“Governor Ducey has wasted countless millions of taxpayer dollars building his damaging and illegal shipping container wall,” Russ McSpadden of the Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement reported by The New York Times. While that report says that Ducey’s office cites construction costs of at least $82 million, some reports have said its cost taxpayers as much as $100 million. “Nevertheless, we’re very pleased to see him agree to remove his political stunt.”
It’s also a major victory for the demonstrators who had physically blocked further dumping, frustrated by the lack of federal action against the Republican governor. They’d even been preparing to continue their blockading through Christmas. “While Ducey’s administration sought to install nearly 2,800 cargo containers across a 10-mile stretch of the border in Cochise County, spending around $95 million for the project, protestors were able to stall contractors to just 3 miles,” Tucson Sentinel reported.
It was such an illegal project that the sheriff of a nearby county threatened to arrest anyone dumping containers in his jurisdiction. Of course, the guy who ordered it all was sitting comfortably in his governor’s mansion.
McSpadden told the outlet that it appeared that contractors were already beginning to haul away containers that were waiting to be illegally stacked. “Everything looks like Ducey’s been heading for the hills with his containers,” he said in the report.
The federal government’s lawsuit had asked a judge to order the removal of the containers, with costs and damages to be paid by Arizona. The New York Times reports that it was unclear “how much it would cost to remove the 9,000-pound boxes and repair environmental damage done after bulldozers cut roads, blocked streams and uprooted oaks and junipers.” In my opinion, they should send the bill to Ducey’s house.
The New York Times also reported that Ducey’s office seemed to be suggesting it had actually accomplished something in its illegal dumping, noting that “federal officials were taking steps to build new permanent barriers to fill in gaps in the existing border wall.” But Tucson Sentinel reported those gaps were left by the previous administration, and the Biden administration had already announced last summer that it would be filling in those gaps (despite the president quickly halting construction of the previous administration’s wall after taking office).
So Ducey’s office seems to be claiming victory for something that had not only already been announced, but that federal officials said he was actively impeding by getting in their way.
“This whole fiasco has been one of the biggest wastes of taxpayer money I’ve ever seen,” tweeted American Immigration Council Policy Director Aaron Reichlin-Melnick. “In a matter of weeks, Arizona set tens of millions of dollars on fire for a political stunt they knew was illegal. At the end of the day, nothing will be left but damage to a national forest.”
The illegal structure has blocked the natural migratory paths of protected animals, including jaguars and ocelots, “along with mountain lions, black bears, coati, mule deer, and javelinas,” National Geographic reported this month. “Ducey’s breaking the law and jeopardizing the spectacular animals that roam the borderlands, just to score political points,” Center for Biological Diversity Co-founder Robin Silver said last month.
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Doug Ducey’s shipping container ‘wall’ is a joke that’s causing real harm to protected animals
