“Fisher’s success and the $1.3 billion contract in Arizona he won in May — the largest border wall contract ever awarded — came despite repeated questions about his qualifications and work. Army Corps of Engineers officials have said the firm won because it submitted the lowest bid.”
ProPublica: He Built a Privately Funded Border Wall. It’s Already at Risk of Falling Down if Not Fixed.
Trump supporters funded a private border wall on the banks of the Rio Grande, helping the builder secure $1.7 billion in federal contracts. Now the “Lamborghini” of border walls is in danger of falling into the river if nothing is done, experts say.
Tommy Fisher billed his new privately funded border wall as the future of deterrence, a quick-to-build steel fortress that spans 3 miles in one of the busiest Border Patrol sectors.
Unlike a generation of wall builders before him, he said he figured out how to build a structure directly on the banks of the Rio Grande, a risky but potentially game-changing step when it came to the nation’s border wall system.
Fisher has leveraged his self-described “Lamborghini” of walls to win more than $1.7 billion worth of federal contracts in Arizona.
But his showcase piece is showing signs of runoff erosion and, if it’s not fixed, could be in danger of falling into the Rio Grande, according to engineers and hydrologists who reviewed photos of the wall for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. It never should have been built so close to the river, they say.
Just months after going up, they said, photos reveal a series of gashes and gullies at various points along the structure where rainwater runoff has scoured the sandy loam beneath the foundation.
“When the river rises, it will likely attack those areas where the foundation is exposed, further weakening support of the fence and potentially causing portions … to fall into the Rio Grande,” said Alex Mayer, a civil engineer professor at the University of Texas at El Paso who has done research in the Rio Grande basin.
Fisher dismissed the concerns. A company attorney, Mark Courtois, called the erosion “a normal part of new construction projects like this and does not in any way compromise the fence or associated roadway.” The company will seek to build drainage ditches to lessen the deterioration, he added. Neither Courtois nor Fisher responded to additional questions made through Courtois’ office.
The Mission private wall project, Fisher’s second following a similar undertaking outside El Paso, is a little known but crucial part of the effort to help President Donald Trump meet his campaign promise to build 450 miles of “big, beautiful wall” by the end of 2020. For the administration, Texas remains the biggest challenge. That’s because the Rio Grande has served as a natural divider, and, unlike other states, most land abutting it is privately owned.
Fisher’s New Mexico and South Texas private fence projects have gone up with financial and political help from We Build the Wall, an influential conservative nonprofit that counts former Trump political strategist Steve Bannon as a board member. The group says it has raised $25 million toward the private wall effort and claims to have agreements with landowners on 250 miles of riverfront property in Texas.
Fisher’s success and the $1.3 billion contract in Arizona he won in May — the largest border wall contract ever awarded — came despite repeated questions about his qualifications and work. Army Corps of Engineers officials have said the firm won because it submitted the lowest bid.
Last December, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., called for the Pentagon’s inspector general to review Fisher’s first $400 million fence contract, awarded in December over concerns of “inappropriate influence.” The audit is ongoing.
Victor Manjarrez, associate director for University of Texas at El Paso’s Center for Law and Human Behavior, said he would never have built along the river’s edge.
“That is nuts,” said Manjarrez, a former El Paso sector chief for the Border Patrol, who spent years working along the Rio Grande. “You’re going to get all the hydrology problems and not even from a flood, just normal ebb and flow. … If I was the sector chief and built something like that, I’d be in so much trouble.”
Building Challenges
Located on the southernmost tip of Texas, the Rio Grande Valley’s unique terrain has challenged wall builders for nearly two decades. The topography of the Valley includes a wide floodplain that has forced the government to construct barriers inland, on top of a levee system. That has left swaths of farmland, cemeteries and even homes in a kind of no man’s land south of the fence, which has been built in fits and starts.
Though tamed by a series of irrigation and flood control dams, the Rio Grande floods periodically, and sometimes catastrophically. In 2010, Hurricane Alex caused widespread damage along the banks of the river, including at the National Butterfly Center, just upriver from Fisher’s fence.