What environmental impacts would a border wall between the United States and Mexico cause?

Though this is a denial of an answer, I really want to point out that making a wall that is EFFECTIVE at keeping people out would have to run about 100 feet under and 50 feet above the surface. The length of the border is ROUGHLY 2000 miles. So you need 300,000 square feet of stone wall. In order to keep people out you need to have at least 3 of these with land mines, barbed wire and regular patrols.

A square foot of stone wall runs about 100 dollars per square foot. That's about 3 million per wall in STONE ALONE. The labor is roughly equal to this as well. So that's 3 walls at 90 million dollars each plus 90 million each for labor and you're already at 540,000,000 dollars just in materials and basic, ultra-cheap labor, which Mexico and Mexicans won't provide you, so call it in at around 750,000,000 USD. Let's tack on another 250 million for barbed wire, trenches, guard towers and the like. So you've got a BILLION DOLLAR wall. And no more immigrant labor - the cost of the wall, compared to the cost of that labor is EXTREMELY minimal. Not to mentioned the destroyed environment. And 10,000+ useless jobs that have no advancement and lead nowhere and will vanish with the next administration.

FALE

/r/askscience Thread