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TORNILLO, Texas — Jesse Grado walks cautiously
past a welder whose work throws off a spray of brilliant sparks as
construction crews lay slabs of concrete for a bridge over the Rio Grande.
The leader of the project points to an empty void — the point where the
six-lane span abruptly ends 30 feet above the river.
Beyond the pavement is nothing but miles of
Mexican farms, dirt and desert.
By June, this was supposed to be the site of a
massive new customs-and-immigration facility that would provide a fourth international
border crossing to handle U.S.-bound commercial traffic from Ciudad Juarez,
one of North America’s biggest manufacturing hubs.
Planners had hoped the $96 million undertaking
would be an economic boon, attracting manufacturing plants and long lines of
trucks that currently use two congested crossings between Ciudad Juarez and
El Paso.
But nearly two years after a ceremonial
groundbreaking, not a shovel of dirt has been moved south of the border. The
Mexican government has not allocated any money for its share of the work, so
the bridge building is stalled — with no timetable for completion.
In the meantime, truckers say they won’t be
lured away from the established crossings until this remote farmland draws
more industry. That could take years.
“To me, it does not make any sense,” said
Manuel Sotelo, truck company owner and president of the Ciudad Juarez freight
truck association. “It’s one of those projects made by someone at a desk in
Washington.”
Truckers hauling cargo from Ciudad Juarez say
using the bridge would require them to make an hour-long drive east to the
new crossing then spend another hour traveling back to cargo terminals in El
Paso, Texas, to unload.
So far, the border community of Tornillo has
secured no agreements with industry. For now, it offers little but fields of
cotton and alfalfa. The scene is similar across the river in the tiny town of
Guadalupe, Mexico.
Still, local officials hope that by building
the crossing first, commercial traffic will come later. They cite the success
at the Santa Teresa port of entry, which was built 20 years ago in New Mexico
in a similarly remote area.
About 15 years after the crossing opened, a
huge industrial park that houses manufacturing giant Foxconn was built a few
hundred yards from the inspection stations. It has since attracted more
businesses.
Once the infrastructure is complete, they’ll
have to take a fresh look at this,” said Vince Perez, an El Paso County
commissioner representing the district where the bridge is being built. “A
port of entry is a once-in-a-lifetime project.”
The two farming communities have been pushing
for the Tornillo-Guadalupe international bridge for the last 16 years to
replace a 1920s-era wooden bridge. Once the new span is finished, the federal
government plans to transfer customs and immigration personnel to the
adjoining 117-acre complex.
In July 2011, American and Mexican officials
showed up with golden shovels and delivered speeches about the promising
future for the surrounding communities. Cesar Duarte, governor of the Mexican
state of Chihuahua, pledged that construction would start two months later.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2-years-after-groundbreaking-project-to-build-new-us-mexico-border-crossing-is-stalled/2013/06/03/84e140aa-cc2b-11e2-8573-3baeea6a2647_story.html
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