To the Editor:

I am writing to urge every person who lives along the beautiful, irreplaceable St. Lawrence River to oppose the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol’s planned land grab of the Blind Bay wetlands area for a new mega-sized industrial complex. The CBP is literally planning to pave over paradise, one of the few fragile wetlands areas on the St. Lawrence River that is still protected.

 

There are probably 100 good reasons why the CBP plan is ludicrous but let’s just review a few:

 

1) The size of this planned facility is enormous: It’s 48,000 square feet, a detention center, a 100-vehicle secure parking lot, a dog kennel, a car wash, a fuel depot, boat ramps, docks, communications towers, all with high-intensity lighting and prison-like impenetrable barriers, with options to expand later. Who needs a parking lot, boat wash and dog kennel with river access? How do we think migratory birds and native wildlife are going to react to this wholesale invasion of their habitat? They will disappear, and may never to return. And the St. Lawrence will lose another natural wetland that filters the entire river. 

 

2) New York state politicians and local officials across the political spectrum are strongly opposed to the CBP plan: In this divided age, it’s been nearly impossible to unite our fractured political establishment but the CBP has managed to do it.

 

3) Those politicians have urged the CBP to build on other potential sites: The now-unused Bonnie Castle Recreation Center, which sits at the intersection of Interstate 81, Route 12 and the Wellesley Island International Bridge, has been offered as an excellent alternative. In Ogdensburg, New York state has a huge unused prison complex that is right on the river and right next to where U.S. border guards work every day at the international bridge to Prescott, Ontario.

 

4) The CBP already has a massive complex at Wellesley Island that they could expand. This site is fully degraded with all the high intensity lights and prison barriers you could want.

 

5) The Border Patrol already keeps their boats at a deep water dock at Keewaydin State Park. To get any type of dock into now-pristine Blind Bay — a protected wetlands — you would have to dredge a channel for hundreds of feet, wrecking a key spawning site for native fish. Not to mention that having big gasoline-powered boats patrolling the border is using technology from the 1950s. Has no one at the CBP heard of drones?

 

I could go on and on but you get the point. This is an unchecked federal agency deciding that it wants to spend our hard-earned tax dollars on building the fanciest mega-facility it can. Boys with expensive toys.

 

I am not writing this because I am a distressed neighbour — I live dozens of miles away from the Blind Bay site. But I do oppose degrading the entire river so one federal agency can get a new dock. 

 

I urge everyone to attend the hearings that the Border Patrol has scheduled to invite public comment: On June 25 and 26, from 4pm to 7pm, at the Cerow Recreation Arena at 615 E Line Road in Clayton, NY.

 

See you there!

 

Sheila Norman-Culp

Morristown