Cyrus Reed, project director of the Border Trade & Environment Project, attended the latest quarterly public meeting of the Board of Directors of the Border Environment Cooperation Commission, held in Ciudad Juárez June 30th at the Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Campus Ciudad Juárez. This brief report highlights issues discussed and raised during the meeting. For a press release on the meeting from the BECC, visit http://www.cocef.org.
Following an introduction by the Dean of Studies of the Instituto Tecnológico and by the mayor of Ciudad Juárez (Ing. Gustavo Elizondo), the Board of Directors of the BECC approved the agenda and minutes of the previous meeting. Then, Arturo Herrera, a Board of Director from the Comisión Internacional de Limites y Agua, the counterpart to the IBWC, presented the report of the Board's Executive Committee, made up of four Board members. Herrera announced that the Executive Committee had determined that the City of Westmorland in California was not quite ready to present its project for Board certification because various aspects of the project still did not meet BECC's certification criteria. Instead, the Board of Directors will hold a special meeting on August 11th to consider certifying the project.
In addition, Herrera announced that several technical assistance grant funds had been approved by the BECC, including $39,000 for Reynosa for their solid waste landfill project and $190,000 for Brownsville, Texas for a water project.
Herrera also announced that the executive committee and staff have been discussing how both they and citizen committees set up as part of the BECC certification criteria should continue to monitor projects once projects have been certified. The BECC is exploring what guidance they could use to help local communities create post-certification citizen committees to follow the progress of projects as they are constructed and implemented. Already, several communities have set up these committees on their own. The executive committee is also discussing how to implement the recognition of projects which meet the High Sustainability Criteria. Such a recognition would need to include analysis by NGOs and academic institutions.
Following Herrera's report, BECC general manager Javier Cabrera Bravo presented the Managers report. Among the highlights of his report was the initiation of the landfill in Agua Prieta on June 3rd, the agreement April 14th to release more than $1.4 million in technical assistance funds to help a number of municipalities in Chihuahua on water and wastewater projects, and similar agreements with municipalities in Tamaulipas ($758,580 in technical assistance) and Sonora (approximately $1 million).
The Advisory Council then made its presentation. Co-chairs Francisco Treviño from Mexico and Leo Valdez from the U.S. then made presentations on the status of the Advisory Council. Treviño announced that the Advisory Council now finally has some U.S. members besides long-time member Travis Johnson from El Paso and Leo Valdez, who was named several months ago. (After serving for two years, U.S. members terms expired several years ago, with only Johnson staying on.) The three new members are:
Treviño and Valdez also said the advisory council is developing its own workplan, including looking at the Post-Certification Committees.
Juan Rangel and his staff then presented the status of technical assistance. EPA originally gave the BECC a grant of $10 million to be used for technical assistance and then added another $10 million. These can only be used for water and wastewater projects. Between 1997 and 1998, $8.2 million was earmarked for projects, while in 1999, $4.8 million has been approved in technical assistance grants, including most recently $100,000 for the City of Horizon in El Paso County.
The money has been split nearly evenly between the U.S. and Mexico ($6.4 million each), although more projects have been approved in Mexico. Generally, consultant fees and costs are higher in the U.S.
Pete Silva, Deputy General Manager, then presented the administrative issues. Most importantly, BECC's proposed budget for FY 2000 is $3.63, or a slight increase from FY 1999, with a budget of $3.08 million. However, while BECC submitted a budget request to Congress of $1.815 million through the State Department, a subcommittee cut the request back to the 1999 level of $1.54 million. (Under the agreement that set up BECC, the U.S. and Mexico are required to each provide 50% of the budget. Traditionally, Mexico has waited for the U.S. approval of its budget to see how much money to earmark in its own budget). Thus, this budget cut would reduce BECC's proposed budget by nearly $0.6 million. Silva said that with such a cut, BECC could not initiate a solid waste technical assistance program (initially for $80,000) and would also have to cut some operating expenses, including public outreach.
Jorge Bustamante wondered why the BECC always went to the U.S. first and let the U.S. determine what the funding levels would be. Silva pointed out that in fact the BECC makes its policy to send the same information to the State Department as to SEMARNAP, through which the BECC receives its funding on the Mexican side. In general, in Mexico, they haven't had trouble getting the matching funds and so what happens in the U.S. Congress has determined the total budget. Still, he agreed that given Mexico's changing congressional structure, BECC could do more to build allies on the Mexican side. For example, BECC has been meeting with SEMARNAP head Julia Carabias and the Comision de Asuntos Fronterizos (Border Affairs Committee) of the Mexican Congress to better highlight BECC needs.
Rene Franco and his staff then presented the status of projects that have been certified or might soon be certified through the BECC process. BECC has in its portfolio 134 projects, 80 of them on the Mexican side, with an estimated investment needed of $800 million. About 30 could be ready for certification in the next few years.
Bob Briggs from the Southwest Center for Environmental Research and Policy (SCERP) then presented a project called the Border Needs Assessment, an interactive computer-based database application which utilizes population and socioeconomic data from Mexico's INEGI and the US Bureau of the Census as well as health statistics, water use and other data. SCERP is developing the application for use by the BECC as it helps prioritize future projects. A component of the project will soon be placed on BECC's homepage. The project was universally hailed by the BECC Board of Directors as of tremendous importance, and Briggs emphasized that they would make a CD version available to the public, in addition to the web application.
In other news, the BECC is negotiating an MOU with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, although it is not yet completed.
Finally, Lynda Taylor, along with staff presented a report on progress in implementing "sustainable development" at the BECC. Taylor said they have developed 119 sustainable development indicators to quantify and measure the state of the environment in terms of sustainability. Indicators include such measures as water conservation, maximizing energy conservation, an equitable fee structure, and emergency response training. These indicators form the basis of a guidance document on sustainability being developed by the BECC.
The following individuals made public comments: Guillermo Fernandez, U.S.-Mexico Science Foundation; Maria Josefina Guerrero, Grupo Dignidad, Miguel Angel Gonzalez, Agua Prieta, Ing. Cileno Villalba, JMAS, Carlos Rincón, EDF and Cyrus Reed, TCPS.
Chairman Nacho Garza then handed out plaques to Board members in commemoration of the 20th public meetings. Many of the Board members have attended all 20 meetings.
1. One of the most important issues which arose was the announcement from both the Executive Committee and the Advisory Council that the BECC is very interested in implementing guidance and policy on post-certification committees. One of the problems which has plagued the BECC has been the failure to adequately ensure that projects are implemented according to the certification criteria.
Cyrus Reed asked the Board whether they anticipated publishing the policy as a guidance document or actually adopting it as part of the certification criteria and the Board responded that they have not made a decision, but that any policy would be subject to public comment.
2 The development of SCERP's Border Needs Assessment is of vital importance. While any database is only as good as its data, having a single database design for the border could be very useful to academics, government officials and NGOs along the border. Having a common computer program could also help dialogue about planning in the border region.
3 The development of sustainable development indicators is also of great importance. Hopefully, this guidance document will be widely available soon. Then the question is how does it get used.
4 The lack of funding for technical assistance for solid wastes projects -- further threatened by the cut by the U.S. Congress -- is a problem. Please write your senator and congressmen and let them know how important it is to have this organization function properly.