Thread: Border-fence projects — and costs — accelerate

Border-fence projects — and costs — accelerate

Contractors recently got $279M as part of effort to complete 670 miles in '08
By Brady McCombs
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 04.27.2008

KINO SPRINGS — The fencing of Arizona's international border continues at an unprecedented speed and cost.

Private contractors have been paid $279 million by the Department of Homeland Security to construct 58 miles of primary fence — fencing meant to stop people on foot — and 32 miles of vehicle barriers in the past nine months, figures from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers show. The projects are part of an effort to complete the construction of 670 miles of fencing and barriers by the end of 2008.

By the end of the year, nearly 110 of Arizona's 350 miles of U.S.-Mexican border are scheduled to have primary fences — more than seven times the 15 miles of two years ago, Homeland Security environmental assessments show.

Homeland Security officials acknowledge that the 15- to 18-foot- high barriers aren't a panacea but say they are a key element in the strategy to slow illegal immigration through the Southwest border's busiest stretch. Border-security proponents applaud the efforts and say fencing is long overdue.

"I believe in a strong, secure fence," said Patrick Flanagan, who has 40 acres about four miles north of the border in the Kino Springs area east of Nogales. "It's the principle of it — I think we need to defend our borders."
Each new project, however, brings out a flurry of concerns from environmentalists, immigrant advocates and some border residents who contend fences don't stop illegal immigration or drug smuggling, and merely push traffic into more remote and fragile terrain. That's dangerous for the people crossing illegally and Border Patrol agents trying to catch them, and harmful to habitat and wildlife that depends on riverbeds and mountains, they say.

"It's a foolish waste of money to try to stop people from coming because they are just going to come around the fence," said Barbara Johnson, who lives about a half-mile north of the border near the Santa Cruz River in the Kino Springs area. "All they are doing is moving the traffic."

The newest project on the docket is 7.6 miles of primary fence and dirt road east of Nogales, where Johnson and Flanagan live.

The fence would start one mile east of Nogales and stretch across the Kino Springs area to the foot of the Patagonia Mountains. Construction is scheduled to begin in late July and be completed by October, but the contract hasn't been awarded yet.

The project comes on the heels of primary fences erected near San Luis, Lukeville, Sasabe, Nogales, Naco and Douglas.

Homeland Security officials are working furiously to complete the remaining 361 miles of projects by the end of the year to meet the mandate of 670 miles of primary fencing and vehicle barriers established by the Secure Fence Act of 2006. Through March, the agency had completed 309 miles.

To reach that goal, on April 1 Secretary Michael Chertoff invoked a waiver granted to him by the 2005 Real ID Act that will allow his department to build fences, roads and towers on 470 miles of border in Arizona and Texas without having to comply with environmental regulations.

Homeland Security identified 13 sections in Arizona under the waiver covering at least 220 miles. The plans for the areas include a mix of primary fences and vehicle barriers.

Costs

The new fences sprouting up are taller, sturdier and, in some cases, more environmentally friendly than the steel landing-mat fences that went up in the mid- to late 1990s in urban centers such as Nogales.

They are also a lot more expensive.

It cost about $1 million a mile to put up the old fences. All six of the recent primary-fence projects in Arizona have cost at least $3.2 million per mile.
That's how much the U.S. House of Representatives estimated it would cost during immigration-reform talks in the summer of 2006.

Only the 32 miles of vehicle barriers going up along the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge are scheduled to be completed for less — about $1.4 million a mile.

The most expensive project so far was the 2.08 miles of fence and improved road in the rolling hills west of Nogales that were finished at $7.4 million per mile. The seven-mile fence flanking Sasabe was completed for $4.5 million per mile, and the 32 miles of fencing east of San Luis for $3.8 million per mile.

The money for most of the fencing comes from a $1.187 billion pot in the 2007 Homeland Security budget earmarked for fencing, said Barry Morrissey, spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection based in Washington, D.C.

Some projects cost more than others because the terrain varies substantially along the nearly 2,000-mile border and no two projects are the same, he said.

Officials chose to use private contractors to get the fences built quickly and professionally and allow Border Patrol agents to stay in the field patrolling, Morrissey said.

Phoenix-based Sundt Construction Inc. has been awarded four of the seven recent contracts in Arizona for a total of $111.8 million to build 46.2 miles of fence, Army Corps of Engineers figures show.

The costs seem reasonable for the nature of the work, said John Pike, director of Virginia-based GlobalSecurity.org, a non-partisan security-information Web site. And the use of private contractors was the only way to construct so much fence under a tight deadline, he said.
Determining if the money is well-spent, however, depends on one's opinion on the effectiveness of fences, Pike said.

"The fence in isolation, and certainly not an incomplete fence, is not going to have much of an impact if you don't fix those other things," Pike said.

Kino Springs fence

The quiet Kino Springs area sits about five miles east of Nogales in wide-open, rolling hills covered with golden wild grass and mesquite trees.
A few clusters of houses surround the Kino Springs Golf Club, and a couple of dozen more are in a neighborhood farther east along Kino Springs Drive that locals call The Village.

The Santa Cruz River bed winds through the area and is a focal point of illegal immigration. Smugglers often use the river because it serves as a compass north and its cottonwood and willow trees provide cover from Border Patrol agents.

At the border, a small but steady stream of water runs north down the middle of the riverbed about halfway across the 7.6-mile stretch designated for the fence.

Chest-high vehicle barriers made of steel rails mark the border going east and west, but not in the riverbed. During a recent storm, the rising river knocked down the vehicle barriers that officials had placed in the river, said Johnson, whose 30 acre-property is near the river.

Officials will face a difficult decision when it comes to the Santa Cruz River.

If they try to build a bollard-style fence — made of steel posts set four inches apart — in the river, it will disrupt the flow of the river or could get knocked down. If they leave it open, it will become even more of a thoroughfare for smugglers, Johnson said.

"There is still going to be a giant 'Welcome to the U.S.A.' gate right here," Johnson said.

Environmental assessments indicate that officials plan to leave very mountainous areas and riverbeds open as they continue building fences.
That triggers a key argument from fence critics: Arizona's stretch of U.S.-Mexican border will eventually become a patchwork of steel fences and vehicle barriers with only the most rugged mountains and largest riverbeds left open.

That would funnel illegal immigration through sensitive corridors that are home to a large amount of biodiversity in the region, said Matt Clark, Southwest representative of Defenders of Wildlife.

"We've basically pointed an arrow saying, 'Go here, there's not a fence here, and bring your friends,' " Clark said. "Because there is nothing there to stop them."

The consequences of pushing people into remote and rugged areas worries Kino Springs resident Stephanie Campbell, whose house sits on the bank of the Santa Cruz River near the golf course.

"All fences do is push them out to farther areas where they end up dying," she said. "There is no way they are going to say, 'Oh well, they built a fence, I'm not going to come into the United States.' "

Flanagan agrees that the fencing will push traffic into harder-to-reach areas, but says that's good news because it will slow illegal immigration. Even the construction activity will help divert traffic and, more important, drug traffickers, off his property. He says he was shot at by drug smugglers, and returned a warning shot, on the evening of April 19, 2007, on his property.

"Fences are needed," said Flanagan, a former Marine and retired contractor who moved to Kino Springs 2 1/2 years ago. "They just make sense."

Environmental concerns about fence / B1
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Officials will face a difficult decision when it comes to the Santa Cruz River.

If they try to build a bollard-style fence — made of steel posts set four inches apart — in the river, it will disrupt the flow of the river or could get knocked down. If they leave it open, it will become even more of a thoroughfare for smugglers, Johnson said.

"There is still going to be a giant 'Welcome to the U.S.A.' gate right here," Johnson said.

Cost of high tech gate on Santa Cruz river: $10 million
Cost of stainless steel mesh fence with barbed wire: $100,000
Cost of National Guard detachment:

We don't need no stinking fence. We just have to enforce our Immigration laws, and stop giving incentives for the illiterate peasants to come here.