Two weeks after the Trump administration was sued over its plan for a border wall through the Big Bend region of West Texas, with plaintiffs claiming the plan violated a federal law, the administration responded by waiving that law entirely for the wall project.The lawsuit was filed last month by the Presidio Municipal Development District, a local economic development group. PMDD claims that potential flooding, and the border wall in general, will harm the entity’s property and initiatives. The group is asking a federal judge to issue an injunction that would effectively stop construction of the wall in the region while the case plays out in court.In the lawsuit, the district claims that border agencies are not coordinating as legally required with other arms of the government in potentially altering a local levee to build the border wall, which the group has said could lead to “deadly” flooding in the area.“The levees protect the entire City of Presidio and its residents, and flooding would threaten lives, homes, businesses, and infrastructure,” the lawsuit said.
The court case largely centers on an obscure federal law called the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899. DHS previously waived a slew of environmental, cultural resource protection and contracting laws to expedite construction of the border wall in the Big Bend region, but it didn’t initially include that 1899 law in its waiver.On July 2, the agency updated its waiver notice to add just that law.
