A Wall Trump Calls ‘Foolish’ |
|
When Hurricane Sandy hit New York in 2012, homes in Staten Island, Queens and Brooklyn were destroyed. Lower Manhattan was flooded and thrown into darkness. Seventy-two people in the city died.
|
Could a six-mile-long wall, stretching from the Rockaways in Queens to land in New Jersey south of Staten Island, have protected New York?
|
The Army Corps of Engineers is studying five plans for barriers — four of which include configurations of retractable sea walls — to block storm surges.
|
It appears that the sea barrier is one wall that President Trump doesn’t like.
|
Reacting to my colleague Anne Barnard’s front-page story on the plans, he tweeted Saturday that a “massive 200 Billion Dollar Sea Wall, built around New York to protect it from rare storms, is a costly, foolish & environmentally unfriendly idea that, when needed, probably won’t work anyway.”
|
He added: “It will also look terrible. Sorry, you’ll just have to get your mops & buckets ready!”
|
Other critics say that the Corps’ plans would not adequately protect New York from rising tides and storm runoff.
|
I talked to Ms. Barnard, who covers the environment for The Times, about the proposals.
|
Anne, why should New Yorkers care about a sea wall?
|
Because this is about whether and how the city is going to survive, as we know it, for the next 100 years.
|
What options are under consideration?
|
The Army Corps of Engineers is looking at several plans, and all but one involve some kind of wall. The biggest wall would go from the Rockaways to New Jersey. That plan would also include a wall between the Long Island Sound and the East River.
|
In another plan, there would be walls across the waterways near the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, the Throgs Neck Bridge and the entrances to Jamaica Bay.
|
Another option has smaller walls across smaller waterways, like the Gowanus Canal and Newtown Creek. And there is one choice that is made up of shore-based measures involving berms, wetlands restoration and raised parks.
|
Clearly, the Corps is focusing on walls because four of its plans involve walls.
|
What do New Yorkers want?
|
We don’t know. Do New Yorkers prefer 30-foot walls on shore, which is what advocates for sea barriers say would be needed if a giant wall is not built further from shore?
Is There 100 Miles of New Border Wall, or Not?It doesn't make much difference — keep building
Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf spoke at an event in Yuma, Ariz., last Friday to commemorate the completion of 100 miles of a new system of border walls along the southwest border. Is all of that wall actually "new"? Well, yes and no, but it doesn't really make a lot of difference, because it is a necessary improvement.
As for the confusion, here is an excerpt from CNN:
Those two paragraphs float in the middle of the article, without any explanation or clarification as to the apparent discrepancy. ABC News casts a bit more light:
That is a fairly significant improvement, for anyone who has traveled to the southwest border to take a look at the various barriers that have previously been erected between the United States and Mexico (as I have). In my February 4, 2019, post "Know Your Fences", I went into detail, with photographs, of the various barriers along the border in the Yuma Border Patrol Sector, where Wolf spoke.
It is clear from those photographs that there were portions of the border wall that were downright decrepit. This is not to suggest that the barriers should be spotless, but many were "walls" in name only, likely to deter the most casual illicit cross-border traffic, but not enough to stop the drug cartels that do their business in the area.
Replacing 90 miles of those old barriers (which CNN reports CBP had done by December 6), is an achievement in and of itself. Surplus Vietnam-era landing-mat fencing is better than nothing, but it is not as good as 30-foot-tall steel bollard walls.
As I have previously testified, border barriers do not stop illegal entry of drugs, migrants, and other contraband per se. Rather, they serve as impediments to slow that traffic long enough for the Border Patrol to respond to incursions. Lights serve as a deterrent where they are used and also allow Border Patrol agents to locate crossers in the dark. Surveillance equipment allows Border Patrol to identify where incursions are happening. Access roads enable agents to quickly respond.
Perhaps the El Paso County officials who recently sued the administration (unsuccessfully) in an attempt to block wall construction should talk to Yuma Mayor Douglas Nicholls, who was quoted in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) press release on the January 10 event:
All politics is local, but local politics is really local, as Mayor Nicholls' statements reflect. El Paso likely has some advantages over Yuma as it relates to the costs of illegal cross-border activity (as I have previously explained), but the flood of migrants through the Yuma sector in May 2019 put a huge burden on the town, forcing Mayor Nicholls to declare a state of emergency.
Wolf asserted that he was confident that DHS could complete, or begin construction on, 400 to 450 miles of fencing by the end of 2020, which would require the department to triple its efforts thus far. Given the lawsuits and pushback from Congress that the administration has had to fight just to get to this point, this is an ambitious agenda, but a worthwhile one. As he explained:
Given the stakes, DHS should celebrate its milestone, and keep building.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment