Rio Grande Institute

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U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Mexican Minister of Environment and Natural Resources Juan Elvira Decide to Strengthen Conservation Cooperation in Big Bend Area of the U.S. – Mexico Border

Washington, D.C. and Mexico, D.F.–In conjunction with the North American Leaders Summit held in Guadalajara, Mexico, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Mexican Minister of Environment and Natural Resources Juan Elvira announced today their commitment to strengthen conserva tion along the U.S. – Mexico border. The Secretary and the Minister will develop a plan to enhance coordination in the Big Bend and El Carmen area of the border and report to Presidents Barack Obama of the United States and Felipe Calderón of Mexico in six months. The proposed plan will take advantage of national parks and protected areas already designated in the Big Bend and El Carmen region, without prejudice to each country’s existing legislation, border security, and rights. “Building upon our shared history of ecosystem and species conservation, the plan will develop a model of bi-national cooperation for the conservation and enjoyment of shared ecosystems for current and future generations,” said Secretary Salazar. With more than 268 river miles and 3 million acres of contiguous parks and protected areas on both sides of the border benefitting under this proposal, 14 percent of the entire U.S.-Mexico border will enjoy strengthene d conservation coordination. The joint announcement marks the renewal of a bilateral process to develop one of the most significant conservation initiatives considered by Mexico and the United States at the border, while also taking into account border security. Sixty-five years ago, the Presidents of the United States and Mexico exchanged letters on the creation of the Big Bend National Park in the United States, wherein they envisioned the conservation of the shared ecosystems on both sides of the Rio Grande in the Big Bend region of Texas in the United State s and Chihuahua and Coahuila in Mexico. Mexico later established Cañon de Santa Elena and Maderas del Carmen protected areas in Chihuahua and Coahuila. Over the years, park rangers, scientists, volunteers, landowners and local communities on both sides of the border have diligently conserved the spectacular landscapes, wilderness, and habitats in both countries, in one of the most biologically diverse regions of the world. The June 2009 designation of Ocampo Protected Area by President Calderón completed a critical piece of this vision, forming a contiguous set of protected areas across from Big Bend National Park in the United States. Additional United States protected areas adjacent to Big Bend National Park include: Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River, Big Bend Ranch State Park, and Black Gap Wildlife Management Area, all in Texas. “The U.S.-Mexico bilateral process is expected to highlight the biodiversity of the region, to consolidate environmental coo peration between the two countries, and could eventually20constitute a symbol of the new era of the relation between Mexico and the United States with respect to bilateral cooperation in the conservation area” commented Mexican Minister Elvira. He added that “the Secretaries of the Interior and of the Environment and Natural Resources recognize in this mandate the vision of the Governments and trust that a proposal can be developed soon for further consideration by the Presidents.”

— DOI —

8 • Desert Candle – Spring 2005

THE RIO GRANDE

BORDER

By Tyrus G. Fain

______________________

The river has had many names. Paul

Horgan, in Great River, listed seventeen,

including P’Osoge, meaning great river in

Tewa, and Rio de Las Palmas, a name

bestowed in 1519 by the Spanish explorer

Pineda.

The Rio Grande I learned about in school was an

“American” river, our third longest. It began in the

Rocky Mountains of Colorado, flowed through New

Mexico and Texas and ended at the Gulf of Mexico. In

truth, the river needed help in reaching the sea,

counting on a hefty contribution from the Conchos

tributary – water generated by rains that fall in

Chihuahua and the Sierra Madre mountains of

Mexico.

The entire Rio Grande/Rio Bravo basin drains an

area of 182,215 miles extending across the jurisdic-

tion of two sovereign nations, three US and two

Mexican states, a number of Indian tribes and count-

less irrigation districts. That has produced a moun-

tain of treaties, minutes, laws, regulations, adjudica-

tions and claims affecting who owns what water, who

keeps it flowing clean and who speaks for the river.

To understand this river it helps to think in terms

of a series of “halves.” The first “half” (really a third)

runs from Colorado down to Elephant Butte reservoir

in New Mexico; it’s a beautiful western US river. Then

from El Paso and Cd. Juarez through the second

“half” of its run to the sea, this is the Rio Grande/Rio

Bravo, a shared resource and an international bound-

ary. Half the river is Mexico, the other half is the USA.

The big Elephant Butte Dam effectively truncates

the Rio Grande just it before it reaches Texas. When

the river leaves El Paso County there is virtually no

flow – usually only a trickle of treated urban run-off

and sewage plus “used” water returned by irrigators.

Unless there are rainstorms, there is no significant

water until the Conchos comes in a couple of hun-

dred miles downstream near Presidio and Ojinaga.

Through the Big Bend and the 196-mile stretch desig-

nated as one of the U.S. Wild and Scenic Rivers, virtu-

ally all of the water is from Mexico.

This river was indeed once great (grande) and wild

(bravo) but when it became a boundary everything

began to change. Its stewardship became highly frag-

mented, unaccountable and with no unified leader-

ship; it was not to be a conventional river.

As border towns grew into cities and Mexico indus-

trialized, we began to see water demand outstrip sup-

ply and problems overwhelm a US-Mexico Boundary

and Water Commission that had virtually no authori-

ty over water matters. Because of so many claims on

the river from so many jurisdictions, its waters have

been over allocated, meaning there is not enough to

go around. Stream flow is so weak the river some-

times can’t reach the sea. Salt cedar (tamarisk) and

giant cane (arundo) are choking out the cottonwood

and willow. Around cities the river has become foul

and in recreational areas where the river runs weak

but still clean (like Big Bend), there is apprehension.

The US and Mexico are in an escalating war of fin-

ger pointing; New Mexico and Texas are surly and

litigious; farmers in Chihuahua and the Lower Rio

Grande Valley are rebellious. We can call it by two

names, but the US can’t care for just half the river; and

neither can Mexico. The approach we are following is

not working.

The Growth of a “Borderland”

Through history, like everywhere on earth, the

rivers of North America were unifiers; they attracted

settlers, watered farmlands, powered mills and nur-

tured communities as they grew and became towns

and cities. Before there were highways there were

waterways. But history dealt our Rio Grande a most

peculiar fate; its lower stretch was made an interna-

tional boundary — split in half.

In 1848, after a fierce and bitter war, a treaty of sur-

render formally moved the Texas border south, mak-

ing Mexico’s Rio Bravo the new international bound-

ary, to be known henceforth (at least in the US) as the

Rio Grande. A stretch of river roughly 1000 miles long

was to define the outer limits of each nation’s sover-

eignty. Legal authority, control, ownership – all that

sovereignty suggests – was to begin and end at mid-

stream.

Then, after peace was restored and for most of the

next 150 years not much happened to provoke any

strict assertion of border sovereignty by either gov-

ernment. Border clampdowns during the Mexican

revolution didn’t endure; enforcement of border

security was sporadic on both sides, aimed mainly at

smuggling and banditry.

Vast numbers of people living and working along

the river crossed freely back and forth every day with

easily obtained papers and sometimes just a figura-

tive nod and a wink from immigration authorities on

either side. Determined migrants with destinations

deeper into the US found their way across the river

and through immigration restrictions best described

as “porous.” For millions of Mexican-Americans,

crossing the Rio Grande became a symbolic highlight

in their migration – an “Ellis Island” experience repre-

senting the last obstacle and the first “American”

place in the journey.

All along the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo where the

human interaction that goes with work, family,

friends and faith has become a routine of life, a

unique “borderlands” culture has taken root. It is

deeply appreciated by those who live in it but misun-

derstood and distrusted by those plagued with fear

and prejudice. In rural areas along the river there has

always been an easy interaction across the border – it

is part of being a neighbor in any remote place and

has little to do with nationality or ethnicity. A sense of

identity comes from it, as does trust and camaraderie.

Over the past fifty years or so commerce and

industry have turned little border towns into big cities

- transportation hubs where the products of NAFTA

are carried on millions of truck trips and local

economies are sustained by millions who work in the

maquiladoras, warehouses, shops and stores. Some

are cross-border commuters who display a sense of

shared experience and fraternal identity with the bor-

der. You find them in growing numbers in the sister

cities: often bilingual, bicultural, well to do, imbued

with a border “hipness”.

The notions that a “borderland” culture is rooted

in the regional psyche or that rivers produce some

kind of social cement doesn’t always hold up and can

bog down in sappy hands-across-the-border babble.

I know people in Mexico and the US who don’t dream

of crossing that border; they are victims of prejudice

or carry emotional wounds they don’t want

reopened. Still, there is a “borderness” phenomenon

that sociologists, cultural anthropologists and market

researchers see emerging.

Of course cultural conflict is a companion of

diversity, so naturally some incidents that involve

Anglo-Hispanic-Native American ethnic divisions get

violent. But civility and neighborliness is the norm

among law abiding borderland folks, even among

those who can’t understand everything the neighbor

says.

Terror Threatens the Borderland

There is a growing fear that prospects for a closely-

knit “borderland” are in danger. The US has asserted

its sovereignty at the Rio Grande and hardened its

border like never before. Those of us who live on the

border have sometimes thought we are on some kind

of battleground when drug gangs fought or aggres-

sive enforcement inconvenienced us at a border stop.

Then, with the horrors of 9/11 and what followed we

got a glimpse of a real battleground and began seeing

just how far a government can go to assert authority

and control over its borders. Necessary or not, it has

not been fun.

There is another threat to the borderland and it is

using the war on terror as a pretext. As the US and

Mexico try to deal with the dilemmas involved in

immigration policy, there is a growing and often uni-

formed popular outcry for “control of our borders”.

That public concern is being exploited by dema-

gogues in politics and tabloid journalism, leading to

useless posturing by government or the vigilantes.

 

Fain is President of Rio Grande Institute. Contact him at:  tfain@riogrande.org

 

Vo2_No

From The Houston Chronicle of Sept. 16, 2007

In storm, Valley’s levees vulnerable to flooding
Without $125 million to bolster Rio Grande structures, hurricane flooding is a threat

By DUDLEY ALTHAUS
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

HIDALGO — Perhaps no region in Texas stands more at risk from the torments, and torrents, of hurricanes than the borderlands.

Though the state has been spared a major storm since 1990, government agencies and outside critics have warned that heavy rains from a hurricane, or even a tropical storm, near the mouth of the Rio Grande could well cause catastrophic flooding.

In such an event, the river’s levees could be topped or toppled, existing flood plains overwhelmed. Towns and cities in the Rio Grande Valley that house more than 2 million people could be inundated. Thousands of people could be displaced, unknown numbers killed or injured. Property worth billions of dollars could be destroyed.

“The levees are too low to sustain a 100-year flood on either side of the river,” said Tyrus Fain, whose Rio Grande Institute is taking part in a federally funded study of ways to mitigate the impact of floods and other hazards on the border. “It’s a disaster waiting to happen.”

The International Boundary and Water Commission — or IBWC, the joint U.S.-Mexico agency that oversees the Rio Grande where it serves as the border — has estimated that $125 million is needed to bolster the levees along the last 100-mile stretch of the river. But Congress has allocated less than $5 million annually for the task.

Had Hurricane Dean slammed the region last month, as early predictions suggested, “it would have been an absolutely devastating event,” Gov. Rick Perry said on a recent visit to Mexico City.

With Dean packing 165 mph winds in the Caribbean, Perry and Texas officials rushed National Guard units to border cities, readied 3,000 buses for evacuations and sent military aircraft into Brownsville to carry away the elderly. They also set up shelters far inland to handle the expected rush of refugees.

As it happened, Dean killed 20 people as it crossed the Caribbean, tore through the Yucatan Peninsula and then made a second landfall in Mexico hundreds of miles south of the border. When it died in the country’s central mountains, Texas officials shrugged off suggestions they had overreacted.

Little wonder. Counting Humberto, which made landfall just east of Houston at High Island last week, Texas has been hit by 13 hurricanes and nearly as many tropical storms in the past 40 years. But only four hurricanes have made landfall since 1989.

 

 Many experts think Texas is overdue for a bad one. And to some of those experts, no one seems more exposed than the growing population along the Lower Rio Grande.

“This area of the state is very vulnerable to any number of natural and man-made hazards,” said Jo Ann Howard, president of Austin’s H2O Partners, which is also working on the hazard study. “The cities and counties on the border are extremely concerned.”

Fast-growing cities

What Texans call the 100-mile-long Lower Rio Grande Valley actually is a sprawling flood plain, flat as a parking lot in most places and often nearly as impermeable.

More than 1 million people now live on the Texas side of the river from McAllen east to the Gulf of Mexico, a distance of 56 miles. Nearly twice that number have swollen the neighboring Mexican cities of Reynosa, Rio Bravo and Matamoros.

Shantytowns, middle-class neighborhoods and industrial parks have sprouted on flood-prone land on either side of the boundary.

As part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s nationwide review of U.S. levees in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. branch of the boundary commission decertified Rio Grande levees in January. Commission officials judged the levees in the Lower Valley incapable of withstanding more than routine flooding.

A major flood, the commission estimated, would overcome at least 38 miles of levees near McAllen, one of the fastest-growing U.S. cities. Another 56 miles on the Mexican side of the river would be topped or breached as well.

“They are all susceptible to failure,” said Joe Tucker, an engineer who spent 31 years supervising the maintenance of the Rio Grande levees for the boundary commission and now is one of the major critics of the failure to improve them.

“There’s all kinds of possibilities,” Tucker, 80, said as he gave a tour of the river levees and flood control dams. “But somebody is going to get hurt somewhere.”

That assessment led FEMA to reconsider the threat to the Texas borderlands, potentially classifying entire cities and counties as flood-threatened. If made formal, that destination will force homeowners and businesses — anyone with a mortgage — to buy flood insurance.

A 2004 impact study done for the boundary commission suggests that the levees at risk protect at least $322 million in property along the Texas side of the final stretch of river.

But officials in Hidalgo County, which is anchored by McAllen and is considered the most vulnerable to levee failure, estimate that at least $8 billion worth of property could be threatened should the Rio Grande levees be breached in Texas and in Mexico near Reynosa.

“For us to get a whole bunch of rain right now would be devastating,” said J.D. Salinas, the county’s chief executive. “Our system is already at capacity.”

When many border natives discuss the potential for trouble, they usually recall 1967′s Hurricane Beulah. After making a September landfall just north of the border, the storm chewed through the ranch and farm country of the Lower Valley. Beulah poured nearly 3 feet of rain in many places over just 36 hours before expiring in the northern Mexico desert.

Flooding in the San Juan River, which rises in the mountains outside Monterrey and feeds the Rio Grande upstream from McAllen, sent a surge of water into the Lower Valley, overwhelming the flood-prevention systems of the time.

Harlingen and other Texas cities were flooded, the water rising as much as 45 feet in some areas near the coast, Tucker said.

“I saw people hurt real bad, propertywise,” Tucker said. “There would be a lot of flooding in the Valley with a repeat of Beulah. I wouldn’t expect a big loss of life, but there would be a huge economic loss.”

Years of neglect

In the aftermath of Beulah, the levees were improved and a new flood-control dam was built to withstand a storm of similar intensity. But years of neglect and the changing conditions along the river render those measures obsolete, Tucker and other experts say.

The amount of water that the river’s channel can accommodate has been reduced, Tucker said, by soil that has been deposited from upstream and by thick vegetation that has grown along its banks, in part because of federally controlled wildlife corridors.

Rainfall so far this year in northern Mexico and the borderlands has been much greater than normal. The two large Mexican reservoirs on the Rio San Juan are nearly filled to capacity.

Significant amounts of new rain would simply wash into the Rio Grande, overwhelming the levee system.

“You don’t know what will happen, but there could be flooding along the entire floodway system,” Tucker said.

Of course it doesn’t take a hurricane to bring a deluge. Tropical storms or thunderstorms can also do the trick.

Locally torrential rains last summer spawned severe flooding in El Paso and its sister city across the Rio Grande, Ciudad Juarez. Storm drains on both sides of the river were unable to handle the runoff. Preparations were made to evacuate huge areas of El Paso when a dam in Ciudad Juarez threatened to break.

More than 4,000 homes were destroyed in the Mexican city, 1,500 in Texas. Damage was estimated at nearly $500 million.

Another storm in April 2004 killed at least 34 people in Piedras Negras, a Mexican border city of 200,000 upriver from Laredo, when a flash flood sent a 25-foot surge of water through a small tributary to the Rio Grande.

With communities and farms along its 1,900-mile course often requiring more water than the river has in it, the Rio Grande dwindles to merely a trickle below El Paso until it is replenished by the Rio Conchos flowing out of Mexico’s western mountains.

 

 

From trickle to torrent

The Rio Grande has sometimes dried up before reaching the Gulf of Mexico, or is only a few feet wide and walk-across shallow at its mouth. But the river’s feebleness is deceiving; it becomes a torrent with the slightest rain.

‘The majority of people in the Valley have no idea what this is about,” Tucker said of the potential for flooding. “They haven’t been exposed to it.”

So far, Congress has ignored the warnings and heavy lobbying by border politicians, continuing to earmark just a few million dollars a year for levee repairs.

Facing both the threat of an actual disaster and the costly increase in federally required flood insurance, Hidalgo County commissioners this year approved a $40 million effort funded by local taxpayers to begin raising the height of the levees.

“We all decided it was best to do it ourselves,” said Mayor Norberto Salinas of Mission, one of Hidalgo County’s larger cities, parts of which could be flooded if the levees fail. “The federal government is not going to come up with the money.”

Hidalgo County officials hope they’ll be paid back the money they’re spending. State and federal officials are trying to pressure Congress into approving the funding, but it’s not certain the money will be available any time soon.

“What surprises me is that I thought after Katrina and all, Congress would appropriate the money,” said Tucker, the retired levee engineer. “But I guess not.

“A little talk here and there, but no improvements made. Really, there’s been nothing.”

dudley.althaus@chron.com

 

TRIM SUMMARY and SCOPE

 

TRANSBOUNDARY RISK IDENTIFICATION AND MITIGATION PROJECT -  PREVENTING DISASTERS THROUGH COOPERATION ON IN TWIN CITIES ON US-MEXICO BORDER 

 

This pilot  project begins a program to improve  the capacity of “paired”  cities, counties and “Municipios” along the US-Mexico border  to identify and mitigate certain risks to human life, property and economic activity from those natural disasters and catastrophic events whose impacts can extend into communities on both sides of the international border.  The project involves, in part, implementation of a regional mitigation action included in the fourteen county Cover the Border Hazard Mitigation Plan  that has been submitted to Region VI of FEMA through the Governor’s Division of Emergency Management (see www.covertheborder.net  for a copy of the plan and information on its sponsors).

 

The Transboundary Risk Identification and Mitigation (TRIM) Program is intended as a long term initiative to provide expert disaster planning, technical assistance and training  teams to participating jurisdictions through a regional  “TRIM Consortium” organized for the express purpose of  helping local governments create  transboundary disaster mitigation action plans and acquire (or improve) the capacity to sustain and update those plans as needed.

 

Such an extraordinary planning and training initiative will help US and Mexico improve their capacity to anticipate  events, reduce the risks they pose as well as respond to emergencies. It represents a new level of engagement and cooperation between US and Mexican local governments who believe their close proximity requires extraordinary cross-border communication and cooperation to anticipate, mitigate, respond to and recover from natural disasters and catastrophes. 

 

The first TRIM Project is being organized for two sister jurisdictions on the Rio Grande by a binational planning support team composed on Texas A & M International University, the Rio Grande Institute, the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon and  Mundo Sustentable, AC

 

June 2008

 

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CONTEXT: US- MEXICO  COOPERATION ON TRANSBOUNDARY RISK IDENTIFICATION AND MITIGATION (TRIM)

 

Border-wide Vision:  This first TRIM project will develop the templates and protocols needed for a process of local-level cooperation and capacity building that will progress incrementally along the entire length of the US-Mexico border

 

TRIM Agreements: Each set of sister communities will be joined by a cooperative agreement and approve a scope of work for a TRIM planning team to develop a locally focused TRIM project that is in harmony with US-Mexico treaty objectives and on-going federal and state binational cooperation programs and the on-going work of  local Emergency Management Coordinators, Consular Sister City Initiatives, the International Boundary and  Water Commission,  Homeland Security, Border 2012, Border Governors Work Groups etc.

 

TRIM Projects: Each project will focus on mitigation of risks and capacity building for sister jurisdictions that concur in having a continuing need to work together to deal with catastrophic storms and other deadly events.. Each will begin with a disaster simulation event at an international bridge sponsored by the sister jurisdictions and community leaders. That will launch a hazard mitigation planning process adapted in part from the Cover the Border initiative underway by TAMIU and the Rio Grande Institute (RGI) for fourteen US border counties.(www.covertheborder.net)

 

The focus of TRIM planning will be on identifying and mitigating hazards that are likely to have a direct adverse impact on lives, property and the natural environment across the border in either direction. The end-product will be a set of well defined, mutually agreed upon, high priority mitigation actions that can reduce the risk that the border community neighbors face from loss of lives, property or critical assets in their natural environment and cultural heritage.

 

A disaster prevention and response “tool kit” focused on binational cooperation will be developed with the EMCs of  local communities  including comprehensive maps from a seamless GIS-based depiction of spatial data the physical landscape, digital elevation models, floodplains and specific data layers such as transportation arteries, critical care facilities, toxic “hot spots” and evacuation routes. Communication protocols and compatible systems will be a key element as will the translation of all audio and print materials.

 

The plan and the “kit” will be developed with an explicit training component to make certain that each participating community has an in-house capability to update and improve upon the plans and materials once the project is completed. The specific content or curriculum, for that training will be developed for each community based on needs, but can be assumed to cover real-time GIS, emergency communications management, risk assessment for flooding, hazmat, wind storms, evacuations.

 

Tabletop simulations will be held at the start and conclusion of each TRIM project, probably on or near the international bridge. These will not only help engage key local EM staff and leaders but the larger community as well.

 

TRIM Teams:  Project development and planning services will be provided to border jurisdictions by teams drawn from a consortium of US and Mexican universities, NGOs, border businesses and their consultants. The work on each project will be closely coordinated with key state and federal agencies, building on vital work done by Homeland Security, TxDOT, GDEM, TCEQ, EPA, SEMARNAT, Water Development Board, CNA etc. Two non-profit organizations, the Rio Grande Institute (RGI) and Mundo Sustentable, AC (MS), will lead TRIMCO’s NGO section. Texas A&M International University, along with the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon and/or the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey will co-chair the university section. The 2006-2007 planning meetings for this initiative were hosted by the Camara Nacional de Industrias de Transformacion (CANACINTRA) which will co-chair the TRIM Consortium’s  private sector liaison section along with a US counterpart organization.  RGI and MS are co-managers of the TRIM Consortium (TRIMCO) which is being organized as an association under applicable US and Mexican law.  Laurel Lacey, one of the outstanding disaster management planning expert is a consultant to TAMIU and RGI on the Cover the Border Hazard Mitigation Plan and has agreed to join this new initiative. She will work with another expert consultant who served in local management positions for border cities for many years. Dr. Alfonso Martinez will head the MS group, drawing upon his professional background in training and the experience he gained as a Regional Director for the Secretaria del Medio Ambiente y Recursos, the principal federal environmental agency in Mexico.

 

Strart-up  Pairings: The RGI is interested in launching the first TRIM pairing in Cameron County and the Municipio de Matamoros because they have greatest exposure to threats from hurricane disasters.  In 2007 Regional officials of the Consejo Nacional de la Industria de Transformacion (CANACINTRA) and and Mundo Sustentable facilitated informal discussions in Cd. Reynosa on a sister city mitigation project.. Other potentially paired jurisdictions where TAMIU and RGI have some relevant experience are Webb, Zapata and Starr Counties paired with the Municipio de Nuevo Laredo; Eagle Pass (Maverick County)  paired with Piedras Negras; Del Rio paired with the Municipios de Acuna; Presidio County paired with the Municipio de Ojinaga as well as El Paso County and the Municipio de Juarez.

 

CURRENT PROJECT: TRIM I  -  CROSS-BORDER  CAPACITY BUILDING FOR DISASTER PREVENTION

Project  Objective: The  purpose of the start-up project for the TRIM Program is to design and apply a technical assistance protocol and training curriculum for transboundary hazard assessment and mitigation in a pair of sister jurisdictions on the US-Mexico border. There will be two outcomes:

1.    a sustainable disaster protection strategy and action plan for participating communities within the two “pilot” jurisdictions.

2.    a tool kit for the technical assistance and training  that will serve as the basis for a series of transboundary hazard assessment and disaster prevention projects among other sister jurisdictions along the entire US-Mexico border.

 

Estimated start/completion dates:  The kick-off project in two paired jurisdictions will begin in July 2008 and extend over 12 months until June 30, 2009.

 

 

SCOPE OF WORK – TASK and TIMELINE

 

TASK ONE – Capacity Assessment   Months 0-3:

This will precede the mitigation planning and lay the groundwork for capacity building.

A binational team of experts will inventory the needs of participating communities for

technical assistance and training. As part of a self-discovery strategy for local residents and

officials a table top event or workshop will be conducted in the first weeks of the Project

focused on several preventable transboundary incidents.                            

 

TASK TWO – Hazard Identification, Analysis and Risk Assessment including GIS, Months 2-5:

A team of consultants will develop and follow a systematic check-list to uncover hazards whose origins and/or impact has a transboundary dimension. The GIS will provide a fairly simple means to display, communicate and begin to analyze those hazards.

 

TASK THREE –Mitigation Planning Months 4-8:

Through a systematic process of discovery, evaluation, consultation and budgeting that includes negotiation for burden sharing on burden –sharing for the specific projects the jurisdictions will develop a joint mitigation strategy on the identified hazards. The plan will include specific mitigation actions to be taken and draft agreements required to move them forward.

 

TASK FOUR –  Mitigation Plan Adoption Months 9-11:

A second and final table top will introduce the plan and the mitigation process to residents

Each local government will be asked to bring the plan to its governing body for adoption.

 

TASK FIVE- Post-Planning Evaluation and Follow-up Training/Education Month 12.

Continuing needs for training and plans for involving local institutions on a continuing basis

will be will be identified.

 

TASK SIX –  Future Projects Month 12

TRIM Partners in consultation with potential future partners will issue a strategic proposal for the border region on joint sister city disaster prevention planning.

 

 

US and Mexican Contact Points:  For the TRIM Consortium working with Paired Jurisdictions (Contact Dr. Alfonso Martinez at amartinez@gen.tv or  Tyrus Fain tfain@riogrande.org ) For the academic collaborators: Dr. Ken Tobin, ktobin@tamiu.edu