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Border Committee looks at problems closing unguarded American/Canadian streets could pose |
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Friday, 05 October 2007 |
By STEVE BLAKE
Express Staff Writer
DERBY LINE, STANSTEAD, Quebec - The border committee's walkaround of the three unguarded streets between Derby Line and Stanstead Thursday was in no way an indication the committee favors closing the streets.
The committee's chairman, Keith Beadle, made that point clear as the tour got underway. The inspection of the streets the federal governments of Canada and the United States want to block from vehicular traffic was simply to see how blockades would affect homes and businesses.
The border committee is made up of members from both sides of the border. Also involved in the tour were members of Customs on both sides to ensure security as the crowd mingled on both sides of the border.
Rosendo Hinojosa of the U.S. Border Patrol told a large crowd that included U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders during a meeting in late August at the Haskell Opera House that, if the municipalities do not block the streets, the federal government will have to do something.
Fernando Beltran, the agent in charge for the Newport sector of the Border Patrol, reiterated Thursday that it was the Canadian government who came up with the idea of closing the streets to traffic.
Under the rules of the International Boundary Commission, a barrier may not be put on the border line. It must be installed ten feet off the line one way or the other.
The Canadian government may not block the streets with permanent barriers if the municipality of Stanstead doesn't want them. Stanstead Mayor Raymond Yates said Thursday he is still adamantly opposed, so, if they are, it appears the barriers will have to be placed on the U.S. side.
After the tour, Beadle said he felt Fernando Beltran was beginning to see some of the problems that would be created by blocking the streets.
The tour started with Maple, the easternmost unguarded street. Members of the committee met there with Eric and Diane Smith, who own a business just north of the border. Their concerns were: what would be done with plowed snow, and how 18-wheel delivery trucks would get to their loading dock. Currently, the trucks drive past their building and back into the dock.
Measurements from the speculated border line by committee members Beadle and Perry Hunt showed that a barrier ten feet south of the line would interfere with the parking lot at the FedEx office building. The exact location of the border line could only be speculated because there is no border marker on the street.
Unwitting drivers have been stopped for inadvertently crossing the border along Maple and the other streets. The signs directing the drivers to the Customs are at the intersections on either side of the border, unreadable from the border line.
Committee member Nancy Rumery suggested that signs could be erected at the entrances to the streets, on both sides of the border, informing drivers that they are closed to through traffic.
Beltran agreed that the current signs are ineffective.
On the southern border, Beltran said, the pavement is marked so motorists know they are moving from one country to another.
Closing Lee Street, across Caswell Avenue from Pelow Hill, would create its own challenges, particularly for the owners of a large green apartment house that straddles the border.
Owner Louise Gosselin is worried that her husband will not be able to plow a driveway on the Canadian side. They don't want to have to pay a Canadian plow driver to do the drive, she said.
In a unique arrangement, some U.S. tenants in the building park on the American side parking lot and go into their apartments actually on the Canadian side.
The committee expresses concern that there is no place to put the plowed snow on Lee Street, as well.
Church Street, which runs by the Haskell Library and Opera House, leads to Cordeau Street, which has been the road taken for years by people going to Canada from the eastern end of Caswell Avenue to get to the Canadian Customs. Cordeau Street is just west of the library on the Canadian side. It is illegal to turn right (north) from Caswell Avenue onto Main Street.
Blocking Church Street on the U.S. side would make it impossible to get to Cordeau Street.
The committee will digest the information they found and call another meeting in about two weeks, Beadle said. |
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Last Updated ( Monday, 08 October 2007 )
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