PODCAST: Will Border Wall Harm Environment? Does That Matter?

Podcast — Parts Per Billion — Feb. 22, 2017

You may have heard that Donald Trump wants to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border—he mentioned it once or twice during his presidential campaign.

There’s, obviously, been a lot of talk about the border wall—its cost, its foreign policy implications, even its basic morality. But you don’t hear too much about how the wall would affect the environment.So, this week on our biweekly environmental podcast, Parts Per Billion, we’re going to focus on exactly that.

Alan Kovski, Bloomberg BNA’s natural resources reporter, says a wall could have some serious consequences for water resources that span the international border and especially for wildlife that moves back and forth between Mexico and the U.S.

Typically, the federal government would have a tough time getting a project like this to comply with all of the environmental laws that deal with water quality and endangered species. But Alan says, thanks to a somewhat-obscure, decade-old national security measure, in this case the Trump administration will likely be able to just ignore them.

 

This story was produced for Parts Per Billion, the biweekly podcast produced by Bloomberg BNA News. It is presented here as it was originally posted at BNA.com.

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