it will more then likely be more then that
Price tag for 700 miles of border fencing: high and hard to pin down
Friday Jun 21, 2013 9:20 AM
The feds have already build 670 miles of fence on the border, like this one near Naco, Ariz. A deal in the Senate calls for the completion of 700 more miles.
A plan for 700 more miles of fencing along the southwest U.S. border — part of a immigration-bill deal forged in the Senate this week — would come with a mammoth and unpredictable price tag, judging by past efforts.
The original legislation crafted by the bipartisan Gang of Eight set aside $1.5 billion for fencing — and that was before a deal was struck with Republican senators to add more to the massive border security and fencing proposal. So how much would a new bigger border fence cost?
Customs and Border Protection spent $2.4 billion between 2006 and 2009 to complete 670 miles of border fence, and the vast majority of that was single-layer — one line of fencing designed to keep either pedestrians or vehicles from crossing into the United States, according to a Government Accountability Office report.
The new plan calls for a double-layer fence — two parallel barriers on either side of a corridor manned by Border Patrol — that would require more land acquisition, more supplies and more labor to build.
There is no firm cost for the fence outlined in the "border surge" agreement announced Thursday, and the price of previous fence construction has varied wildly.
A 2009 analysis by the GAO found that the cost of pedestrian fencing ranged between $400,000 and $15 million per mile with an average of $3.9 million a mile. The price of less expensive vehicle fencing ran anywhere from $200,000 to $1.8 million a mile, for an average of $1 million a mile.
That same year, Customs and Border Protection set aside $58 million to build a 3.5 mile stretch of fence along "difficult terrain" in San Diego , according to the GAO, an investigative arm of Congress.
"The per mile costs to build the fencing varied considerably because of the type of fencing, topography, materials used, land acquisition costs, and labor costs, among other things," the office's report said.
For example, while some 2008 contracts were being finalized, estimates began to balloon because the construction boom in Texas led to labor shortages and rising steel and cement prices, budget watchdogs noted.
And then there's the need to commandeer private land. The government can seize private property under eminent domain, but the costs of that action may not manifest themselves until legal battles are resolved.
Scott Nicol, chair of the Sierra Club Borderlands Team, which opposes fence expansion because of the threat to wildlife, expects much of the new double-layer fence would run through south Texas, where "you do have a lot of people who are just like, 'I'm not going to sell my land.'"
An Associated Press analysis of court documents last year found that when homeowners reject the feds' initial offers to buy their borderlands, the cost skyrockets.
The Nature Conservancy balked at an offer of $114,000 for a fence on its land in the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas, and ultimately settled for $1 million. A developer in Brownsville, Texas, was offered $233,000 but ended up with $4.7 million three years later .
Building border fortifications didn't always cost so much. Earlier fence projects were carried out using scrap metal and Border Patrol or National Guard laborers, but as more and more barriers were approved and deadlines imposed, private contractors overseen by the Army Corps of Engineers took over the work.
For a sense of the scope of the contracts, consider a 2009 push to erect 38 miles of 19-foot fence near El Paso, Texas. The contractor, New Mexico-based Kiewit, said in a summary that more than 1,100 people and 600 pieces of equipment were mobilized to complete it in four months. The total cost of that segment: $170 million.
Like any large government initiative, border security is not immune from waste. A 2011 report by the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security found that Customs and Border Protection needlessly spent about $69 million by botching the order of steel and approving a high-priced subcontractor.
The payoff of all this infrastructure is unclear. Illegal entries to the United States fell 69 percent between 2006 and 2011, while drug and contraband seizures nearly doubled, the GAO said in a March report. At the same time, the report said, Customs could not account for the impact of the fence.
In response to a 2009 recommendation, the agency undertook an outside analysis to measure the effect of border fencing. Last year, officials said that based on preliminary results it will take another three to five years to come up with a "credible assessment" of how well the first 670 miles of fence is working.
If the full Congress eventually approves another 700 miles of double-layer barrier as part of an overall immigration bill, the cost-effectiveness may not be clear until after the last fence post is driven into the ground.
source
https://usnews.newsvine.com/_news/2013/06/21/...-down?lite
Study: Price for border fence up to $49 billion Study says fence cost could reach $49 billion / Lawmakers' estimate falls far short of total, research service says
Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer
Published 4:00 am, Monday, January 8, 2007
The cost of building and maintaining a double set of steel fences along 700 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border could be five to 25 times greater than congressional leaders forecast last year, or as much as $49 billion over the expected 25-year life span of the fence, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
A little-noticed study the research service released in December notes that even the $49 billion does not include the expense of acquiring private land along hundreds of miles of border or the cost of labor if the job is done by private contractors -- both of which could drive the price billions of dollars higher .
The Congressional Research Service also questioned the effectiveness of a fence in preventing people from crossing the border illegally, especially if it does not span the entire 1,952-mile border. Secure fencing of some kind already exists along 106 miles of border, mostly in short stretches around cities.
The findings did not deter Congressional backers of the border fence, including Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-San Diego, the fence's principal proponent.
"Mr. Hunter firmly supports expanding the San Diego border fence across the U.S.-Mexico border," said spokesman Joe Kasper. "This doesn't have to be and should not be as costly an endeavor as some are suggesting."
Congress has so far provided the Department of Homeland Security with $1.5 billion for upgrading infrastructure and technology at the border this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. No money has been allocated specifically for the 700 miles of fence.
A spokesman for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., was circumspect as to how the money should be spent, given the report's findings.
"Sen. Feinstein has been supportive of the idea of a fence and thinks it has been effective in California," said Feinstein spokesman Scott Gerber. "At the same time, we have to be realistic about the costs of both construction and maintenance. Priorities need to be made, estimates need to be made based on the real world, and as additional information comes forward, we'll take another look at it
The fence would be built under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Customs and Border Protection. Boeing Co., under a September contract with Homeland Security, already has begun constructing a "virtual fence" along all 6,000 miles of the U.S. border, north and south, that is expected to run to $2.5 billion.
A state-of-the-art fence constructed on almost 10 miles of border in western San Diego County has reduced the number of Border Patrol arrests of illegal entrants there, the research service reported.
But "the flow of illegal immigration has adapted to this enforcement posture and has shifted to the more remote areas of the Arizona desert," the research service said. The number of arrests along the entire border in 2004 was 1.2 million, the same as in 1992, before the San Diego fence was built and other enforcement was increased.
"The main difference is that, while San Diego accounted for the majority of apprehensions in 1992, in 2004 (the) Tucson and Yuma sectors accounted for the majority of apprehensions," the study noted.
When the House of Representatives first approved a border security bill last winter, Hunter estimated it would cost $2.2 billion. The Congressional Budget Office echoed that figure in May with an estimate of $3 million per mile -- $2.1 billion for 700 miles .
But the Congressional Research Service noted that the 14-mile San Diego fence is expected to cost $9 million per mile once it is finished . The research service also used a larger figure -- 850 miles -- for the length of the fence.
Recent fences along the border have been constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for Customs and Border Protection. The Corps has obtained the land, drafted the environmental protection plan, designed the project and overseen construction. Labor has been provided by National Guard and military units on loan from the Department of Defense.
[color=red ]The Dec. 12, 2006, nonpartisan congressional report said the corps predicted that the combined cost of building and maintaining the fence over a 25-year life cycle would range from $16.4 million to $70 million per mile, depending on how heavily and how often the fence is damaged by would-be border jumpers. At $70 million per mile, a 700-mile fence would cost $49 billion . [/color]
Though much land on the border in California and Arizona already belongs to the federal government, most of the Texas and New Mexico borderlands are privately held. And 70 miles of Arizona border lie along the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation, whose leaders have vowed to fight the fence, a stance that could lead the government into a protracted legal battle.
Douglas Massey, a professor of sociology at Princeton University who studies the border and illegal immigration, said the government should spend its money differently.
"It's a waste of money," he said. "If you want to increase security, better to use some of that money for ports and transportation systems. If you want to lower the rate of Mexican immigration to the U.S., I would spend it on development assistance for Mexico."
A guest worker program would reduce the illegal traffic at the border, he also said, and free up the Border Patrol to focus on keeping out drug smugglers and potential terrorists.
Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., who has spoken adamantly in favor of restricting both legal and illegal immigration, remains a supporter of the fence for security reasons as well.
"It's simple: What did 9/11 cost us versus what would it cost to maintain a fence to help prevent that?" said Carlos Espinosa, a Tancredo spokesman. "If we could prevent another terrorist attack, then absolutely it's worth it."
source
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Study-P...625039.php
Price tag for 700 miles of border fencing: high and hard to pin down
Friday Jun 21, 2013 9:20 AM
The feds have already build 670 miles of fence on the border, like this one near Naco, Ariz. A deal in the Senate calls for the completion of 700 more miles.
A plan for 700 more miles of fencing along the southwest U.S. border — part of a immigration-bill deal forged in the Senate this week — would come with a mammoth and unpredictable price tag, judging by past efforts.
The original legislation crafted by the bipartisan Gang of Eight set aside $1.5 billion for fencing — and that was before a deal was struck with Republican senators to add more to the massive border security and fencing proposal. So how much would a new bigger border fence cost?
Customs and Border Protection spent $2.4 billion between 2006 and 2009 to complete 670 miles of border fence, and the vast majority of that was single-layer — one line of fencing designed to keep either pedestrians or vehicles from crossing into the United States, according to a Government Accountability Office report.
The new plan calls for a double-layer fence — two parallel barriers on either side of a corridor manned by Border Patrol — that would require more land acquisition, more supplies and more labor to build.
There is no firm cost for the fence outlined in the "border surge" agreement announced Thursday, and the price of previous fence construction has varied wildly.
A 2009 analysis by the GAO found that the cost of pedestrian fencing ranged between $400,000 and $15 million per mile with an average of $3.9 million a mile. The price of less expensive vehicle fencing ran anywhere from $200,000 to $1.8 million a mile, for an average of $1 million a mile.
That same year, Customs and Border Protection set aside $58 million to build a 3.5 mile stretch of fence along "difficult terrain" in San Diego , according to the GAO, an investigative arm of Congress.
"The per mile costs to build the fencing varied considerably because of the type of fencing, topography, materials used, land acquisition costs, and labor costs, among other things," the office's report said.
For example, while some 2008 contracts were being finalized, estimates began to balloon because the construction boom in Texas led to labor shortages and rising steel and cement prices, budget watchdogs noted.
And then there's the need to commandeer private land. The government can seize private property under eminent domain, but the costs of that action may not manifest themselves until legal battles are resolved.
Scott Nicol, chair of the Sierra Club Borderlands Team, which opposes fence expansion because of the threat to wildlife, expects much of the new double-layer fence would run through south Texas, where "you do have a lot of people who are just like, 'I'm not going to sell my land.'"
An Associated Press analysis of court documents last year found that when homeowners reject the feds' initial offers to buy their borderlands, the cost skyrockets.
The Nature Conservancy balked at an offer of $114,000 for a fence on its land in the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas, and ultimately settled for $1 million. A developer in Brownsville, Texas, was offered $233,000 but ended up with $4.7 million three years later .
Building border fortifications didn't always cost so much. Earlier fence projects were carried out using scrap metal and Border Patrol or National Guard laborers, but as more and more barriers were approved and deadlines imposed, private contractors overseen by the Army Corps of Engineers took over the work.
For a sense of the scope of the contracts, consider a 2009 push to erect 38 miles of 19-foot fence near El Paso, Texas. The contractor, New Mexico-based Kiewit, said in a summary that more than 1,100 people and 600 pieces of equipment were mobilized to complete it in four months. The total cost of that segment: $170 million.
Like any large government initiative, border security is not immune from waste. A 2011 report by the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security found that Customs and Border Protection needlessly spent about $69 million by botching the order of steel and approving a high-priced subcontractor.
The payoff of all this infrastructure is unclear. Illegal entries to the United States fell 69 percent between 2006 and 2011, while drug and contraband seizures nearly doubled, the GAO said in a March report. At the same time, the report said, Customs could not account for the impact of the fence.
In response to a 2009 recommendation, the agency undertook an outside analysis to measure the effect of border fencing. Last year, officials said that based on preliminary results it will take another three to five years to come up with a "credible assessment" of how well the first 670 miles of fence is working.
If the full Congress eventually approves another 700 miles of double-layer barrier as part of an overall immigration bill, the cost-effectiveness may not be clear until after the last fence post is driven into the ground.
source
https://usnews.newsvine.com/_news/2013/06/21/...-down?lite
Study: Price for border fence up to $49 billion Study says fence cost could reach $49 billion / Lawmakers' estimate falls far short of total, research service says
Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer
Published 4:00 am, Monday, January 8, 2007
The cost of building and maintaining a double set of steel fences along 700 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border could be five to 25 times greater than congressional leaders forecast last year, or as much as $49 billion over the expected 25-year life span of the fence, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
A little-noticed study the research service released in December notes that even the $49 billion does not include the expense of acquiring private land along hundreds of miles of border or the cost of labor if the job is done by private contractors -- both of which could drive the price billions of dollars higher .
The Congressional Research Service also questioned the effectiveness of a fence in preventing people from crossing the border illegally, especially if it does not span the entire 1,952-mile border. Secure fencing of some kind already exists along 106 miles of border, mostly in short stretches around cities.
The findings did not deter Congressional backers of the border fence, including Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-San Diego, the fence's principal proponent.
"Mr. Hunter firmly supports expanding the San Diego border fence across the U.S.-Mexico border," said spokesman Joe Kasper. "This doesn't have to be and should not be as costly an endeavor as some are suggesting."
Congress has so far provided the Department of Homeland Security with $1.5 billion for upgrading infrastructure and technology at the border this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. No money has been allocated specifically for the 700 miles of fence.
A spokesman for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., was circumspect as to how the money should be spent, given the report's findings.
"Sen. Feinstein has been supportive of the idea of a fence and thinks it has been effective in California," said Feinstein spokesman Scott Gerber. "At the same time, we have to be realistic about the costs of both construction and maintenance. Priorities need to be made, estimates need to be made based on the real world, and as additional information comes forward, we'll take another look at it
The fence would be built under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Customs and Border Protection. Boeing Co., under a September contract with Homeland Security, already has begun constructing a "virtual fence" along all 6,000 miles of the U.S. border, north and south, that is expected to run to $2.5 billion.
A state-of-the-art fence constructed on almost 10 miles of border in western San Diego County has reduced the number of Border Patrol arrests of illegal entrants there, the research service reported.
But "the flow of illegal immigration has adapted to this enforcement posture and has shifted to the more remote areas of the Arizona desert," the research service said. The number of arrests along the entire border in 2004 was 1.2 million, the same as in 1992, before the San Diego fence was built and other enforcement was increased.
"The main difference is that, while San Diego accounted for the majority of apprehensions in 1992, in 2004 (the) Tucson and Yuma sectors accounted for the majority of apprehensions," the study noted.
When the House of Representatives first approved a border security bill last winter, Hunter estimated it would cost $2.2 billion. The Congressional Budget Office echoed that figure in May with an estimate of $3 million per mile -- $2.1 billion for 700 miles .
But the Congressional Research Service noted that the 14-mile San Diego fence is expected to cost $9 million per mile once it is finished . The research service also used a larger figure -- 850 miles -- for the length of the fence.
Recent fences along the border have been constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for Customs and Border Protection. The Corps has obtained the land, drafted the environmental protection plan, designed the project and overseen construction. Labor has been provided by National Guard and military units on loan from the Department of Defense.
[color=red ]The Dec. 12, 2006, nonpartisan congressional report said the corps predicted that the combined cost of building and maintaining the fence over a 25-year life cycle would range from $16.4 million to $70 million per mile, depending on how heavily and how often the fence is damaged by would-be border jumpers. At $70 million per mile, a 700-mile fence would cost $49 billion . [/color]
Though much land on the border in California and Arizona already belongs to the federal government, most of the Texas and New Mexico borderlands are privately held. And 70 miles of Arizona border lie along the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation, whose leaders have vowed to fight the fence, a stance that could lead the government into a protracted legal battle.
Douglas Massey, a professor of sociology at Princeton University who studies the border and illegal immigration, said the government should spend its money differently.
"It's a waste of money," he said. "If you want to increase security, better to use some of that money for ports and transportation systems. If you want to lower the rate of Mexican immigration to the U.S., I would spend it on development assistance for Mexico."
A guest worker program would reduce the illegal traffic at the border, he also said, and free up the Border Patrol to focus on keeping out drug smugglers and potential terrorists.
Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., who has spoken adamantly in favor of restricting both legal and illegal immigration, remains a supporter of the fence for security reasons as well.
"It's simple: What did 9/11 cost us versus what would it cost to maintain a fence to help prevent that?" said Carlos Espinosa, a Tancredo spokesman. "If we could prevent another terrorist attack, then absolutely it's worth it."
source
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Study-P...625039.php
