limits these colonias to a distance from the border. This limits all designated colonias in California to roughly the area of Imperial County. Programs Multinational environmental agreements The North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC) is an international environmental-agreement between the governments of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. NAFTA sought to promote economic growth by lowering most of the existing barriers to trade. While many advocates of NAFTA argued that it would indirectly increase the standard of living and thus environmental spending on the border, many critics commented on the fact that only a single sentence in the agreement's preamble addressed the environmental impacts of promoting free trade. In order to ensure that NAFTA would pass, the Clinton Administration pushed for NAAEC as a side agreement specifically to aid border environmental issues. From NAAEC came the creation of the Commission on Environmental Cooperation (CEC), an institution providing a forum for environmental-law enforcement disputes to be resolved. Scholars generally agree that the NAAEC's diction is ambiguous and does not clearly define the authority that the organization has; it is also unclear whether violators are obligated to respond to inquiries made by the CEC, and thus few parties have actually been investigated and punished for failing to cooperate. The charter creating the Border Environment Cooperation Commission (BECC) and North American Development Bank (NADB) was the first multinational agreement to address the problems faced by colonians. These two binational institutions were created to resolve issues that revolve around land contamination and sustainable water/wastewater infrastructure and compensate for CEC's shortcomings. However, BECC/NADB does not explicitly address the colonias themselves but rather the Mexico–U.S. border, defining the border as areas in the U.S. "within 100 kilometers [62 miles] and the area in Mexico that is within 300 kilometers [190 miles] of the international boundary." BECC/NADB consists of a board comprising members from both the U.S. and Mexican governments, and thus lies equally within the jurisdiction of each nation's government; this includes the Administrator for EPA and the Secretaries of State and Treasury from the U.S., and the Secretaries for the Environment and Natural Resources, Treasury, and External Relations from Mexico, as well as one state representative and non-governmental organization from each country. The BECC certifies projects that meet criteria in order to receive funding from the NADB. Projects can be proposed by anyone; in doing this, the BECC/NADB seek to promote public participation in