EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) – Community advocates held a press conference Wednesday evening, Dec. 13, demanding that commercial traffic from the Bridge of the Americas (BOTA) be relocated to areas such as the ports of entry in Santa Teresa or Tornillo, Tx, away from neighborhoods within the vicinity of the port of entry.
The press conference was held at the Hilos de Plata Community Center in Central El Paso, moments before the General Services Administration (GSA) held a public meeting to provide more information on the plans to expand BOTA and request public input regarding the project’s impact on the community.
Community advocates were all unified in their message, urging the federal government to relocate all of commercial traffic coming from BOTA, arguing that it has been negatively impacting neighborhoods such as Chamizal and San Xavier, who have been suffering from the pollution caused by semi-trucks and their emissions.
“Every night when I sit down and try to rest, I can’t because I’m breathing diesel. You can taste it. You can breathe it. You can smell it,” said Ricardo Leon, a resident from the San Xavier neighborhood in Central El Paso.
The government will allocate $700 millions for the completion of the project. Advocates and residents of these communities stressed the importance of taking a stance now, as it will likely be many years or even decades before any changes to BOTA will be revisited.
With the GSA meeting taking place, they opened for public comment, and have set a deadline of Jan. 16, 2024, for people to submit a written comment expressing their input.
An attorney representing the neighborhoods of El Chamizal and San Xavier, Veronica Carbajal said the GSA was deliberate in their choice to set the date of the meeting and the deadline, and called for them to extend the public comment period.
“The comment period is extremely short. They knew that this was coming. We’ve been meeting with them since June of last year and yet they decided to announce it and give us a 30 minute, 30 day response time knowing that the holiday was going to break up our ability to comment. So I hope that the community rises up and that we ask for an extension of time to properly comment on what we have been saying for a year” said Carbajal.
Two of the three proposed plans by GSA to expand BOTA would require them to build where the El Paso County Coliseum and El Paso County Events Center (ice rink) are currently located.
Community advocates also joined in their call to preserve the coliseum and ice rink.
“Losing the ice and the facilities for what it does for the city of El Paso, for the quality of life, for the neighborhoods within the vicinity and even all of El Paso. It would be huge if we were to lose that,” said the president of the El Paso Rhinos Corey Heon.
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