U.S. Customs and Border Protection awarded a contract for border wall construction to Dickinson, N.D.-based Fisher Sand & Gravel Co. for $309.46 million to build 27 miles of new border wall in Santa Cruz County, Ariz., located within CBP’s Tucson Sector. Construction is expected to begin by this fall. 

The contract is funded with CBP’s 2021 funds and the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security said it will close openings in the border wall remaining from contracts cancelled during the Biden administration. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also waived environmental rules for federal construction—including the National Environmental Policy Act—for another wall project in Texas. This is the fifth waiver that has been signed by Noem for border wall construction. Environmental rules were previously waived for all wall projects in Arizona and New Mexico.

The waiver covers the Rio Grande Valley Wall Project (9 miles with up to an additional 8 miles in options) which is funded with CBP’s FY 2021 appropriations.
The Tucson contract is the final contract for work announced earlier this month in Arizona and New Mexico and the last of the projects approved and funded with 2021 CBP appropriations.

Environmental groups oppose both the waiver of environmental rules and the larger border wall efforts.

“This valley represents Southern Arizona’s last unwalled major biodiversity hotspot in the border region, a critical wildlife corridor in the middle of the Sky islands and in the birthplace of the Santa Cruz River, where species like the endangered jaguar and ocelot, as well as black bear and other species roam,” Sierra Club borderlands coordinator Erick Meza said
in a statement. “Blocking 25 miles of this landscape will sever connectivity for countless animals, pushing already vulnerable species closer to extinction.”

In its reconciliation package that it voted to pass in May, the House of Representatives included an appropriation for $46.5 billion for DHS to fund hundreds of new miles of border wall over the next four years. The Senate finance committee draft potentially expands border wall funding to more than $50 billion in tax dollars.