More USA Today Nonsense
September 17, 2007
USA Today published a report on the border fence issue, saying, in part...
"...A December report by the CRS, which researches policy issues for Congress, cited U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimates that the two-layered fence could cost $1.2 million to $1.3 million per mile to build, not including land acquisition and maintenance.
"When maintenance was figured in, the cost estimate jumped to $16.4 million to $70 million per mile over the next 25 years, the report said."
Bad Assumptions
Last December we criticized the Congressional Research Service analysis of the cost of constructing and maintaining the San Diego border fence. In their report, the CRS says--
"The Corps of Engineers also predicted that the 25-year life cycle cost of the fence would range from $16.4 million to $70 million per mile depending on the amount of damage sustained by the fencing."
The Corps of Engineers report (USACERL
Technical Report 99/28 published in February, 1999 
)
states --
"In the absence of any maintenance records and operational experience with most of the design options, two sets of assumptions were used for each system in order to define a best and worst case scenario."
The Corps of Engineers worst case scenario calcutates the life-cycle costs of the fence assuming that the entire fence would have to be replaced in the fifth year of operation and every four years after that (Page 24). In fact. the San Diego fence has never been replaced, even a little bit at a time.
The Corps of Engineers goes on to say...
Although these results attempt to account for the effects of terrain, structural vandalism, projected maintenance and repair (M&R) costs and special equipment needs, they should be considered preliminary. For this application, more operational experience is needed to arrive at an optimized and practical solution.
So we have the CRS using the worst case scenario for the life-cycle cost of the double-layer border fence from a report that was seven years old and which based its cost analysis on assumptions that should have been examined in light of real-life experience with the San Diego fence.
Open border advocates such as USA Today are quick to quote the ill-founded CRS numbers as proof that the fence will cost too much.
Glenn Spencer
