Latest wall news from the Washington Post:
White House press secretary says border wall will be funded by 20 percent import tax on Mexican goods
The Mexican drug cartels must be rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of large numbers of workers in isolated areas with little to do with their recreational time
Better a million Americans die on collapsed bridges and derailed trains, than that a single Mexican enter the USA!!!11!!!
Oh, goody: a trade war.
Yeah, that’ll improve the US economy bigly.
Mexico does the same…then pays for the wall out of the money they take from us. Win-Win!!
Low wage labor is illegal for government projects, though.
25% for the NEPA clearance. Then whatever clearance the states require. In California, that’s CEQA. Don’t know what Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas require. Those states will have to pony up staff to review the plans, review the environmental docs, and coordinate the construction.
Then 25% for the design, ghod knows what for the ROW acquisition, and 35% for Inspection and Construction Management. Minimum.
California hires out construction. That doesn’t mean that the construction companies go out with no oversight. (Although Construction Management and Inspection are also often contracted out.) If there are Highway Department cars and trucks, it’s probably because they’re inspecting, coordinating, or providing additional traffic control, to improve worker safety.
California still has a CCC. In fact, we have two. Their remit is to train workers, so they can’t do anything requiring construction skills. They can do small landscaping or clearing and grubbing items. It’s usually about the same cost as a regular subcontractor, only with more coordination needed.
Not with federal money. Federal money requires all contractors and subs to pay prevailing wages and to submit certified payrolls that are matched against the Inspector’s notes. On a big project, there will also be added apprenticeship requirements.
Somehow, I don’t believe legality matters much to Trump and his cronies.
Don’t forget Trump declared war on regulations.
OK, so we have a rough estimate of concrete costs at a bit under $2 billion. That assumes though that the wall is three feet wide for the entire 35 feet of height. I’m not anything near an engineer, but it seems to me that stability requirements would demand that the base of the wall be much wider than the top.
Plus of course the wall has to be anchored to the ground somehow. How would that be accomplished – rebar?
Also, how much of the wall would be in areas subject on occasion to hurricanes? How much in areas susceptible to earthquakes? What measures would have to be taken in those areas to assure that natural disaster doesn’t ruin portions of the wall?
State Highway Departments employ their own highway department crews*** to maintain roads and bridges. ***
Notice the word maintain. A huge difference from building the roads and bridges in the 1st place.
Current construction practice is expensive but a lot of that expense is mandated by current standards in safety, building materials specifications, etc.
For example safety regulations adds a significant cost to construction. There is much incentive for a company to keep a good safety record. The insurance companies keep records on industrial and construction injuries and fatalities. Every company pays for insurance and that insurance is based on past performance.
Is anyone here suggesting that construction companies nowadays just ignore issues like this ?
Yeah. Trump.
The idea I purposed in the OP was to restart the CCC or a similar Federal Construction agency.
Building the border wall would be the first project. New projects that fix America’s decaying infrastructure would provide jobs and training for decades to come.
Why not do a package deal? You train chronically unemployed people in construction, get badly needed infrastructure work done and boost the economy through Federal spending.
Seems like a win-win to me.
How many billions did we piss away in Iraq and Afghanistan? With nothing to show for it? Imagine that money being spent right here in America rebuilding our infrastructure.
Best of all The Donald gets his border wall. It’s a trade off. Use the wall project to actually get something better done.
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Wouldn’t this tariff violate NAFTA?
Did you ever write to Bush about your idea?
If we don’t build an unworkable wall, that’s more money, jobs and materials for the infrastructure.
Is there reason to believe that we’re short on construction workers? That these people will move into the workforce with their new concrete skills rather than just become one of a thousand unemployed concrete workers in a glut of concrete workers?
To answer an easier question: you don’t attach the wall to the ground, you add an extra 10-15’ below ground for the 30’ above ground. Except Trump told us this wall would go super deep and have sensing monitors to prevent tunneling so add all that to your costs.
I know! Trump can have unicorns build the wall! They are great at tunneling super deep, and also can fly!
Given the border shown on Google Maps, it looks as though there was a survey and agreement on the border despite changes of course of the Rio Grande.
Here’s a series of 29 images of the existing wall.
Note the image (#15) of the crosses stacked against the wall on the Mexican side, “in memory of migrants who died crossing to the U.S.”