Feds backtrack on border wall water after public outcry

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:16)
WBUR podcasts, Boston.

**Russell Johnson** (0:21)
Well, to me, it's kinda like, all right, you caught your kid with the hand in the cookie jar, but they're still eating the cookie.

**Chris Bentley** (0:29)
Customs and Border Protection says it will stop drilling new wells in New Mexico after Here & Now reported they were pumping groundwater without permits to build Trump's border wall.
It's Wednesday, August 5th, and this is Here & Now Anytime from NPR and WBUR. I'm Chris Bentley. Today on the show, a family escapes the Washington wildfires just in time.

**Ryan Herzog** (1:04)
The garage door opened at 2.53. We officially left our house, and we have video of the house on fire at 3.15.

**Chris Bentley** (1:11)
And wanna know why there isn't a full blown global energy crisis because of the US-Israeli war with Iran? You can thank China for slashing its oil imports.

**Rory Johnston** (1:23)
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.

**Chris Bentley** (1:29)
All that coming up in a few minutes. But first, we have an update on a story we broke from the US-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.
They'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.

**Gabe Vasquez** (2:00)
Our ranchers follow the state's water laws. DHS does it, 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.

**Chris Bentley** (2:18)
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. Peter O'Dowd shared some updates in this conversation with Anthony Brooks.

**Peter O'Dowd** (2:33)
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 people in this area without water. So that's a pretty significant about face.

**Anthony Brooks** (3:09)
Right. Sounds like it. So what's the immediate impact on the ground? What's going to happen?

**Peter O'Dowd** (3:14)
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 the 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.
The fact is these are like industrial scale wells. They can produce a ton of water.

**Anthony Brooks** (3:46)
Right. And in fact, speaking of a ton of water, last July, you spoke with the 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.

**Peter O'Dowd** (4:01)
Well, because there's a lot of walls. So the Trump administration got $47 billion from Congress to finish what the first Trump administration started. You've got like more than 1000 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.
And 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.