Border wall construction during summer 2020 has mostly involved concerns over the low levels of Quitobaquito Springs. Scientists say that effects could go unnoticed and unknown for the next fifty years. If the Springs are completely drained, it is unknown how much time would have to pass for the Springs to come back – and they might not come back.1Douglas Main, “Sacred Arizona spring drying up as border wall construction continues,” National Geographic online, July 20, 2020, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/07/quitobaquito-springs-arizona-drying-up-border-wall/#close. Amber Lee Ortega said in a summer 2020 interview about Quitobaquito Springs:
I can feel my ancestors there, you just feel them… You feel the history. You feel the stories. You hear the songs. You feel it. There’s life; there’s history; there’s strength there. It’s our roots.
Amber Lee Ortega, Hia C-ed O’odham2Alisa Reznick, “Experts: Border wall construction may imperil sacred source of water in desert,” Cronkite News online, August 10, 2020, https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2020/08/10/border-wall-construction-quitobaquito-springs-desert/.
The National Park Service, Border Patrol, and Tohono O’odham are working together, says Border Patrol and the NPS. Tohono O’odham chairman Ned Norris Jr. took tribal concerns to a U.S. House subcommittee hearing in February 2020, saying that the U.S. agencies are not working with the Native nation and that their findings of no archeological items or bones in the blast site are false. Nothing has come of this hearing.
