Posted on 05/29/2019 7:42:59 PM PDT by BeauBo
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials announced in a news release Tuesday that the agency has awarded a new contract for 3 miles of steel bollard fencing in Starr County. The $42,860,000 contract, which was awarded to Kiewit Infrastructure West Co. with fiscal year 2019 Homeland Security appropriations (not subject to any of the lawsuits going on). (Construction) is expected to begin in August.
The awarded new barriers... would be placed on federal land between Salineño and Escobares, but not within city limits... located 5 miles north of Salineño, and 5 miles west of Escobares.
CBP said the 3 miles will be the first of about 53 miles slated for Starr County, which includes appropriations funded in fiscal year 2019.
(Excerpt) Read more at themonitor.com ...
These three "new" miles (where no previous barrier existed, are in addition to 13 more "new" miles nearby, just East and West of McAllen Texas. Those projects have started their clearing and roadwork, and will soon start installing barrier (the first of the heavy flood control levee type of barrier, of President Trump's program).
Ten minutes later, some d!ckhead District Court Judge in Michigan will issue an order blocking construction...
how long is the border?
Somewhere between 3 and 2000 miles give or take.
It’s infinite where it includes the Rio Grande shoreline.
“This results from the fractal-like properties of coastlines, i.e., the fact that a coastline typically has a fractal dimension (which in fact makes the notion of length inapplicable).”
Land mines would work. Cheaper too.
Why don’t they just put up some signs: “no pisar el césped”
It will do about as much good as three miles that don’t include the town.
$42 million for three miles? $2,650 a foot? Do you think anybody is making any money? Naw.
I am fed up with gubment and politicians. The whole lot of them are crooks. If they are not directly crooks they are just as bad if they don’t stand up and condemn and persecute or prosecute the crooks. The couldn’t organize a piss up in a pub.
42millon for 3 miles.
We are getting screwed
“how long is the border?”
About 1,954 miles. In total (”new” and “replacement”), the President’s program targets around 1,100 miles of that for barrier construction.
Contracting is done segment by segment.
Lots of segments are now being awarded, as compared to early in the Trump Presidency. Only 40 miles were funded by Congress in 2017 (just now finishing up). 80 miles were funded in 2018 (construction just now beginning or recently underway). 55 miles were funded by Congress in 2019 (this is the first award from those funds).
But President Trump’s emergency declaration and re-programming of other funds, is enough for a few hundred more miles, which should be dropping on contracts throughout this year, and starting work about three months later.
We started the year building about a half mile per week, and are on track to finish the year building about a half mile per day.
“42 millon for 3 miles. We are getting screwed”
It is not that we are getting screwed, it is that we are getting top of the line wall system, with all the bells and whistles on the Border Patrol’s wish list.
High speed, all weather patrol road; grading and clearing of observation areas; permanent fixed day/night camera coverage; grid powered stadium lighting in the cities, and embedded and mobile sensors/alarms.
Oh, and bollards too. Huge two to three storey tall barriers with anti-climb features, that are strong enough to stop speeding trucks driven by suicide drivers, with massive reinforced concrete foundations - two feet thick and six feet deep at the minimum.
This is a badly needed section. I talked to someone today from the area, right now there is not only no fence of any kind but there is thick brush all along the river there and it is easy for smugglers and other illegal activity to hide and enter at will. It is like the wild west there and they have corrupt local officials and scared people who live there. The people living there are truly scared and deal with cartel retaliation big time. The person I talked to said this segment is vital and will push the illegal traffic to an area that is easier to watch and catch illegal traffic.
That area will of course need more fence as soon as possible, but the person I talked to said this is a blessing and will make a huge difference.
42 million/3 miles is 14 million per mile
1500 miles at 14 million is 21 Billion. Rather have the bollard walls and concrete add the rest later.
Lets get a barrier up then add the bells and whistles
“Lets get a barrier up then add the bells and whistles”
An obstacle that is not under observation, is vulnerable to counter-obstacle tactics. That is a basic doctrine among the Army’s combat engineers.
If no one is watching the barrier on a dark night, it takes just a few minutes to set up a ladder and drop a rope down the other side. With ladders and ropes, people climb Mount Everest. Or they could take a few hours to deliberately saw through, or a few days to tunnel under.
You have to be able to detect and respond, to have an effective barrier. That is why they install it as a package of “wall system” - that is what works. They have been playing catch the jumper every night for decades, and have tested and refined their requirements.
“42 million/3 miles is 14 million per mile”
Prices vary from $4 million per mile in the flat desert around the Santa Teresa Port of Entry in New Mexico, to close to $25 million per mile for FEMA hurricane-rated flood control levee barrier in the lower Rio Grande Valley.
The total plan envisions building about 1,100 miles of barrier. But it is in priority order - the first few hundred miles will make a much bigger impact than the last few hundred, and they are the places that need the strongest and best defenses (e.g. all the big border cities and the Rio Grande Valley, where more than half of the total flow flood across each day).
“Aw, come on you political hacks...solve the problem. Three miles...”
It is just how the contracting process goes, lots of factors go into determining how big the segment will be for a given contract. Last month, DoD awarded 46 miles on a single contract (West from El Paso past the Columbus Port of Entry), but that was a straight line in flat desert, overwhelmingly on Federal land, and all covered by the Roosevelt Reservation (Federal Government’s existing right of way).
These three miles are problematic, high traffic terrain, where the property issues are all ready to go, so they are moving out to get it done, while the issues are settled in other places.
About 400 private landowners need to be settled with in the Rio Grande Valley Sector, and the Roosevelt Reservation does not apply in Texas. Additionally, Congress (Henry Cuellar, (D) of Laredo and Los Zetas) inserted several restrictions into law for the Rio Grande Valley, which will further break up the segments there into smaller, less efficient chunks of work.
Despite the size of the segments, the bottom line is that we are off to the races this year for contracting border wall (individual segment completion generally takes a year or more after award). In 2017, we contracted for a total of 40 miles (just finishing up), 80 miles in 2018 (now getting underway in earnest across several segments).
But this year, with all the funding that the President has identified (four times as much as 2017 and 2018 combined) we are on track to contract a few hundred miles worth - the highest priority few hundred miles.
The high priority 14 mile primary barrier in San Diego has already made a big difference there (part of that first 40 miles). It was able to stop the caravan mob attacks last year, in the areas where it stood (it is now complete), and another 14 miles of 30 foot secondary barrier is now going in behind it. Those 28 miles (half from 2017, half from 2018), along with all the clearing, grading, roads, lighting, cameras, sensors and alarms in between; will transform the security of the biggest city on the border. That door will be buttoned up tight by Christmas.
As we work down the priority list through the first few hundred miles, we will already be addressing the areas where the great bulk of traffic now crosses. So this year’s contracting is where we are really engaged in the main battle of securing the border.
That is why the President pulled out the stops to get the funding this year, when the program was ready to scale up. In the first year especially, lots of long lead time preparations were needed. Designs needed to be tested and refined (prototypes), contract specifications had to be finalized for the designs. The whole border had to be analyzed for prioritizing segments and detailing the route. Legal issues of Leftist lawsuits and private property had to be addressed, Contract vehicles had to be established in accordance with the Federal Acquisition Regulation, and so on.
In the first year, we could not responsibly go out willy nilly building assorted barriers, without first carefully answering and communicating all the who, what, when, where, why and how questions. The comprehensive plan to establish full operational control of the border (five years, $25 billion, 1,100 miles of barrier, thousands more full time positions, and several technology programs) was submitted to Congress in March of 2018, and finally resubmitted after incorporating Congressional tweaks in December of 2018.
We are now ready programatically for full scale deployment (technology as well as barrier), and the President delivered the needed money bomb right on schedule.
“This is a badly needed section... there is thick brush all along the river... It is like the wild west there”
The Rio Grande Valley and Laredo are the Wild West part of the border. The terrain is super tough to police because of the vegetation, and the cartels there are hyper violent - the kind of thing we think of for ISIS, like mass beheadings and sadistic torture.
Narcos drive around with machine guns openly mounted in pickup trucks. In Nuevo Laredo gunfights can be heard almost daily. It got so bad for a while that the Government disbanded the police force there entirely, and the only Government security presence were occasional large military patrols, like a wartime occupation.
Thanks, BB, for posting so much factual data in your various postings related to the border barrier system.
Yeah we are getting screwed.
Fischer claims to be able to provide all that for $5 million a mile.
It’s just my guess, but for the $14M per mile I think they can do President Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Wall’ shown at about the 5:45 point in this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO2GY-84hgQ&list=PL0HrVZq162tjVXAXX71aKJZkWpGUg9TYu&index=2&t=385s
Sorry, I can’t figure out how to get the video to start at the 5:45 point.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.