The El Paso City Council on Tuesday shot down an effort to eliminate from the Bridge of the Americas all commercial truck traffic – and the pollution that idling trucks emit into South-Central neighborhoods – with a majority on council arguing such a move would hurt commerce in the Borderland. 

The controversial vote stems from the federal government’s plan to invest around $650 million to modernize the Bridge of the Americas, also known as the Puente Libre, and reshape the port of entry for decades to come. Organizers and activists in the Chamizal and other adjacent neighborhoods south of Interstate 10 see the modernization project as a once-in-a-generation chance to re-envision the bridge and, ideally, stop diesel trucks from using the crossing and polluting the surrounding areas. 

During the council meeting, District 8 city Rep. Chris Canales called to have the city send the General Services Administration – the federal department overseeing the BOTA renovation – a letter stating the city of El Paso wants the project to “move forward with a project scope that removes commercial truck traffic” from the port of entry. 

City Council, however, voted 6-2 to delete the item from the agenda, effectively killing Canales’ push to send the letter. At his first meeting since he was elected earlier this month, District 2 Rep. Josh Acevedo was the only other representative who voted with Canales. 

Canales wanted to send the letter to state the city’s position on the project to the federal government, which is seeking feedback over the coming weeks. 

“The north-south freeway, the spaghetti bowl, was never designated to be a parking lot. And that’s what it’s become,” Mayor Oscar Leeser said, referring to an I-10 off ramp south of Concordia Cemetery that often backs up with drivers heading into Juárez. 

He acknowledged the idling vehicles result in higher air pollution levels in south El Paso. But Leeser said the city must first consult with businesses and with leaders in Juárez, as well as study the potential economic impact of closing off the Bridge of the Americas to big-rig trucks that haul goods over the border back and forth.

“It’s more than just writing a letter and saying ‘Let’s redirect traffic,’” Leeser said. “Let’s sit down with our partners on the other side of the border, let’s sit down with the business community and come up with a solution that’s going to help that part of the community.”

Supporters of the plan to get rid of trucks from the BOTA argue the city can direct the trucks to the port in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, as well as a newer, under-used port of entry in Tornillo in far east El Paso County. But the longer, less direct trip could take a toll on commerce, District 3 Rep. Cassandra Hernandez said

“I haven’t been educated on this issue,” Hernandez said at the start of her comments. “By rerouting commercial trucks from the bridge, you are impacting businesses, you are impacting residents, not only locally but bi-nationally and regionally.”

Hernandez urged council members to instead write letters to the federal government about the project from their individual offices, not on behalf of the city as a whole. 

And by rerouting traffic to other ports of entry “we’re displacing the problem somewhere else,” Leeser said. “We’re not fixing the issue.”

Canales, however, contrasted the densely populated urban neighborhoods abutting the Bridge of the Americas with the less populated and more rural areas that surround the ports of entry in Tornillo and Santa Teresa. 

The three census tracts immediately adjacent to the Bridge of the Americas are home to more than 9,300 El Pasoans, according to the 2020 U.S. Census. The two census tracts surrounding the port of entry in Tornillo have a population of just under 4,400 people. 

Residents within the three tracts near BOTA – which span from I-10 south to the border and from Eucalyptus Street east to Concepcion Street – experience asthma at higher rates than El Paso County as a whole, and have higher rates than the statewide and national rates of asthma, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control. 

Likewise, CDC figures show that rates of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease across those three Chamizal neighborhoods are roughly double the countywide, statewide and national rates. The American Lung Association says chronic obstructive pulmonary disease can be caused by things such as smoking and air pollution. 

Meanwhile, the median household income in the Chamizal tracts is below $23,000 per year.

“Commercial traffic (in Tornillo) has a very different impact than it does in a very dense Chamizal neighborhood on either side of the bridge,” Canales said. He also said the area surrounding the port of entry in Santa Teresa is similarly sparsely populated, but has the advantage of nearby warehouses and industrial infrastructure. 

“A truck idling is a truck idling,” he said, “but the impact it has on people in different places is wildly different.”

While there are fewer people living near the crossing in Tornillo compared with the neighborhood near the Bridge of the Americas, residents in Tornillo also experience asthma at rates higher than the state and national rates. And chronic obstructive pulmonary disease rates near Tornillo’s border crossing are similar to the elevated rates in Chamizal neighborhoods, according to the CDC. 

“These trucks are right in front of Zavala (Elementary School) everyday. We have seen how much pollution those kids have been going through at Zavala,” Acevedo said, referring to the school near the intersection of Alameda and Copia streets. “Whether it’s Tornillo or Santa Teresa, those are both viable options to move the trucks out of the core.”

Officials with El Paso County and the El Paso Chamber have sought to increase usage of the Tornillo crossing in recent years. Truck traffic spiked at the Tornillo port last fall, when over 6,200 trucks crossed at the site in September and October after the port had seen an average of fewer than 10 trucks per day before then, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Transportation. 

Last September, the El Paso Chamber said the Tornillo port’s director indicated the crossing had room to process more commercial vehicles. “The Tornillo Port of Entry can handle the brunt of commercial traffic,” the chamber said in a statement last fall.

Truck traffic in Tornillo fell off in November and December last year compared with prior months, with slightly more than 900 trucks crossing over those two months. 

Yet Canales’ proposal to have the city collectively call for the end of commercial truck traffic at the bridge faced overwhelming skepticism. Council representatives asked aloud where the trucks would go if not through BOTA, and what kind of extra costs businesses would face to route commercial traffic to the edges of the El Paso metro area. 

“We write the letter, and then what?” District 1 Rep. Brian Kennedy asked. “How’s it going to affect the commercial traffic? We don’t know. What’s the process of transferring that traffic to another bridge? We don’t know. Where will the traffic go? We don’t know. We can suggest it, but we don’t know.

“We don’t have enough information to start sending this off and saying ‘Here’s what we think’.”  

Others argued sending a letter likely wouldn’t achieve anything, and the city is already working on slashing pollution.

“We are talking about how we can reduce emissions,” said Hernandez, who mentioned a $15 million grant the federal government recently awarded to El Paso to fund the installation of dozens of electric vehicle chargers here. 

“We need to keep that up, so that in 10 years or in 15 years we can reduce the emissions at the bridge,” she said. “There are little things that we can do to take steps forward to help reduce this.”

Organizers from the Chamizal area blasted City Council representatives in a press conference Tuesday. Cemelli de Aztlan, a member of the Familia Unidas del Chamizal neighborhood group, and others pointed out the federal government has held different meetings about the Bridge of the Americas modernization project for over a year and a half. 

In that time, federal officials have tweaked their project proposals based on local feedback. GSA officials have said it’s unlikely the federal government will demolish the County Coliseum as part of the project – an early proposal that met backlash. And the agency has also developed a potential option for the BOTA project that would phase out commercial truck traffic at the port.

“This is not new,” said Veronica Carbajal, a lawyer representing Chamizal residents who last month lost a runoff election for a City Council seat against Acevedo. “We’ve had so many meetings. And it is extremely disappointing that you have city council members that have not bothered to attend a single one of those meetings to stay on top of the issue.”

In any case, the modernization project remains years away; the design phase won’t happen for another two years. Construction on the Bridge of the Americas is set to start in August 2028, and the GSA estimates it will be largely complete by summer 2031. 

The port’s modernization is “an opportunity to rethink what that port of entry is and the role it plays in our community,” Canales said. “It’s very important that we … listen to the communities on both sides – in District 2 and District 8 – on both sides of the port of entry, who are telling us this is what is best for their community.”