Searchers scoured rugged desert Tuesday for a small plane that disappeared while carrying the Mexican and U.S. heads of the International Water and Boundary Commission.
The chartered Cessna 421 carrying U.S. commissioner Carlos Marin and his Mexican counterpart, Arturo Herrera, was reported missing Monday after it didn't land as scheduled in Presidio, Texas, about 250 miles southeast of El Paso. Jake Brisbin Jr., executive director of the Rio Grande Council of Governments, was also on the plane along with a pilot, according to Presidio County Judge Jerry Agen.
Sally Spener, a spokeswoman for the IBWC in El Paso, said searchers were concentrating on a desert area west of Ojinaga, Mexico, a border city across the Rio Grande from Presidio.
Spener said the plane left El Paso just after 10 a.m. Monday and was scheduled to pass over the Luis Leon Reservoir in northern Mexico so the men could view floodwaters that continue to threaten levees on both sides of the border near Presidio.
Marin has worked with the IBWC's U.S. section since 1997. He was appointed interim commissioner in 2005 and President Bush appointed him commissioner the next year. Herrera has led the Mexican section of the IBWC since 1989.
The agency is responsible for maintaining the border between the U.S. and Mexico. In areas divided by the Rio Grande, that includes building and maintaining levees.
Marin, Herrera, and Brisbin were headed to the area Monday to discuss ongoing flooding that has prompted hundreds of residents to evacuate on both sides of the swollen river.
Spener said Tuesday that a levee along the Rio Conchos, a river that feeds into the Rio Grande, failed Monday night. Flood waters were reported in low-lying areas on the western side of Ojinaga. Monday afternoon, houses and businesses near the Rio Grande levee in the Mexican border city were lined with sandbags and appeared empty.
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