July 19, 2007

The $1.5 Million La Entrada Study
By Jack D. McNamara

After a brief June indisposition the Nimby News attempted to get ourselves back into the picture regarding “La Entrada al Pacifico,” better known as LEAP. Our perspective is refreshed by the fact of no abrasive direct contacts with the promoters of the Topolobampo to Midland- Odessa “corridor” proposal to bring us thousands? Hundreds? Or no diesel-belching Mexican goods bearing tainted Chinese dog food.

We always refresh ourselves by re-reading our file, a growing pile of paper which chronicles the progress of this LEAP idea. For example, we have the news story from the Midland-Reporter Telegram of August 26, 2005 which tells us “State approved La Entrada al Pacifico trade Corridor study” for the impressive sum of $1.5 million, focusing on the 250 miles from Presidio to Odessa. The story includes the term “outreach” to affected communities twice and concludes, “A comprehensive public involvement and outreach program will be undertaken to gauge public support and gather concerns as part of the alternative evaluation process to select a technically feasible corridor.”

Now, gentle reader, when you encounter people who use this sort of language in the America of the 21st century, you must be on guard. The rather stark fact is that they have found a way to milk public dollars for no actual work other than stacking euphemisms around political deals already made. But since they already have our money we are entirely justified in sitting back and watching how they spend it.

In this case the spenders are the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDoT) and an engineering firm, HDR Engineering. They contacted us in March with a four page, slick brochure promoting meetings in Presidio, Alpine, Midland and Ft. Stockton in March. The meetings brought forth a good deal of “outreach” and a second round of meetings was scheduled for July.

In early June, however “stakeholder” meetings were cancelled. Perhaps they were cancelled because TxDot hasn’t a clue what they mean by “stakeholder,” a point made publicly, separately and independently by us, Jeff Davis County Mountain Dispatch Editor Bob Dillard and Brewster County Judge Val Beard (Alpine Avalanche of June 7, page 1, “LEAP process bothers Beard”).

Last week we were surprised to see another Alpine Avalanche headline, “TxDoT promises hard data,” page 1. The front-page story, by new editor Mike Perry, was a long story which described a meeting of “six environmentally conscious Big Bend citizens” who met July 5 with HDR rep Brian Swindell. Other groups and individuals met with Mr. Swindell according to the story but only Judge Beard and Alpine Mayor Mickey Clouse were identified.

Mr. Swindell spoke to the Alpine Avalanche and is quoted “I think there were a lot of misconceptions,” he said, “and I think we cleared up a lot of them.”

Really? We have no “misconceptions” regarding Mr. Swindell’s meetings because we have no conceptions at all. Mr. Swindell has told us nothing except what pleasant meetings he had here. This appears to be a sort of indefinitely extended psychobabble.

All of the local weekly newspapers have devoted endless columns of print to this issue yet apparently none of them were invited to report the meetings. This is an issue of paramount importance to the area yet TxDoT and HDR Engineering have endless meetings without producing anything of use concerning the question. It is only through the words of Fran Sage, one of the “environmentally conscious” attendees, that we know anything about what happened. Mrs. Sage was quoted extensively in the Avalanche story.

Now we once helped sell iceboxes to Eskimos so we know what is going on. This being a family newspaper, however, we will refrain from explicit descriptions and await a promised “press release” promised for this week’s newspapers.

But while Mr. Swindell, TxDoT and HDR have been diddling us with their “outreach” a former Alpine resident, Foster Rich, has made them irrelevant. Last week’s newspapers carried a four-page study by a former vice president of Booz, Allen, and Hamilton consulting firm that the “best course of action” for La Entrada would cross the border in the El Paso area, probably Fabens.

The study appears in today's issue of the Big Bend Sentinel.

Foster Rich produced his study after a short investigation. He says in a single declarative sentence, “All freight transportation from Topolobampo to Chihuahua will be by rail.”

Now TxDoT, HDR and presumably Mr. Swindell have been funded $1.5 million for their “feasibility study” since August 2005. Do they have any simple declarative sentences in them? For example, what says HDR to Foster Rich’s assertion that the Chihuahua City to El Paso is a superior business model to that for Chihuahua to Presidio?

It is indeed high time that we get some facts. Those facts will show that the idea of a Topolobampo-Presidio/Ojinaga-Marfa- Alpine-Midland/Odessa route is absurd as a business model or a sane expenditure of public funds.

Such a route is pure politics. Some politicians are striving mightily to use the political system to create some economic activity for their constituents. We understand that because there is always a lot of political-economic twaddle going around.

In the old days Texas Highway Department engineers, most of them Texas Aggies, would take one look at the MOTRAN option and dismiss it out of hand as merely politics and we would still have our $1.5 million. Now we are constantly deluged with publicly funded “studies” which are thinly veiled exercises in manufacturing the appearance of consent to bad ideas.

How are TxDoT and their helpers spending the taxpayers’ money? And for what? •

(Also published by the Big Bend Sentinel of Marfa, Texas July 19, 2007.)