Posted on 11/14/2018 3:33:34 PM PST by BeauBo
Federal officials have approved another border wall contract, this one for the $167 million construction of 8 miles of levee wall system in the Rio Grande Valley. Awarded Nov. 11 to Galveston-based SLSCO, the project dubbed RGV-02 consists of construction in the Hidalgo County cities of Alamo, Donna, Weslaco, Progreso and Mercedes... Reinforced concrete levee wall will be constructed to reach the height of the existing levee in addition to steel bollards measuring 18 feet high being installed atop the concrete wall...
(Excerpt) Read more at brownsvilleherald.com ...
"the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, also detailed the removal of area vegetation located along a “150-foot enforcement zone” throughout the 8 miles where construction is planned.
The U.S. government awarded the first contract, which has a $145 million price tag, to SLSCO earlier this month for 6 miles of construction along the levee wall system. Referred to as RGV-03, the first project confirmed by CBP lies within the McAllen station area in Hidalgo County, and consists of similar construction announced for RGV-02.
Construction for both border wall projects, which will include “detection technology, lighting, video surveillance, and an all-weather patrol road parallel to the levee wall,” is scheduled to begin in February 2019."
If we had to wall the entire 2000 mile border it would be over $40 Billion.
Didn’t shillary “lose” 5 billion alone?
didn’t the military say it can’t account for FIVE TRILLION worth of expenditures!!?!
40 billion would be worth it except where there’s natural barriers or somebody’s farm is sticking out there :)
“If we had to wall the entire 2000 mile border it would be over $40 Billion.”
These are some of the most expensive miles to build. For flood control purposes, the base is a massive concrete levee, built to FEMA specs for hurricanes. Becasue it is a super hot spot for illegal crossings, each mile is tricked out with all the bells and whistles (lights, cameras, alarm systems). On top of it all, there is private land that has to be acquired or compensated.
In other places, good barrier is being built for $4 million/mile.
Eminent domain anyone living on the border
The problem is the land that gets stranded behind the fence.
They will pay the landowner for the land that they need to build the fence and the road, but they won't pay for the land that is stranded behind the fence.
The next to last paragraph in the article identifies it:
Private property which could be a house on a lot or farmland. Natural habitats and preserves like a wildlife management area. Cemeteries. State parks and Birding Centers. Bird watching is big business in south Texas. People come from all over the US and world.
IMHO, national security trumps all. Graves and Cemeteries can be moved. A park on the Border is just plain stupid. Birding can be done on the US side, and if they want to bird on the Mexico side they can cross at a checkpoint. As my old HS football coach used to say, these are not reasons, they are excuses.
8 miles. Teeny tiny drip in the ocean. Soooo, they walk 4 miles and go around it.
Nobody cares what your poorly informed opinion is.
8 miles is better than 0 miles.
This is only one of numerous contracts being let for wall construction.
That will pay for the wall.
Another 6 miles worth in the Rio Grande Valley was awarded the week before - they are awarding task orders off of a larger contract (MATOC Horizontal Construction)
There are already many disjointed segments of barrier in the Rio Grande Valley from back during the Bush-era Secure Fence Act (about sixty miles, with many gaps). Now we are going back and filling the gaps, to make it a continuous barrier. The new stuff will also be bigger, and incorporate a full suite of Lights, cameras, sensors, patrol road and a 150 foot wide open enforcement zone. There is also some retrofit upgrades of the old existing barrier in places, included in the new contracts.
Here is an old graphic of where the old and proposed new barrier will go. The eight miles worth just announced will fill some of the green gaps depicted here. Red shows existing barrier, and yellow is for one gap that will be left open, for the Santa Ana Reserve.
The Last award will do the green area to the West, marked Butterfly Center, This one is likely for the green segments East of the Santa Ana Reserve, and the next award likely coming soon (RGV-1?) will likely do those in middle, just South of McAllen. Then (mid 2020) there will a strong continuous barrier of over 40 miles (except the Santa Ana Reserve), where now is the highest flow of illegals.
Worth every penny.
Screw the land owners on the border, this is war! They will be way over compensated of that I am sure.
It is almost insulting.
Check out Post 14.
These are small task orders being awarded as part of a large contracting effort that was built over the last two years (Border Infrastructure Eastern MATOC for horizontal construction, primarily located in Rio Grande Valley, Laredo, Del Rio, Big Bend and El Paso Border Patrol Sector - there is another one for the Western half of the border). Everything is already planned out, and the vendors have been pre-certified into a pool that bids on each segment task order, so the Government gets a competitive price. The awards will just be doled out in small chunks like this.
They are going to fill the gaps in the existing barrier, with the strongest barrier ever. What we are seeing with these eight miles, and the six miles last week, and the central McAllen portion likely to come soon (I’d guess next week), will pretty much button up McAllen, which is now the area of the single heaviest traffic. Work will start in February, and construction will probably run six months to a year.
In addition to the segments shown on the graphic in Post 14, at least eight more miles have been funded just West of there in Starr County and are in contracting, and landowners recently began receiving notices in some of the gaps further East closer to Brownsville (so far groundbreaking is running 10 months after these letters, but that could speed up).
San Diego is already getting a double layer of solid new barrier from the Ocean to Otay Mountain, and they are halfway done with the first run already. The West side of the Port of Entry in Calexico, California is now finished with 30 foot bollards, and Secretary Neilsen announced that the East side will be getting 11 more miles on the East side next year. 20 miles of new bollards has recently been completed on the Western flank of El Paso, and now we are building in downtown El Paso. The Secretary also mentioned that some amount in Arizona is also included in what has already been funded.
The bottom line is that we are going to have many more concurrent segments being constructed in 2019 than we had in 2018, and their effect will start getting noticeable in local traffic and crime.
“Bird watching is big business in south Texas.”
It is likely that land stranded on the South side of the fence will tend toward being a kind of nature preserve over time, as other uses dwindle. Maybe some Preservation Trust, or the State or Federal Park systems could buy up parcels over time.
Gates could be opened during business hours, and closed at night, to allow use, but let the birds get a good nights sleep from noisy tourists.
The most populated segment might be Los Ebanos. I’d guess they will have a well used gate for a long time.
“Good barrier”? I haven’t seen any planned wall design yet that won’t be scalable by the illegals.
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