The full cost of Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s floating buoy barrier in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass is greater than previously revealed.
Between February and August of last year, the state attorney general’s office doled out expert services contracts and related amendments worth almost $1 million total as part of its defense against a federal Department of Justice lawsuit over the buoys, records obtained by the Texas Observer show. The experts are being retained to provide declarations or testimony in the year-and-a-half-old suit. Pretrial discovery is currently scheduled to last through May, though it’s possible President-elect Donald Trump’s administration will drop the suit.
The expert contracts are worth more than the $850,000 that the state paid to install the first 1,000 feet of buoys in July 2023, as calculated from purchase order records. (The state added to the riverine barrier in November.) Abbott’s office has described the buoys as “low-cost.”
