Initial proposals are due Tuesday to the Department of Homeland Security, for any construction or security firm looking to head up what promises to be one of the largest construction projects in American history—the so-called “border wall”—and some firms have gotten creative.
More than 200 companies say they’ll submit a proposal to DHS, so many that DHS has now divided the competition into two groups: those who would use concrete to build the border wall, and those with more interesting ideas. The competition winner will get a $2 billion budget to start construction in late 2017.
The proposals must fill some specific requirements, like that the wall be physically imposing yet “aesthetically pleasing,” and impervious to scaling with a pickax, resistant to burrowing, and at least 30 feet tall.
So far, few potential contractors are willing to reveal their grand plans to cut off Mexico from the United States, but one, Crisis Resolution Security Services of Chicago, Ill. says they’re going with a traditional “castle wall” in their submission, modeled on the Great Wall of China.
The “Great Western IBW (International Border Wall)” features two 26-foot concrete walls with 30-foot packed dirt berms beneath, and space for running, walking and biking on top, provided you mount the wall from the American side. CRSS is unique, however, in that its willing to sacrifice parts of Texas, leaving American territory south of the wall where terrain becomes too difficult to build on.
Concrete Contracters Interstate wants Mexico’s involvement in their project, asking south-of-the-border artists to contribute their work to the Mexico-facing wall. The US-facing side would be a highly-polished glass, that they say would mimic and reflect the natural landscape of the desert.
“If the wall is going to be built, it may as well be beautiful,” they say in the proposal. They don’t say whether they asked any Mexicans, though.
Pennsylvania-based Clayton Industries wants to hide our nuclear waste in the wall. Las Vegas, Nev.-based Gleason Partners wants the wall to power most of the state of Texas using solar panels.
Others seemed to miss the point of DHS’s process altogether—or, at least, they decided to turn their proposals, which are mostly kept out of the public eye, into tiny works of civil disobedience.
One artist proposed a “lighthouse wall” that would help illuminate the desert so that border jumpers wouldn’t hurt themselves while crossing through at night. Otra Nation, a “collective” of North American artists, proposed a vast hyper-loop that would turn the US and Mexico into one, vast, shared “co-nation,” that has high-speed rail along the border.
Even stranger? The results of the “Building the Border Wall” proposal contest, that promised to help one lucky company put together their official package for DHS. Among those “top ideas,” are an international “irrigation wall” and community garden, and “inflato-border” system of flexible bubbles that perform a variety of functions including “bringing communities together,” and a flexible membrane that would bounce people back and forth.
DHS will announce the front-runners of their border contest in May. Anyone chosen to advance will have to build a small replica of their border wall in the desert near San Diego by October.