There is a wide cost range for the construction of pedestrian border walls, resulting from factors which include labor (some sections were built by members of the National Guard, while others were built by private contractors); topography; remote vs. urban locations; land purchases and condemnations; materials (wall sections built in the 1990’s used scrap metal, obtained from the military for free, while more recent sections have required the purchase of concrete, steel, etc.); and the design that is being utilized.
In October 2008 the Houston Chronicle reported that “The Army Corps of Engineers estimated that the amount spent for pedestrian fencing has jumped 88 percent since February to $7.5 million per mile. The costs for vehicle barriers have increased 40 percent to $2.8 million per mile, according to the GAO.”
“As border fence lags, costs, controversy rise” by Stewart Powell, Houston Chronicle, October 10, 2008
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6052544.html
In January, 2009, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that costs for sections built up to that point ranged from $400,000 to $15.1 million. They also noted that these cost estimates were not independently verified and, “An Independent Auditor's Report on DHS's Fiscal Year 2008 Financial Statements found that CBP did not have adequate policies and procedures in place to properly account for steel purchases and construction of the U.S. border fence in an accurate and timely manner. As a result, for several months throughout the year, CBP’s financial statements did not accurately reflect the construction activity.”
Secure Border Initiative Fence Construction Costs, United States Government Accountability Office, January 29, 2009
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09244r.pdf
The GAO’s January 2009 report only included border wall sections that had been completed, not those which were under construction or in various stages of planning.
Sections that were later constructed included the 3.6 miles of pedestrian border wall built through the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area, at a cost of $57.7 million, averaging just over $16 million per mile.
“$57.7-million fence added to an already grueling illegal immigration route” by Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times, February 15, 2010
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/15/local/la-me-fence15-2010feb15
Also unfinished at the time were the border wall and earthen berm blocking Smuggler’s Gulch, near San Diego, which cost $59 million for 3.5 miles, averaging $16.8 million per mile.
“A Barren Promise at the Border” by Rob Davis, Voice of San Diego, October 22, 2009http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/environment/article_13330282-1245-5e49-bd68-5a10237c9f44.html
According to the GAO it will cost an estimated $75 million per year to maintain border walls. As of mid-May 2009, the fence had been breached more than 3,300 times, with costs to repair each breach averaging $1,300.
Secure Border Initiative: Technology Deployment Delays Persist and the Impact of Border Fencing Has Not Been Assessed, Government Accountability Office, September 2009
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09896.pdf
In 2011 the GAO stated that “CBP estimated that the border fencing had a life cycle of 20 years and over these years, a total estimated cost of about $6.5 billion to deploy, operate, and maintain the fencing and other infrastructure. According to CBP, during fiscal year 2010, there were 4,037 documented and repaired breaches of the fencing and CBP spent at least $7.2 million to repair the breaches, or an average of about $1,800 per breach.”
BORDER SECURITY: DHS Progress and Challenges in Securing the U.S. Southwest and Northern Borders, United States Government Accountability Office, March 30, 2011
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11508t.pdf
In the spring and summer of 2011, CBP replaced 2.77 miles of existing “landing mat” fence in Nogales, which had suffered numerous breaches, with “bollard” fencing, at a cost of $11.6 million.
“Barrier Rebuilt” by Margaret Regan, Tucson Weekly, June 23, 2011
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/barrier-rebuilt/Content?oid=3028495
In 2010 the GAO reported that “Since fiscal year 2006, DHS has received about $4.4 billion in appropriations for SBI, including about $2.5 billion for physical fencing and related infrastructure, about $1.5 billion for virtual fencing (e.g., surveillance systems) and related infrastructure (e.g., towers), and about $300 million for program management.”
SECURE BORDER INITIATIVE: DHS Needs to Strengthen Management and Oversight of Its Prime Contractor, United States Government Accountability Office, October, 2010
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d116.pdf
Showing posts with label cost. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cost. Show all posts
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Border Walls are Ineffective Speed Bumps in the Desert
By Scott Nicol
All of the imagined benefits of the border wall flow from the assumption that if walls are built they will stop undocumented traffic from coming across. Politicians claim that building 700 miles of wall along our 1,933 mile long southern border, while ignoring the 3,987 mile long northern border and 12,479 miles of coastline will somehow allow the Department of Homeland Security to achieve the Secure Fence Act’s goal, to “achieve and maintain operational control over the entire international land and maritime borders of the United States.”
Crossers climbing the “triple fence” near San Diego, California. Photo by Laura Garcia.
In fact, the Border Patrol’s own statistics show that the border walls have not brought about a decrease in illegal entries. The border patrol uses the number of border crossers apprehended in a given sector to gauge the overall number of attempted crossings. Apprehensions dropped dramatically between 2005, the year before the Secure Fence Act was passed, and 2007, the year after. But the decrease did not occur in areas where border walls had been built. On the contrary, the greatest reductions in apprehensions, which according to the Border Patrol would indicate a successful strategy for stopping undocumented immigration, were seen in sectors that did not have walls. Texas’ Rio Grande Valley sector saw a 45.3% decrease in apprehensions, bringing them to a 15 year low. The Del Rio, Texas, sector saw a 66.5% decrease. Neither sector had an inch of border wall before 2008. In sectors such as Tucson, which saw walls built shortly after passage of the Secure Fence Act, the reduction in apprehensions began before any wall posts were erected. The areas that saw an increase in crossings were California’s San Diego and El Centro sectors, both of which have had border walls for over a decade. At the same time that the unwalled border witnessed dramatic decreases in crossings, heavily fortified San Diego saw a 20.1% increase.
Even before the passage of the Secure Fence Act, it was clear that border walls did not reduce the number of people entering the United States. The Congressional Research Service found that the number of border crossers apprehended nationally in 1992 was the same as the number apprehended in 2004, after walls in San Diego had been erected. They concluded that migrant traffic had simply shifted to more remote areas in Arizona and that “increased enforcement in San Diego sector has had little impact on overall apprehensions.” Migrants were not stopped by border walls; they simply went around them.
Other researchers have studied the effectiveness of the border wall and border enforcement by analyzing how successful migrants are at getting through it. The Migrant Policy Institute found that 97% of undocumented immigrants eventually succeed in entering the United States, a number that has been unchanged since the first border walls went up in 1995. Wayne Cornelius, Director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California-San Diego told the House Judiciary Committee that according to his research,
Tightened border enforcement since 1993 has not stopped nor even discouraged unauthorized migrants from entering the United States. Even if apprehended, the vast majority (92-97%) keep trying until they succeed. Neither the higher probability of being apprehended by the Border Patrol, nor the sharply increased danger of clandestine entry through deserts and mountainous terrain, has discouraged potential migrants from leaving home.
Assertions by pundits and politicians that walls will allow the U.S. to “secure” its southern border are patently false. Spokespersons for the Border Patrol tend to describe it much more modestly. Del Rio, Texas, Border Patrol Chief Randy Hill said, “We're going to see steel barriers erected on the borders where U.S. and Mexican cities adjoin. These will slow down illegal crossers by minutes.” Not stop crossers, or allow the Border Patrol to “achieve and maintain operational control” of the border, but slow them down by “minutes.” As Border Patrol spokesperson Mike Scioli said, “The border fence is a speed bump in the desert.”
Even Bush administration Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said in 2007, “I think the fence has come to assume a certain kind of symbolic significance which should not obscure the fact that it is a much more complicated problem than putting up a fence which someone can climb over with a ladder or tunnel under with a shovel.”
Mile upon mile of border wall have been built, with no apparent thought given to efficacy, because the Secure Fence Act only mandated a mile count. There is no requirement that border walls have any measurable impact on immigration or smuggling, and in 2009 the Government Accountability Office found that the Department of Homeland Security had made no effort to determine whether or not walls were having any effect. Even the Border Patrol has questioned whether walls are being built in some locations for political, rather than operational, reasons. In a 2007 email obtained by the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) through a Freedom of Information Act request, the Assistant Chief Patrol Agent for the Yuma sector asks, “will we be getting fence where we don’t need it in our sector for the sake of putting up the required mileage?” The miles of unnecessary border wall that he referred to have since been built through the Imperial Sand Dunes of Southern California.
Border Wall in the Imperial Sand Dunes. Border Patrol photo.
Despite its “symbolic significance” and its possibly arbitrary placement, the border wall comes with a real price tag. In 2007 the Congressional Research Service estimated that the border wall could cost as much as $49 billion to build and maintain. Since then the costs of construction have risen dramatically. The Army Corps of Engineers reported that the cost of building “pedestrian fences” has increased from an average of $3.5 million per mile to $7.5 million per mile. The cost of building vehicle barriers on the border is now $2.8 million per mile. Some sections of border wall are particularly expensive: the walls that have been inserted into the levees in south Texas averaged $12 million per mile; in California, a 3.5 mile section that involved filling in canyons cost taxpayers $57 million. In 2008, the Department of Homeland Security asked Congress to allocate an additional $400 million for border wall construction, because the $2.7 billion already spent was not enough to finish out the year.
Why would members of Congress vote to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on border walls that do not work?
Simply put, for members of Congress who do not live beside the border, and do not count on the votes of those who do, the border wall is an abstraction. The reality that the border wall has little or no impact on border crossings is irrelevant. The reality that more than 400 property owners have had their property condemned is irrelevant. The reality that federally designated wilderness areas and wildlife refuges have been severely impacted is irrelevant. The politicians who voted for border walls were voting for a symbol, something that could be used to give voters a false sense of security during election cycles, and nothing more.
All of the imagined benefits of the border wall flow from the assumption that if walls are built they will stop undocumented traffic from coming across. Politicians claim that building 700 miles of wall along our 1,933 mile long southern border, while ignoring the 3,987 mile long northern border and 12,479 miles of coastline will somehow allow the Department of Homeland Security to achieve the Secure Fence Act’s goal, to “achieve and maintain operational control over the entire international land and maritime borders of the United States.”
Crossers climbing the “triple fence” near San Diego, California. Photo by Laura Garcia.
In fact, the Border Patrol’s own statistics show that the border walls have not brought about a decrease in illegal entries. The border patrol uses the number of border crossers apprehended in a given sector to gauge the overall number of attempted crossings. Apprehensions dropped dramatically between 2005, the year before the Secure Fence Act was passed, and 2007, the year after. But the decrease did not occur in areas where border walls had been built. On the contrary, the greatest reductions in apprehensions, which according to the Border Patrol would indicate a successful strategy for stopping undocumented immigration, were seen in sectors that did not have walls. Texas’ Rio Grande Valley sector saw a 45.3% decrease in apprehensions, bringing them to a 15 year low. The Del Rio, Texas, sector saw a 66.5% decrease. Neither sector had an inch of border wall before 2008. In sectors such as Tucson, which saw walls built shortly after passage of the Secure Fence Act, the reduction in apprehensions began before any wall posts were erected. The areas that saw an increase in crossings were California’s San Diego and El Centro sectors, both of which have had border walls for over a decade. At the same time that the unwalled border witnessed dramatic decreases in crossings, heavily fortified San Diego saw a 20.1% increase.
Even before the passage of the Secure Fence Act, it was clear that border walls did not reduce the number of people entering the United States. The Congressional Research Service found that the number of border crossers apprehended nationally in 1992 was the same as the number apprehended in 2004, after walls in San Diego had been erected. They concluded that migrant traffic had simply shifted to more remote areas in Arizona and that “increased enforcement in San Diego sector has had little impact on overall apprehensions.” Migrants were not stopped by border walls; they simply went around them.
Other researchers have studied the effectiveness of the border wall and border enforcement by analyzing how successful migrants are at getting through it. The Migrant Policy Institute found that 97% of undocumented immigrants eventually succeed in entering the United States, a number that has been unchanged since the first border walls went up in 1995. Wayne Cornelius, Director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California-San Diego told the House Judiciary Committee that according to his research,
Tightened border enforcement since 1993 has not stopped nor even discouraged unauthorized migrants from entering the United States. Even if apprehended, the vast majority (92-97%) keep trying until they succeed. Neither the higher probability of being apprehended by the Border Patrol, nor the sharply increased danger of clandestine entry through deserts and mountainous terrain, has discouraged potential migrants from leaving home.
Assertions by pundits and politicians that walls will allow the U.S. to “secure” its southern border are patently false. Spokespersons for the Border Patrol tend to describe it much more modestly. Del Rio, Texas, Border Patrol Chief Randy Hill said, “We're going to see steel barriers erected on the borders where U.S. and Mexican cities adjoin. These will slow down illegal crossers by minutes.” Not stop crossers, or allow the Border Patrol to “achieve and maintain operational control” of the border, but slow them down by “minutes.” As Border Patrol spokesperson Mike Scioli said, “The border fence is a speed bump in the desert.”
Even Bush administration Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said in 2007, “I think the fence has come to assume a certain kind of symbolic significance which should not obscure the fact that it is a much more complicated problem than putting up a fence which someone can climb over with a ladder or tunnel under with a shovel.”
Mile upon mile of border wall have been built, with no apparent thought given to efficacy, because the Secure Fence Act only mandated a mile count. There is no requirement that border walls have any measurable impact on immigration or smuggling, and in 2009 the Government Accountability Office found that the Department of Homeland Security had made no effort to determine whether or not walls were having any effect. Even the Border Patrol has questioned whether walls are being built in some locations for political, rather than operational, reasons. In a 2007 email obtained by the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) through a Freedom of Information Act request, the Assistant Chief Patrol Agent for the Yuma sector asks, “will we be getting fence where we don’t need it in our sector for the sake of putting up the required mileage?” The miles of unnecessary border wall that he referred to have since been built through the Imperial Sand Dunes of Southern California.
Border Wall in the Imperial Sand Dunes. Border Patrol photo.
Despite its “symbolic significance” and its possibly arbitrary placement, the border wall comes with a real price tag. In 2007 the Congressional Research Service estimated that the border wall could cost as much as $49 billion to build and maintain. Since then the costs of construction have risen dramatically. The Army Corps of Engineers reported that the cost of building “pedestrian fences” has increased from an average of $3.5 million per mile to $7.5 million per mile. The cost of building vehicle barriers on the border is now $2.8 million per mile. Some sections of border wall are particularly expensive: the walls that have been inserted into the levees in south Texas averaged $12 million per mile; in California, a 3.5 mile section that involved filling in canyons cost taxpayers $57 million. In 2008, the Department of Homeland Security asked Congress to allocate an additional $400 million for border wall construction, because the $2.7 billion already spent was not enough to finish out the year.
Why would members of Congress vote to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on border walls that do not work?
Simply put, for members of Congress who do not live beside the border, and do not count on the votes of those who do, the border wall is an abstraction. The reality that the border wall has little or no impact on border crossings is irrelevant. The reality that more than 400 property owners have had their property condemned is irrelevant. The reality that federally designated wilderness areas and wildlife refuges have been severely impacted is irrelevant. The politicians who voted for border walls were voting for a symbol, something that could be used to give voters a false sense of security during election cycles, and nothing more.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Taxpayers for Common Sense Blasts the Border Wall
Taxpayers for Common Sense has voiced their opposition to the border wall, tossing it into their Weekly Wastebasket. They describe themselves in this way,
"Taxpayers for Common Sense is an independent and non-partisan voice for taxpayers working to increase transparency and expose and eliminate wasteful and corrupt subsidies, earmarks, and corporate welfare."
Border Waste Reruns
Volume XIV No. 38: September 18, 2009
Jimmy Buffet could have testified at this week’s hearing about ongoing federal border protection initiatives. As you watched the same old song and dance about Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending commence before lawmakers, you could almost hear him sing: “Wasting away again on the border wall. Searching for the lost section of fence. Some people say that Boeing’s to blame, but I know – it’s our own damn fault.”
With the benefit of updated numbers and dates, the House Homeland Security Committee learned that seven years and more than $4 billion in, DHS’s Secure Border Initiative (SBI) is (still) broken. SBI is comprised of a system of cameras and sensors known as SBINet and a steel “pedestrian” fence erected on more than 600 miles of the southwestern U.S. border.
Lawmakers heard an all too familiar tale of waste and woe. The average cost of pedestrian fencing has jumped from $3.5 to $6.5 million per mile, and costs for vehicle fencing have doubled. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) testified that the sensors used in the SBINet system still suffer from too many false detections and are vulnerable to bad weather despite the fact that the military has effectively used camera and sensor technology to track enemy movements for years at a much lower cost. But it didn’t stop there, the sad song continued:
· Full deployment of SBINet is now projected for 2016—seven years after the original contract with Boeing was scheduled to end;
· The pedestrian fence has been breached more than 3,000 times so far, with each repair costing at least $1,300;
· A long-overdue DHS study estimates the costs of maintaining the fence over a 20-year period at $6.5 billion— which is likely a low ball.
Sadly, even the new price tag may not tell the whole story. As our analysis of fence costs points out, maintenance estimates by the Congressional Budget Office and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers put that figure at $8 billion years ago, before the same labor and materials price hikes that have bumped up the cost of fence construction.
Problems with SBINet are due in large part to a contract that even a Boeing spokesman admitted was “awkward.” That’s a bit of an understatement: The delays and cost overruns have made the project a poster child for problems with “lead systems integrator” contracting strategy, where one company acts as a “system integrator” that tries to cobble together several different projects completed at different times and with different subcontractors. Incredibly, DHS just renewed Boeing’s contract for another year, despite a string of failures that has dogged the contract almost since its 2006 inception.
The fundamental question, of course, is whether the fence actually works. The unfortunate answers range between “no” and “not sure”. Because the SBINet technology still isn’t functional, border patrol agents are forced to work with outdated and ineffective technology, decreasing the border’s effectiveness. And the border patrol hasn’t yet created a way to quantitatively measure whether or not the pedestrian fence is actually keeping people out. The number of people caught trying to cross the border actually declined in several sectors before the fence went up, showing only that those numbers are influenced by factors other than the existence of a 14-foot steel wall.
Like too many expensive national security projects, Congressional commitments to the border fence were made in a fiscal vacuum. Yet Senators exacerbated irresponsible spending by inserting a requirement that would add another 300 miles of pedestrian fence at a cost of some $40 billion. Even though they’ve seen this one before, maybe lawmakers should review the hearing transcript: When asked whether the American taxpayer had benefitted from spending on SBI, the GAO analyst replied with an unequivocal “No.”
"Taxpayers for Common Sense is an independent and non-partisan voice for taxpayers working to increase transparency and expose and eliminate wasteful and corrupt subsidies, earmarks, and corporate welfare."
Border Waste Reruns
Volume XIV No. 38: September 18, 2009
Jimmy Buffet could have testified at this week’s hearing about ongoing federal border protection initiatives. As you watched the same old song and dance about Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending commence before lawmakers, you could almost hear him sing: “Wasting away again on the border wall. Searching for the lost section of fence. Some people say that Boeing’s to blame, but I know – it’s our own damn fault.”
With the benefit of updated numbers and dates, the House Homeland Security Committee learned that seven years and more than $4 billion in, DHS’s Secure Border Initiative (SBI) is (still) broken. SBI is comprised of a system of cameras and sensors known as SBINet and a steel “pedestrian” fence erected on more than 600 miles of the southwestern U.S. border.
Lawmakers heard an all too familiar tale of waste and woe. The average cost of pedestrian fencing has jumped from $3.5 to $6.5 million per mile, and costs for vehicle fencing have doubled. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) testified that the sensors used in the SBINet system still suffer from too many false detections and are vulnerable to bad weather despite the fact that the military has effectively used camera and sensor technology to track enemy movements for years at a much lower cost. But it didn’t stop there, the sad song continued:
· Full deployment of SBINet is now projected for 2016—seven years after the original contract with Boeing was scheduled to end;
· The pedestrian fence has been breached more than 3,000 times so far, with each repair costing at least $1,300;
· A long-overdue DHS study estimates the costs of maintaining the fence over a 20-year period at $6.5 billion— which is likely a low ball.
Sadly, even the new price tag may not tell the whole story. As our analysis of fence costs points out, maintenance estimates by the Congressional Budget Office and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers put that figure at $8 billion years ago, before the same labor and materials price hikes that have bumped up the cost of fence construction.
Problems with SBINet are due in large part to a contract that even a Boeing spokesman admitted was “awkward.” That’s a bit of an understatement: The delays and cost overruns have made the project a poster child for problems with “lead systems integrator” contracting strategy, where one company acts as a “system integrator” that tries to cobble together several different projects completed at different times and with different subcontractors. Incredibly, DHS just renewed Boeing’s contract for another year, despite a string of failures that has dogged the contract almost since its 2006 inception.
The fundamental question, of course, is whether the fence actually works. The unfortunate answers range between “no” and “not sure”. Because the SBINet technology still isn’t functional, border patrol agents are forced to work with outdated and ineffective technology, decreasing the border’s effectiveness. And the border patrol hasn’t yet created a way to quantitatively measure whether or not the pedestrian fence is actually keeping people out. The number of people caught trying to cross the border actually declined in several sectors before the fence went up, showing only that those numbers are influenced by factors other than the existence of a 14-foot steel wall.
Like too many expensive national security projects, Congressional commitments to the border fence were made in a fiscal vacuum. Yet Senators exacerbated irresponsible spending by inserting a requirement that would add another 300 miles of pedestrian fence at a cost of some $40 billion. Even though they’ve seen this one before, maybe lawmakers should review the hearing transcript: When asked whether the American taxpayer had benefitted from spending on SBI, the GAO analyst replied with an unequivocal “No.”
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