Crews blasting hill in Organ Pipe monument to make way for border wall

Construction crews are blasting a hill on Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument to make way for the border wall. The blasting is taking place on Monument Hill, just to the west of the port of entry in Lukeville, a small border town 150 miles southwest of Tucson. Contractors are building the 30-foot-tall steel wall on the side of the hill as part of a 43-mile project on Organ Pipe and the adjacent Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. “The construction contractor has begun controlled blasting, in preparation for new border wall system construction, within the Roosevelt Reservation at Monument Mountain,” the public affairs office for Customs and Border Protection said. The Roosevelt Reservation is a 60-foot-wide strip of federal land that runs along most of Arizona’s border with Mexico. “The controlled blasting is targeted and will continue intermittently for the rest of the month,” CBP said...MORE

Congress has designated 312,000 acres of the monument as wilderness. I sure hope folks enjoy their wilderness experience as the crews blast away.