The federal government is chaining one-ton buoys across the Rio Grande. In Utah, one washed-out bridge has turned a 30-minute trip to the doctor into two hours.

Jordan Elder of News 4 San Antonio and FOX San Antonio rode the river with Border Patrol near Eagle Pass as crews worked sunup to sundown, six days a week, installing a waterborne barrier. It is planned for more than 500 miles of the Rio Grande, about 40% of the Texas-Mexico border. In 2023 the Justice Department sued Texas over Governor Greg Abbott’s buoys. The federal version uses linked cylinders with no gaps, sitting about three-quarters above the water and built to spin if anyone climbs on them. This summer’s flood swept hundreds of them downstream, which shut Eagle Pass’s international bridges and piled buoys against Laredo’s land port. Jordan found about $3 billion in federal contracts tied to the barrier, but buoy spending is mixed in with border wall work, so the real price is hard to pin down. Laredo is worried about its drinking water, scientists are watching silt build up into islands, and a drone no-fly zone makes it hard to check whether contractors are keeping up with maintenance.

Samantha Hoffman of KUTV 2News traveled to Bluff, Utah, a town of a couple hundred people that flooded twice in about a week. Water stood a foot deep in the post office and fire station. The Highway 163 bridge to Monument Valley is gone, and the detour through Kayenta, Arizona adds an hour or more. A tilting power line threatened to cut electricity across 30 miles and take out cell service during evacuations. Just outside town, families on Navajo Nation land can’t get back into their homes because of E. coli, and federal aid may never reach towns this small.

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