Trump's border wall will fail, according to engineering report
The privately built border wall built by Fisher Sand and Gravel is in danger of failing during a flood, according to an engineering report.
From The Texas Tribune:
Company president Tommy Fisher, a frequent guest on Fox News, had called the Rio Grande fence the "Lamborghini" of border walls and bragged that his company's methods could help Trump reach his Election Day goal of about 500 new miles of barriers along the southern border.
Instead, one engineer who reviewed the two reports on behalf of ProPublica and The Texas Tribune likened Fisher's fence to a used Toyota Yaris.
"It seems like they are cutting corners everywhere," said Alex Mayer, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Texas at El Paso. "It's not a Lamborghini, it's a $500 used car."
Since Fisher's companies embarked on construction of the Rio Grande fence, the Trump administration has awarded about $2 billion in federal contracts to the firms to build segments of the border wall in other locations.
Fisher Industries seems well-suited for a president like Trump. From Wikipedia:
Fischer Industries is a privately-held construction company based in Dickinson, North Dakota, led by Tommy Fisher. It is a child company of Fisher Sand and Gravel.
President Donald Trump has lobbied for the company to receive contracts on the US-Mexico Trump wall, to the Department of Homeland Security, to Todd T. Semonite of the Army Corps of Engineers, and promoted the company in an interview on Fox News with Sean Hannity. Jared Kushner has also endorsed the company, as well as freshman North Dakota senator Kevin Cramer, to whose campaign the Fisher family contributed $10,000.
Tommy Fisher has appeared on local and conservative TV and radio and is a donor to several charities and the Republican Party. Senator Kramer suggested Fisher's Fox News appearances are what attracted Trump to the company.
The High Plains Reader has documented environmental violations and tax evasion by the company, including 169 citations and paying $1 million in air quality violation fines in Maricopa County, Arizona over the past 10 years. In 2009 Michael Fisher, then-owner of Fisher, pled guilty to nine counts of felony tax fraud, being sentenced to 37 months in prison and over $300,000 in restitution. The comptroller also pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States in 2009. Another former head of the company, David William Fisher, pled guilty in 2005 to child pornography and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was released on April 30, 2010.
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Mark Frauenfelder, Khareem Sudlow
