Federal money targets clean up: Youth Corps part of effort to pick up immigrant waste BY BILL HESS Herald/Review
SIERRA VISTA -- The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has received $720,000 to use to clean up trash left behind by illegal immigrants, and some of that money is earmarked to take care of problems on public and private land in Cochise County. The cleanup will help U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service property in the county, said Bill Childress, manager of the agency's San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area. The agency also is reaching out to county officials and seeking volunteer groups that want to clean up illegal immigrant trash. "The thing is that only UDIs' (illegal immigrants) trash can be picked up," Childress said on Monday. "We are trying to minimize the environmental damage caused by UDIs." Trash discarded by county residents is not part of the program, he added. In April, the BLM received the special money from Congress, with $420,000 of it going to the Tucson Field Office, which includes most of the county. The remainder went to the Safford Field Office that includes a portion of the county east of Douglas. The Tucson operation, which includes Pima and Santa Cruz counties, also will be taking care of trash problems on the agency's Las Cienegas and Ironwood properties, he said. "The money will buy 13 weeks from the Youth Corps Organization of Southern Arizona," Childress said. The Youth Corps, which works with mostly teens, costs $6,400 a week. The group will be contracted to work three weeks each at the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, Ironwood and Las Cienegas, and one week each for the Sierra Vista Ranger District of the Coronado National Forest, the Coronado National Memorial and for the Cochise County government, Childress said. Where the group will work for the remaining week has not been decided, he added. The BLM is providing material to be used in the program. Pallets of special heavy-duty garbage bags are at the BLM office in Sierra Vista. The agency ordered nearly 26,000 of the lime-green bags, which measure 38 inches by 65 inches, at a cost of about $25,000. The bags' bright color will stand out and let people known how much trash is being left behind by illegal immigrants, Childress said. The BLM also is hiring three student conservation associates, who are recent college graduates, to play a role in the project. Although the 12-month pay is not much -- $15,000 plus a small trailer to live in or $21,000 if they provide their own living accommodations -- Childress said the young people who are part of the contract procedure will obtain important job knowledge, especially if they are interested in working for the BLM in the future. Chris Hartman, 22, who graduated this year from Earlham College in Indiana, was the first to arrive. He earned a bachelor's degree in geology and art at the 12,000-student private college. Hartman has been on the job about a month and is scouting out areas along the San Pedro for cleanup operations. On Monday afternoon, he returned to an area along Lewis Springs, one of the few perennial flows into the river, and found an area he cleaned up a couple of weeks ago but was again trashed by illegal immigrants. Near what he calls the culvert condos, large metal devices under a railroad track, backpacks, pieces of men's, women's and children's clothing, empty food cans and plastic water bottles were thrown on the ground and hung from tree branches. Inside some of the culverts, branches from trees and bark torn off cottonwoods showed indications of being burned for use in a warming or cooking fires. There also was an airline ticket issued in Cuautla, Mexico, a community about 50 miles southeast of Mexico City in the state of Morelos, for a trip from Mexico City to Hermosillo for a 7:40 p.m. flight on July 5. Near Lewis Springs, illegal immigrants used an area as their bathroom. Fecal mater and other toilet trash floated in the waterway on Monday. The springs are where the BLM would like to re-introduce a native fish species. For Hartman, who visited the Southwest and Cochise County for a semester field trip while in college, it is hard for him to judge why the illegal immigrants are coming into the United States. He said it bothers him that the illegal immigrants do not care about the land, which he said is evident by the amount of trash they are leaving. As a test two weeks ago, he cleaned up abut 90 cubic feet of trash in 25 minutes. That area is now full of trash again, he said. Hartman, who calls Nashville, Ind., home, will be working with the Tucson-based Youth Corps Organization of Southern Arizona and others in developing a cleanup strategy to be approved by people such as Childress. Once the other two conservation associates come aboard, there will be a lot of work for them, Hartman said. Childress said this is the first year Congress has provided money for such a project. He said he hopes more funds will be made available to expand the program. A number of special concerns, especially when it comes to bio-hazards of some of the trash, such as human waste, Childress said. There will be training sessions on how to safely remove such material. The "tailgate sessions," will be part of the responsibility of Hartman and the other two student conservation associates, he added. The agency is preparing bilingual signs to hopefully advise illegal immigrants about taking care not to trash the environment, Childress said. The signs also will advise legal immigrants who visit BLM property that they may come upon illegal immigrants and how to take care of the situation. The BLM is looking at hiring state prison labor for cleanup projects and is willing to work with volunteer groups and environmental organizations such as The Nature Conservancy, Childress said. It is time to "blur the line between federal, state and local agencies and other groups to take care of the problem," he said. HERALD/REVIEW senior reporter Bill Hess can be reached at 458-9440 Ext. 115 or by e-mail at bill.hess@svherald.com. |
