents have been banned from installing fences in their frontyards. Carter and many of the other 191,000 people who live in Glendale have nothing against the American icon to home and hearth. It's just that fences, any fences, would change the look and feel of the city's neighborhoods, Carter said.

If good fences make good neighbors, then what is to be said of all the fences that turned into rubble with the January earthquake? That's a question that many neighbors are asking themselves as they deal with the task of rebuilding the many fences that were destroyed or damaged and are still in need of repair. Who pays the bill is the focus of contentiousness by many not-so-neighborly neighbors throughout the San Fernando Valley and Ventura County.

If good fences make good neighbors, what do bad fences make? Inmates -- at least in Rolling Hills Estates. That's what Francisco Linares found out this week, when an L.A. County Superior Court judge sentenced him to six months in jail. His crime? Erecting a 180-foot-long fence while building his dream home in the horsy hills of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Never mind Paris Hilton and her 45-day sentence for serial probation busting.

A drive around the city reveals what lucky homeowners have: fences. There are chain-link monsters that collect leaves and twigs, and brick walls that utterly hide a home from view. And there are traditional white picket fences, such as the one built by Daniel Trevor around his charming home on a charming street in a neighborhood that conjures up New England. But Trevor's fence is illegal and has become the center of a controversy that will soon come before the City Council.

The Planning Commission this week ordered a homeowner to tear down a fence around his house because it does not conform to building code requirements. Hany Henein had illegally built a 6-foot wrought-iron fence along the sidewalk in front of his residence on Rocky Mountain Drive, near Brookhurst Street and Adams Avenue, planning staff members said. Under city codes, a residential fence may be no taller than 42 inches if it is built within 15 feet of public property.

Until recently, chain-link fences and fresh coats of paint were the standard remedies for vandalism in western Paramount. If their choice of landscaping ruled out the former, even the most vigilant homeowners could count on repeat visits by taggers, San Marino Avenue resident Yolanda Zuniga said. She remembers watching several months ago as city workers whitewashed graffiti in front of her neighbor's home. "Right after they painted, [vandals] were there to tag on it again," Zuniga said.

The government's plan to build a 670-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border took another step forward Monday when the Supreme Court turned away a legal challenge from environmentalists. The court's action clears the way for U.S. officials to press ahead with the project with little worry that judges will be able to stop it.

In a bid to overcome angry resistance to the government's planned border barrier, federal officials have agreed to run a contested section close to the Rio Grande rather than slice through miles of private land. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the agreement with Hidalgo County officials Friday, hailing it as a precedent that could be echoed in other parts of the state where resistance to the barrier has been most intense. "It's a great model for what we can do," he said.

Leaders in a small Texas border city said Wednesday that they felt blindsided after learning that a judge had ordered public land turned over temporarily to the federal government as it works on a fence along the border with Mexico. U.S. District Judge Alia Moses Ludlum ordered Eagle Pass to surrender 233 acres of city-owned land. The Justice Department had sued for access to the land Monday. Ludlum's ruling came the same day, before the city could muster a challenge.

The Bush administration warned landowners along the southern border Friday that it would seize their property if they refused to cooperate with federal efforts to build a fence meant to slow illegal immigration. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said he would give landowners 30 days to indicate whether they would allow federal officials on their land to survey its suitability for fencing. If they decline, he said, he would turn to the courts to gain temporary access.

LIKE the Hudson River School paintings that inspire her, artist Karen Blackwood has created a landscape of detailed naturalism. But rather than painting on canvas, she chose a concrete wall for her sprawling mural. The cinder-block wall that separates her driveway from her Burbank neighbors' property was an eyesore, as far as she was concerned. "I just couldn't look at it anymore," she says, "and planting was not an option" in the area between concrete driveway and wall.

A crew of U.S. Border Patrol agents, sweating under a hot Texas sun, squared off against an array of formidable-looking frontier fences. They swung axes at posts, used blowtorches to melt steel, tore through sheet metal with crow bars and scaled walls with ladders. Government engineers working with the agents rammed remote-control SUVs loaded with 10,000 pounds of sand into the barricades at 40 mph. The agents drew on secrets learned from smugglers.

A judge has ordered a mining company to tear down a fence that officials say is a threat to a den of rare rattlesnakes. The ruling from Dutchess County Supreme Court Justice Judith Hillery requires the Sour Mountain Realty Co. to remove the 4-foot fence in Fishkill, N.Y., by Saturday. Owner Jay Montfort said he will appeal. It was installed in February near a den of timber rattlesnakes on Montfort's property.

Several recent incidents of violence on and near high schools in the Southland have prompted Valencia High School officials to begin erecting a chain-link and wrought-iron fence around open portions of the school.

The first section of a high-tech "virtual fence" along the U.S.-Mexico border will be tested this month after defense contractor Boeing Co. reported it solved most of the computer glitches that have delayed the program for months, a federal official said Wednesday. Boeing personnel who briefed federal officials "sounded real optimistic" about the fixes, said Brad Benson, a Customs and Border Protection spokesman in Washington.

san luis, ariz. -- The federal government's border fencing effort has accelerated rapidly in recent weeks with barriers rising in towns from California to New Mexico and workers completing the longest stretch of continuous fencing on the U.S.-Mexico frontier. The Department of Homeland Security reached its goal of completing 70 miles of new fencing by the end of this month, nearly doubling the length of barriers on the border to about 145 miles.