Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumTrump's Incomplete Border Wall Is in Pieces That Could Linger for Decades
SIERRA VISTA, Ariz. The sweeping view of undefiled wilderness on the border with Mexico long rewarded hikers who completed the Arizona Trail, an 800-mile route winding through deserts, canyons and forests.
Then something else came into focus a few weeks ago at the forbidding site in the Huachuca Mountains: a lonely segment of border wall, connected to nothing at all, in an area where migrants rarely even try to cross into the United States.
There it was, this unfinished piece of completely pointless wall, right in this magical place, said Julia Sheehan, 31, a nurse and former Air Force mechanic who trekked to the site with three other military veterans who are hiking the Arizona Trail. Its one of the most senseless things Ive ever seen.
The quarter-mile fragment of wall is part of an array of new barrier segments along the border, some of them bizarre in appearance and of no apparent utility, that contractors rushed to build in the waning days of the Trump administration well after President Biden made it clear that he would halt border wall construction.
Now the incomplete border wall, already one of the costliest megaprojects in United States history, with an estimated eventual price tag of more than $15 billion, is igniting tensions again as critics urge Mr. Biden to tear down parts of the wall and Republican leaders call on him to finish it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/us/border-wall-trump-biden.html
Iliyah
(25,111 posts)constructed were cheap, those billions went into somebody's pocket.
exboyfil
(17,863 posts)Pretty early on. May not be able to do anything about it, but at least the public needs to be aware of whose pockets the dollars ended up in.
no_hypocrisy
(46,130 posts)Commissioned and partially built to enshrine the legacy of a wealthy Scottish banker. He died before it was completed and today, it is only an empty shell and a local curiosity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCaig%27s_Tower