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BORDER OVERLOAD
DROUGHT
Measuring success
City eyes cutting evaporation
Accomplishments of previous surge are not so clear By ERIC DEXHEIMER AND JEREMY SCHWARTZ AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN
AUSTIN — When Texas leaders ordered a $30 million “surge” of Department of Public Safety troopers to the Rio Grande Valley in mid-June, they touted the success of an earlier operation that they said was a model for the current effort. In a June 18 letter expressing his support for the new operation, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst cited Operation Strong Safety, which massed DPS troopers along the border last fall for three weeks. The effort
“achieved astounding results,” he wrote, echoing earlier claims by DPS officials that Strong Safety had “curtail(ed)” cartel activity in the region during the surge. Yet the raw numbers behind those claims, obtained this week by the Austin AmericanStatesman through a Texas Public Information Act request, show that the surge’s impact was actually much less clearcut. For example, the DPS boasted in a press release that drug seizures had decreased during the surge — a sign the operation had deterred illegal activity, according to the agency —
citing drops in confiscated cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine. What officials didn’t mention is that heroin seizures increased 61 percent during that period. At the same time that the DPS identified decreased drug seizures as a mark of Strong Safety’s success, the agency also pointed to increased currency seizures as an indication the operation had worked. Even then, while officials trumpeted a dramatic 185 percent increase in U.S. currency seizures, they didn’t mention that currency seizures continued to rise steeply over the next three weeks after the surge ended.
DPS Director Steve McCraw told the Statesman the varying results were “positive, relevant outcomes related to the disruption of cartel activity.” For example, he said, “cash is typically a southbound commodity, and heroin is typically smuggled through the ports of entry.” On one level, officials’ parsing of statistics to declare the success of a high-profile operation is a reminder that the 1,254-mile border between Texas and Mexico often serves as a stage for political theater, a place where partisan actors on either side of the immigration
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TEXAS DROUGHT
RISING OUT OF THE LAKE Town sees light after 60 years
LUBBOCK — A North Texas city already has deployed two unusual techniques to try to cope with a persistent and lengthy drought, and Wichita Falls just added a third, more extreme tool to try to deal with its dwindling water supply. The hope is that adding a biodegradable palm oil-and-lime-based product on the surface of a lake that’s the city’s primary water supply will cut the evaporation rate of 40 million gallons a day by at least 10 percent, Russell Schreiber, the city’s director of public works, said. “We’re in desperate times here,” he said. Wichita Falls provides water to about 150,000 people near the Oklahoma border, and has cut its usage from 35 million gallons a day to about 12 million gallons. “We’ve got to do whatever we can to conserve anything or as much as we can.” Though Wichita Falls is not the first city to try the method, it is the largest of its kind in the nation, Schreiber said. It’s yet another step for the city that is more than 40 inches behind on
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IMMIGRATION
Colorado driving
By CLAIRE KOWALICK WICHITA FALLS TIMES RECORD NEWS
LAKE ARROWHEAD — Few people today remember a time before Lake Arrowhead existed. Fewer still may know that a town named Halsell has been lying underneath the lake’s waters for nearly 60 years. Now that Arrowhead is less than a quarter full, Halsell has risen from the depths like a visible history lesson of the pioneer past. People had been slowly moving into the area, about 20 miles southeast of Wichita Falls, since the 1860s. Comanche and Kiowa Indians regularly raided in Clay County and the surrounding area until the establishment of the reservations in the 1870s in present-day Oklahoma. Halsell was formally established in 1900 and named for local rancher Henry H. Halsell, according to the Clay County Historical Museum. Halsell was from a wealthy ranching family and he built a general store, two Methodist churches, and financed houses for several former cowboys. The town of Halsell also had a second general store, grocery, domino parlor, black-
By BETSY BLANEY ASSOCIATED PRESS
Immigrants can receive driver’s licenses now By IVAN MORENO ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photos by Claire Kowalick/Wichita Falls Times Record News | AP
The yoke of a cart or wagon is visible at the town site of Halsell. Bud Gossett, background, explores remains of the town. Few people know that the town has been lying underneath Lake Arrowhead’s waters for nearly 60 years and has become exposed as drought has drained the lake. smith and cotton gin. In 1900, when the nearby town of Shilo lost its oneroom schoolhouse to a windstorm, town leaders combined the two school zones and built a new schoolhouse in 1901. In 1913, the school was revamping into a two-story, sixroom school housing about 150 students and three teachers at its peak. The Southwestern Railway Company established a railroad line connecting Henrietta with Archer City in 1910, and Halsell grew quickly. After a population high of about 600 residents in 1920, the
See LAKE TOWN PAGE 9A
DENVER — Colorado has started issuing driver’s licenses and identification cards to immigrants regardless of their legal status, marking a dramatic change in a state that less than a decade ago passed strict immigration enforcement laws. There was a festive mood at one Denver office issuing the documents Friday morning, as state Department of Revenue Director Barbara Brohl congratulated applicants once they had their cards approved. “I never imagined that I would one day have a driver’s license in my hands,” Mexican immigrant Rosalva Mireles, 37, said in Spanish as she held a paper copy of her new license. The permanent card will be mailed. She’s one of thousands of immigrants hoping the identification cards will add a degree of legitimacy to their residency in Colorado. About 9,500 people are signed up for appointments through the next 90 days to get the documents, with more getting scheduled every day. Both people in the country illegally and those who have
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