Heavy Rainfall and Flooding is collapsing Trump’s Border Wall at Mexico

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Former US President Donald Trump’s border wall between the US and Mexico is already failing at its sole task. The monsoons flooding in Arizona has broken the floodgates on portions of the wall and separated metal panels from their hinges and left huge openings in the barrier. Gizmodo reported that the damaged section of the wall is located near San Bernardino Ranch, east of Douglas, and northeast of the Mexican town of Agua Prieta. Most of the southwest is desperate for water. The portions of southern Arizona have experienced record-setting rainfalls. Rainfall in nearby Douglas has doubled the average monsoon season rainfall and it also brought flooding.

Gizmodo reported that 6 gates were knocked off their hinges and others were damaged by the floodwaters. The collapsing wall comes as little surprise to those familiar with the region’s climate and geology. Trump’s wall was a passion project and a foundational promise of his campaign, the former president rushed to start its construction. In 2015, he said, “Nobody builds walls better than me, believe me. And I’ll build them very inexpensively”. The former president may have exaggerated his wall-building expertise by just a bit. Trump did not sideline environmental laws to commence construction. He likely would have learned that Arizona’s monsoon season would uproot his wall.

Myles Traphagen of the Wildlands Network said that he believes the companies who worked on the wall were more concerned with finish the project than they were its long-term viability. He said that he could understand other projects – like dams – having a net benefit to society even if they did damage to the environment, but did not feel the same about the border wall. Traphagen also said, “The border wall is a complete suck of money. We don’t benefit by any of that”. Since Trump left office, Joe Biden has put a halt to building the wall. However, the already-built section 452 miles of the wall has resulted in extensive damage to the borderlands ecosystem.