Contractor worries Mother Nature could stall border wall construction
May 17, 2008 - 10:50PM
Jackie Leatherman

McALLEN -- The Hidalgo County portion of the border wall will require more concrete and manpower to build than the Anzalduas International Bridge that will link South McAllen and Mission to the west side of Reynosa.

"It's (going to cause) a lot of people to work late nights," said Louis Jones Jr., president of Dannenbaum Engineering Co., who is working on both projects. The Houston-based company has five offices statewide, including one in McAllen.

Building the border wall here will require three times the concrete needed for the 2.62-mile bridge, which is already under construction. The wall is also expected to have five times the number of construction workers as the bridge - 250 compared to 50.

Although the design of the wall is "pretty basic," Jones noted that "the aggressive timeline makes it intensely complicated."

Federal government plans call for 370 miles of fence and 300 miles of vehicle barriers to be built along the southern U.S. border by the end of this year. So far, more than 300 miles of fencing have been erected, varying from metal barriers to impede pedestrians to concrete posts designed to block vehicles.

In Hidalgo County, at least 22 miles of that barrier will take the form of an enhanced levee system designed to provide both border security and flood protection. Construction on that portion is expected to begin by the end of June.

The project will be broken into seven smaller segments that will follow the levees in Hidalgo County. The levee repairs will be done at the same time as the wall construction.

The shortest wall segment will be 0.9 miles and the longest will be 4.3 miles. Wall height will range from 12 feet to 24 feet.

Officials decided that parceling out the project would give smaller, local businesses more opportunity to come up with the manpower and insurance coverage needed to participate in construction.

Some 1.8 million cubic yards of dirt - enough to fill a football field-size hole about 281 yards deep - will be needed to rehabilitate both the portions of the levee with the border wall and without the border wall.

Officials aren't concerned about material or labor shortages for the wall's construction.

It's nature they have to worry about - the majority of the construction is expected to take place during the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.

"That's the most fear," said Jones, the Dannenbaum Engineering executive. "We have to build this thing during hurricane season. If you get a hurricane to roll through here, you could shut down for a couple of weeks. As long as we don't have weather problems, we'll get it done."

The last major hurricane to strike the Rio Grande Valley was Hurricane Allen, which made landfall as a Category 3 storm near Port Mansfield on Aug. 10, 1980. A more recent near miss occurred Aug. 22, 1999, when Hurricane Bret made landfall as a Category 3 storm on Padre Island in sparsely populated Kenedy County, about halfway between Brownsville and Corpus Christi.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced construction of a border fence in South Texas as part of its efforts to increase border security. Congress mandated that 670 miles of vehicle and pedestrian barriers be constructed along the southern international border by the end of 2008.

Hidalgo County officials convinced DHS to change its design plans to a concrete floodwall that would also serve to secure the border. This past week, however, the Texas Border Coalition - a group of Texas border mayors, county judges and local economic development officials whose executive committee includes Hidalgo County Judge J.D. Salinas - sued DHS for allegedly failing to follow federal land acquisition rules in preparing to build the border barrier.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, meanwhile, has said the current levees would not withstand a major storm. If they're not repaired, landowners would end up paying increased flood insurance costs.

Hidalgo County is seeking federal reimbursement for portions of a $100 million voter-approved bond being used to repair portions of the levee, some of which would be border wall sites.

DHS has agreed to give the county up to $82 million for border wall construction only.

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