Approximately 270 Naval Reserve Seabees will be working on upgrading the International Wash on Pan American Street.

Lt. Col. Joel Quinn on the border as he watches the progress of the first phase of the International Wash upgrade.

The men have been working in groups of 20, rotating every14 days. A total of 35 Seabees will be on the ground during each rotation.

The work being done by the men at the International Wash prepares these them for the kind of work they will later be doing when they are deployed to Iraq.

The Naval Reserve men have been filling in the ditch with earth before going back in to excavate and pour concrete.

The first phase of the mission is to clear out the ditch of earth and other debris, said Lt. Col. Joel Quinn, Joint Task Force North Engineer Mission Planner.

The first phase of the project involves excavating the ditch; constructing drill shaft and lining the ditch with concrete. The phase began on March 3 and is scheduled to end on Aug. 28, 2008.

The entire project, though, is anticipated to be finished sometime in 2009.

Quinn said that on the north side of the ditch the men will pour a 10 foot concrete wall.

It will be eight feet wide; the southern wall will also be made of concrete and will be anywhere from eight feet to 12 feet long.

The entire project will be about 1.3 miles long.

The Joint Task Force North, based in Biggs Airfield, Fort Bliss, Texas, is a joint service command comprised of active duty and reserve component of soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, Department of Defense civilian employees, and contract support personnel.

JTF North is the DoD organization tasked to support the nation’s federal law enforcement agencies in the identification and interdiction of suspected transnational threats within and along the approaches of the continental United States, said Armando Carasco, the pubic affairs for JTF-North.

Transnational threats are those activities conducted by individuals or groups that involve international terrorism, narcotrafficking, alien smuggling, weapons of mass destruction and the delivery system for these weapons that threatens the national security of the US.