Weekend Onesie: Just Another Brick...
File this under: whatever happened to...?
Remember 'the wall?' No, not Pink Floyd's masterpiece... the one the orange ogre promised everyone he would build.
He had four years to get 'er done. And... what became of that?
Well, you don't have to search very hard on Google to find all the answers. In particular, there are articles by John B. Washington of The Atlantic, and CNN's Ed Lavandera, Ashley Killough and Catherine E. Shoichet, which shed more than a little light on the whole debacle.
Here are some 'fun' facts:
HISTORY
In the 1990's, the federal government built the first segments of the border wall along major cities in the U.S. Southwest: El Paso, TX, Nogales, AZ , and San Diego, CA. It utilized recycled steel from helicopter landing mats left over from the Vietnam War and materials from former Japanese internment camps.
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THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION
One of the tenants of President Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign was that he would make a clean break from the policies of the Trump administration.
On his first day in office, President Biden declared, "It shall be the policy of my Administration that no more American taxpayer dollars be diverted to construct a border wall."
Halting a project of this size remains a political and logistical quagmire.
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THE POLITICAL FALLOUT
In October, 2021 both Texas and Missouri sued the Biden administration for halting border-wall construction and not using the funds specifically appropriated by Congress for that purpose. This was is an effort to force the administration to resume building the wall.
Despite the lawsuit, large-scale wall-raising isn’t likely to happen. Trump infamously had to bypass Congress and stretch the definition of a national emergency in order to secure funding.
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COST AND WASTE
According to the Congressional Research Service, the Trump administration directed $16.4 billion in funding to his pet project. Most of those funds, about $10 billion, came from the Department of Defense. An April, the DOD estimated that an addition $1.4 billion in suspension and termination costs may be incurred.
"We know how much an F-35 fighter costs and how much components cost for the latest Gerald Ford aircraft carrier, but everything regarding the borderlands wall is severely obscured from public review and scrutiny." - Myles Traphagen, Wildlands Network
Tens of thousands of heavy steel slats are slowly rusting in the open air throughout the southwestern borderlands.
These slats, called 'bollards,' are 18 or 33 feet long and filled with concrete and rebar, making recycling them incredibly difficult. To reuse the metal, someone would have to cut out the concrete, then cut up the steel, before turning it into scrap metal - a process which significantly diminishes resale value.
One site in New Mexico has about 31,000 bollards. Another 20,000 are spread across four sites in Arizona; a few thousand more sit in the chaparral hills outside San Diego. They are/were worth at least a quarter of a billion dollars.
One steel manufacturer which supplied material for the border wall estimated that each bollard costs about $9,000, not including modifications (welding, steel panels, rebar and concrete) or installation costs. That means about half a billion dollars’ worth of steel is sitting in the sun in New Mexico, Arizona, and California.
"The government will seek to transfer usable material to other federal agencies before considering material for donation or sale. We have no plans for separating the concrete from the excess bollards for disposition." - Jay Field, a public-affairs officer at the Army Corps of Engineers
Along with the steel, contractors have left light poles, electrical supplies, crushed aggregate, processed riprap rock, sand, culvert materials, and piping - worth about $350 million - sitting unused in the desert. Itemize costs of materials are unavailable, and anti-wall watchdogs put that cost significantly higher.
The border wall now runs much of the length of Arizona, which is where most of the construction took place over the past four years. Given the difficult terrain in Guadalupe Canyon, the wall erected there cost about $41 million a mile to build.
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THE ENVIRONMENTAL FALLOUT
"It's kind of a bizarre scene because we've got this huge amount of devastation, this massive swath of land that's been blasted open, and nobody knows what's gonna happen next."
- Laiken Jordahl, environmental activist
Within sight of Guadalupe Canyon, in the southeastern corner of Arizona, land made up of rounded buttes and steep canyons - critical habitat for jaguars and other endangered cross-border species - crews were dynamite-blasting into mountain sides in order to build the wall.
"It is enraging. We have watched thousands of pounds of dynamite be detonated in wilderness areas, in corridors for endangered species, in places where there is not frequent migration from people or smugglers. They have cut through an entire mountain range to build a small section of wall that to someone in DC was just another mile on the tally."
- Laiken Jordahl, environmental activist
Entire ecosystems are imperiled by the wall.
"At least 93 endangered and threatened species - think jaguars, ocelots, Mexican gray wolves - are pushed nearer to extinction by border walls, Walls in the wild destroy habitat, alter waterflows, and disrupt wildlife migrations."
- Russ McSpadden, of the Center for Biological Diversity
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MAINTANENCE COSTS
Some contractors are still being paid to maintain already built segments of wall, or guard leftover material.
In the Tucson, a private company, Southwest Valley Constructors, was awarded a $524 million contract "for design build of the Tucson sector barrier wall replacement project." The completion date for that section, still unfinished, was September 7, 2021. Southwest Valley Constructors received three other federal contracts for border-wall construction, with its multiple contracts adding up to more than three-quarters of a billion dollars.
"We want to see these contracts canceled, and we want to see the remaining billions of dollars left in those contracts used to restore and revegetate this beautiful landscape."
- Laiken Jordahl, environmental activist
A report from GOP staff on the Subcommittee on Government Operations and Border Management, written by aides to pro-border-wall Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, claims that the Biden administration is spending as much as $3 million a day paying subcontractors to guard border-wall materials and keep work sites safe. (That number has not been verified by an outside source.)
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THE HUMAN FALLOUT
The border wall’s opponents claim that the wall itself, not migration, is the crisis. Even half-built, the existing parts of the wall force migrants into ever more remote, ever more perilous crossing zones. Some of these zones are seeing record numbers of migrant deaths.
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Only in America...
The Immigrant - Neil Sedaka
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2 comments:
The waste and environmental impact is disgusting. Thanks for this.
Your research is thorough. I had no idea that such staggering amounts of money were engaged. Drugs move under and around that border, a wall is pointless - and cartel money endless. Americans (if I may speak humbly as the toqued cousin in the attic) have always had big appetites for, well .. everything. This is not going to change anytime soon, wall or no wall.
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