The Guy Who Spent $30 Million Building Trump's Wall Is Looking for Buyers

[riversedge]

Last edited Thu Jul 22, 2021, 11:44 PM - Edit history (1)

, perhaps billionaire Trump can snatch it up and put his name on it.
gee


The Guy Who Spent $30 Million Building Trump’s Wall Is Looking for Buyers
When Tommy Fisher heard the call for a big, beautiful wall, he erected a 3-mile fence along the Rio Grande. Now all he needs is someone to buy it back.



https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-07-22/trump-border-wall-builder-tommy-fisher-is-looking-for-a-buyer

Video: Tahseen Rabbi
By
July 22, 2021, 3:00 AM CDT


To get to Tommy Fisher’s private border wall in Texas, I drive south from the city of McAllen, then west on Military Road, past a chunk of redundant, abandoned federal border wall, and from there onto a dirt path through a sugar cane farm down to the Rio Grande. When I arrive, Fisher is waiting, wearing a Western-style plaid shirt, wraparound sunglasses, and a mesh baseball cap featuring his company’s logo. He’s 51 years old, with an ursine build and a disarmingly gentle voice.

By trade a builder of more prosaic infrastructure, such as dams and freeways, Fisher greets me by launching into a baffling sermon on his wall’s technical specifications. Mostly what I perceive is that we’re at its very edge, meaning we could theoretically walk around it and swim 100 yards to Mexico. Across the river, near the city of Reynosa, which has lately been wracked by unusually intense cartel violence, is a park with wooden docks and straw-roofed gazebos. Beyond the park, according to Fisher, is at least one cartel stash house, where drugs or people are stowed before being smuggled to America. As I poke around, Fisher says, “Make yourself at home.”



There are two private-sector border walls attempting to separate Mexico from the U.S., and Fisher Sand & Gravel Co. has built them both. The first, erected in the summer of 2019, is nestled in a mountainous half-mile stretch of New Mexico. The second—this one—is more ambitious. Completed last year, it’s about a 90-minute drive from the Gulf of Mexico, under the low, heavy skies of South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. The structure is 3 miles long, hugging a severe bend in the river, and consists of roughly 15,000 18-foot-tall gray steel bollards, spaced 5 inches apart and set in a wide concrete foundation. (In this sense it’s more like a fence, but for simplicity’s sake I’ll mainly call it a wall.) Up close, one can easily see between the bollards. From a distance they appear to be a contiguous, glinting slab of sheet metal.

Fisher continues pummeling me with information about his creation—“galvanized steel,” “modified spread footing”—sounding like a proud parent, or maybe an anxious student, at a science fair. “If I only did 1,000 or 2,000 feet, everyone’s going to make fun,” he says. “No one can really make fun of this.”


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relates to The Guy Who Spent $30 Million Building Trump’s Wall Is Looking for Buyers
Aerial view of Fisher’s 3-mile wall.
Photographer: Lowy+Lacar for Bloomberg Businessweek

[Hoyt]

1. Another memorial to hatred. But he'll get contributions/money from rubes.

[riversedge]

2. Fisher's wall at night....................

Fisher’s wall at night.
Photographer: Lowy+Lacar for Bloomberg Businessweek

[littlemissmartypants]

3. That's not a wall, that's a boondoggle. nt

[underpants]

4. We already have the milk thanks

[mac2766]

5. If it's on his property

he has the right. I certainly wouldn't have spent 30 million dollars on a "wall", but hey, if that's how he wants to spend his time and money, more power to him. I guess another way to look at it is that if the "wall" (wall... that cracks me up) already exists, there is less of a chance that the government will seize his property to build a "wall" to keep the scary foreign people out.

[Aristus]

6. Contact Monsieur Maginot of France.

n/t