Let me start this crazy story by saying in 2007 there was a huge debate in Arizona about water washing away the border wall.
Yes, you read that right. Nearly 15 years ago — FIFTEEN — federal officials were sternly warned their wall designs would fail catastrophically due to basic water runoff.
In October 2007, before the fence was built by Kiewit Western Co. for $21.3 million, Organ Pipe officials told the U.S. Department of Homeland Security they were worried that the design would impede the movement of floodwater across the border; that debris would get trapped in the fence; that water would pool; and that the lateral flow of water would cause damage to the environment and patrol roads, according to a report issued by Organ Pipe in August 2008 about flooding that summer.
In response, the Border Patrol issued a final environmental assessment with a finding of no significant impact. It also said the fence would not impede the natural flow of water or cause flooding. […] At a December 2007 meeting, Kiewit officials stated in a handout that the fence design “would permit water and debris to flow freely and not allow pounding of water on either side of the border” because the drainage crossing grates “met hydraulic modeling requirements.”
“Now we know who’s right,” said Matt Clark, Southwest representative for Defenders of Wildlife. “Period. End of story.”
End of story? Sadly not.
Matt Clark was talking about the wall three years later in 2011 when that fancy $20 million “hydraulic modeling” wall, as predicted, simply washed away. Problems started immediately in 2008, prompting lawsuits and complaints about the wall operating like a weak dam and then it came down exactly as predicted.
It begs the question of whether people who had been advocating for these walls were taking a slice of $20 million; really didn’t mind if their overpriced wall malfunctioned or fell.
They may as well be building monuments to corruption and stupidity for all they care.
Lesson learned from this 2007 debacle? Not so fast.
Take a look at the big story now coming from Arizona.
José Manuel Pérez Cantú, the director of the nonprofit Cuenca de Los Ojos, said in an email that six gates were washed out at this location alone. Other gates were also reportedly impacted by the heavy rainfall and flooding. The power and height of the waters can be seen in not just the heavy gates ripped open but the debris that wrapped around intact portions of the wall.
Who could have predicted this? Ah yes, just about everyone.
Indeed. Anyone could have predicted this.
The border wall is becoming the standard for illustrating how to fail at security, but behind the obvious failure of the wall to function longer than a year are the massive corruption and ecological disaster stories that make it even worse.
Let me add a little more context to just how stupid the corruption was, from another section of the wall that failed.
- …boasted at a campaign event in New Jersey that the wall was ‘going up at record speed’…
- Steel panels from the fence in the town of Calexico, California were knocked down on Wednesday morning. The concrete used to anchor the 30ft-tall (9m) panels in place had not yet set.
You see boasts about how quickly the wall goes up, while the wall being a poorly-planned rush job is given as the excuse for it falling right back down.