fullspinzoo wrote:
10,000 Conservative ranchers just came out against Trump's wall? I thought you were a little smarter than that. How absurd can you be? Look up 'conservation' in the dictionary. Seriously, 'fake news'
Obviously YOU aren't! Farmers and ranchers along the border in Texas are against the wall! So are conservationist.
Has anyone, including YOU, thought about, or even care about the impact a wall would have on the lifestyles and livelihood of Texas farmers and ranchers? Have you or anyone else thought about the impact a wall would have on wildlife, especially endangered species? Have you or anyone given any thought to the logistics of building a wall along a river that is subject to drying up, flooding, changing directions?
MarkC covered this best in case no one bothered to read his post:
From a concerned engineer:
“To recap: Iʼm a licensed structural and civil engineer with a MS in structural engineering from the top program in the nation and over a decade of experience on high- performance projects, and particularly of cleaning up design disasters where the factors werenʼt properly accounted for, and Iʼm an adjunct professor of structural analysis and design at UH-Downtown. I have previously been deposed as an expert witness in matters regarding proper construction of walls and the various factors associated therein, and my testimony has passed Daubert.
Am I a wall expert? I am. I am literally a court-accepted expert on walls.
Structurally and civil engineering-wise, the border wall is not a feasible project. Trump did not hire engineers to design the thing. He solicited bids from contractors, not engineers. This means itʼs not been designed by professionals. Itʼs a disaster of numerous types waiting to happen.
What disasters?
Off the top of my head...
1) It will mess with our ability to drain land in flash flooding. Anything impeding the ability of water to get where it needs to go (doesnʼt matter if there are holes in the wall or whatever) is going to dramatically increase the risk of flooding.
2) Messes with all kind of stuff ecologically. For all other projects, we have to do an Environmental Site Assessment, which is arduous. Theyʼre either planning to circumvent all this, or they havenʼt accounted for it yet, because thatʼs part of the design process, and this thing hasnʼt been designed. 3) The prototypes they came up with are nearly impossible to build or donʼt actually do the job. This article explains more:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.engineering.com/amp /17599.html
And so on.
The estimates provided for the cost are arrived at unreasonably. You can look for yourself at the two-year-old estimate that you see everyone citing.
http://fronterasdesk.org/sites/default/files/field/docs/2016/0 7/Bernstein-%20The%20Trump%20Wall.pdf
It does not account for rework, complexities beyond the prototype design, factors to prevent flood and environmental hazard creation, engineering redesign... Itʼs going to be higher than $50bn. The contractors will hit the government with near CONSTANT change orders. “Cost overrun” will be the name of the game. It will not be completed in Trumpʼs lifetime.
Iʼm a structural forensicist, which means Iʼm called in when things go wrong. This is a project that WILL go wrong. When projects go wrong, the original estimates are just *obliterated*. And when that happens, good luck getting it fixed, because there arenʼt that many forensicists out there to right the ship, particularly not that are willing to work on a border wall project— a large quotient of us are immigrants, and besides, we canʼt afford to bid on jobs that are this political. Weʼre small firms, and weʼre already busy, and we donʼt gamble our reputations on political footballs. So youʼd end up with a revolving door of contractors making a giant, uncoordinated muddle of things, and itʼd generally be a mess. Good money after bad. The GAO agrees with me.
And it wonʼt be effective. I could, right now, purchase a 32 foot extension ladder and weld a cheap custom saddle for the top of the proposed wall so that I can get over it. I donʼt know who they talked to about the wall design and its efficacy, but it sure as heck wasnʼt anybody with any engineering imagination.
Another thing: we are not far from the day where inexpensive drones will be able to pick up and carry someone. This will happen in the next ten years, and itʼs folly to think that the coyotes who ferry people over the border wonʼt purchase or create them. Theyʼre low enough, quiet enough, and small enough to quickly zip people over any wall we could build undetected with our current monitoring setup.
Letʼs have border security, by all means, but letʼs be smart about it. This is not smart. Itʼs not effective. Itʼs NOT cheap. The returns will be diminishing as technology advances, too. This is a ridiculous idea that will never be successfully executed and, as such, would be a monumental waste of money.“
Just a thought