Duncan Hunter Still Working On America's Border Fence

While Barack Hussein and John McCain are parading around the country (and other countries) trying to get votes by making promises, Duncan Hunter is actually out there getting stuff done. Here are a couple of recent stories about the former Presidential hopeful and his never-quit attitude.
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By Leslie Berestein
San Diego UNION-TRIBUNE
July 29, 2008

Crews could begin filling in Smuggler's Gulch as early as this week for the border-fence construction project that environmentalists had opposed for years.
Click to see Proposed, existing fencing graphic.
The gulch is a deep canyon west of the San Ysidro port of entry. Yesterday, Reps. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, and Brian Bilbray, R-Carlsbad, held a news conference there to announce the expected start of the cut-and-fill phase.
“This is the last hole in the border fence,” Hunter said. “It's important to get this done.”
Earth-scraping equipment was scheduled to arrive yesterday, he said. A Border Patrol spokesman later confirmed that the contractor handling the fence project is obtaining more equipment.
The federal government plans to build an earthen berm across the canyon to support a 15-foot, secondary steel-mesh fence as well as patrol and access roads. The government will need to fill the canyon with more than 2 million cubic yards of dirt.
Hunter's aides said the cut-and-fill operation would be in full swing by Aug. 11, with about 22,000 cubic yards of earth moved per day.
This year, the government awarded a $48.6 million contract for the fence work to Kiewit Corp., a construction and mining company based in Omaha, Neb. The corporation has been preparing the site in recent months.
Government officials expect to finish the fence project by May 1.
The scale of the work has drawn widespread criticism from environmentalists, who fear that sediment from the earth-moving operation will harm the Tijuana River estuary. The estuary is an internationally recognized wetlands area that has cost millions of dollars to restore.

ALSO-
$42Mil Border Fence Construction Under Way!
Area Considered Notorious For Smuggling
POSTED: 2:40 pm PDT July 28, 2008
UPDATED: 5:32 pm PDT July 28, 2008

SAN DIEGO -- After more than a decade of delays, construction is getting under way on a 3-mile stretch of border fencing.
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The double fencing stretches from the ocean at Border Field State Park into Smuggler’s Gulch, which empties into the Tijuana River Valley on the U.S. side of the border. That area has historically been San Diego's most heavily trafficked border stretch, in terms of illegal immigrants, drugs and criminal activity, officials said. Just last week, Border Patrol agents took 49 illegal immigrants into custody in that area after they were found hiding in the tank of a stolen water truck.
The first phase of the fencing project is already ongoing -- floodworks. A big box culvert and rip-rap boulders to protect the fences and the access road between them from storm runoff.
Starting later this week, the contractors will begin bulldozing 2 million cubic yards off the top of the mesas to accommodate all that. Fourteen miles of double-fencing has gone up to the east of Smuggler's gulch since 1996.
"Every family in America that's been touched by the tragedy of illegal drugs or by criminal activity that's come from across the border has as stake in this border fence," said Rep. Duncan Hunter.
But federal regulations and environmental lawsuits have delayed work on the coastal stretch to the west, until Hunter pushed through a waiver of those laws, exercised by the Department of Homeland Security. He argued that the project won't be the environmental disaster that critics have claimed.
"This plan has gotten past, it's been approved by the Carlsbad office of Fish and Wildlife -- which is considered to be the toughest Fish & Wildlife office in the nation. So it's an ecologically and environmentally sensitive plan. It's a good one," said Hunter.
According to Hunter, San Diego County's crime rate has gone down by 53 percent since the 14 miles of existing double-fencing went up along the border. He said that barriers of one kind or another now stretch for about 50 the county's 70 miles of border.

More on the Border...
August 5, 2008: Feds Rescue Smuggled Toddlers
May 8, 2008: Illegal Immigrants Arrested While Leaving U.S.
May 2, 2008: May Day Marchers Hit San Diego Streets
November 8, 2007: GOP Irked At Democrats Slashing Funds For Border-Fence Bill
August 14, 2007: Presidential Hopeful Tours Border