The word “boondoggle,” which means an extravagant and useless project, comes from the Boy Scouts’ practice of “boondoggling.” They would braid and knot colorful strands of plastic and leather to make bracelets and other items.
During the Great Depression, the U.S. Works Progress Administration started paying out-of-work educators to craft decorative items from discarded materials. In 1935, the New York Times reported that federal dollars were used to finance the children’s fashioning of these boondoggles.
The term became political when Republicans, unhappy with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, used the word to mock wasteful spending on public make-work projects. Today, the word is still used to make fun of questionable projects and spending by governments around the world. Let’s dive into some of the most outrageous examples.
10. Japan’s Great Tsunami Walls
After a devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011, Japan decided to build hundreds of sea walls to protect its coastline. The project was estimated to cost €6 billion. As Irish Times contributor David McNeill writes, the 2011 earthquake beneath the Pacific Ocean produced “towering waves” that devastated Koizumi, Japan. Four drowned, and almost all the other 1,800 residents of the coastal town were swept away.
The goal was to secure residents along the 8,699 miles (14,000 kilometers) of Japan’s 21,748-mile (35,000-kilometer) coastline, who needed “tsunami protection.”
However, the project faced criticism. Some argued that similar efforts in the past had mixed results. Hiroko Otsuka, who grew up near Koizumi, feared the barriers could give residents “a false sense of security.”
Otsuka’s concerns were personal, as her mother and brother died during the 2011 flood. She believes they might have survived if they had fled to higher ground instead of seeking refuge behind the sea wall. Like others, Otsuka thinks that building barriers against tsunamis should be reconsidered. [1]
9. Spain’s Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences
Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences was intended to boost tourism. Despite €7.5 billion in spending, it has not achieved its goal. Feargus O’Sullivan described the project as “the gift that keeps on taking.”
The initial cost of the museum-cum-arts center quadrupled to €1 billion before it was completed in 2005. However, it continued to cost the government money, including a €4.5 billion “bailout” to the region and repairs to the opera house. The structure’s metal shell buckles “as it expands and contracts” due to the city’s “daily temperature extremes.”
In 2014, inspectors discovered that “the thousand tiny mosaic-like tiles” covering the metal sheets in the shell needed to be removed, costing another €3 million. Santiago Calatrava, the architect, blamed “poor construction,” not his design, for the problems. O’Sullivan argues there’s plenty of blame to go around, including “failed or underperforming projects… kickbacks [and] an unnecessary airport nearby.” [2]
8. Saudi Arabia’s Farming Boondoggle
Charles J. Hanley wrote in the New York Times that the Saudi government could describe agriculture as “one of the kingdom’s most spectacular achievements.” But the spectacle has long since overshadowed any real achievement.
The Saudi government subsidized $13 billion worth of “overpriced crops” and dumped “mountains of grain” in the desert to rot, all to pose as “a desert oil state in the unnatural role of wheat exporter.”
Although Saudi Arabia can replace the money wasted on subsidizing farm crops, it cannot replace the water, which has caused the Saudis to quit trying to farm their four million acres of desert “farmland.” Cattle have been suggested as an alternative to wheat, but the need to “green feed” the livestock gives even the optimistic Saudis pause. As Agriculture Minister Abdullah bin Moammar concedes, such a project “could get out of control.” [3]
7. Germany’s Renewable Energy Boondoggle
In 2002, Germany decided to “phase out nuclear power,” Rick Mills reports. Eight years later, Chancellor Angela Merkel extended the use of the country’s nuclear reactors because the nation couldn’t supply enough power by renewable energy sources alone. Due to politics, though, Germany cut electricity availability by 40% overnight while planning to eliminate the rest of the supply by 2022. A year before the deadline, the country shut down three of the six plants that remained operational.
As predicted, renewable energy sources couldn’t produce the power supply the country needed, and energy prices spiked sharply. As a result, Germany’s $16 billion go-green boondoggle failed, and the country had to return to its reliance on coal and nuclear energy. [4]
6. England’s Car Parks
In England, millions of pounds have been spent on parking garages and lots that few drivers use. According to the British Parking Association, there are between 17,000 and 20,000 car parks across the country. Some are multi-story (garages), while others are simply “surface” lots.
Some car parks have attracted “anti-social behavior,” an online Guardian article reports. Abbey Walk in North East Lincolnshire is one such location. The county’s council has requested ₤1.54 million to fund a “refurbishment programme.” Communities hope to cash in on the massive boondoggle by repurposing the car parks as shopping centers, cultural or performance centers, or office spaces. However, it remains to be seen whether such conversions will pay off since online shopping and “out-of-town retail parks” have already taken a toll on stores and other businesses located in the city centers. [5]
5. Mexico’s Mayan Train
Critics are concerned about Mexico’s $20 billion Mayan train, as an online Nation article states. Nevertheless, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is committed to building the 900-mile (1,448-kilometer) railroad that will run “through southeastern Mexico… promoting Indigenous history and culture to tourists.”
Part of the train’s route passes through the country’s 3,000-square-mile (4,828-square-kilometer) Mayan forest’s Calakmul biosphere reserve, which is “home to an archaeological jewel: the ancient Mayan city of Calakmul.” The region is experiencing a prolonged drought, and some question introducing 8,000 tourists per day to the area despite the government’s promise of a new aqueduct.
Many Indigenous people, supposed to benefit from the train, call the project “an act of war,” fearing that it will “devastate southern Mexico’s ecosystem and further marginalize the communities living there.” Instead of honoring Mexico’s Indigenous peoples, the Mayan train seems to have alienated and angered them. [6]
4. China’s Three Gorges Dam
Chinese government officials ignored scientists’ advice not to build the massive hydroelectric Three Gorges Dam. Only after the dam—the largest in the world—was completed, to the tune of $24 billion, did the officials admit that the scientists’ predictions of landslides and the “altering [of] entire ecosystems,” among other “serious environmental problems,” might have resulted from the dam’s construction.
Although champions of the project had envisioned the dam as “a major source of renewable power for an energy-hungry nation,” able to produce 18,000 megawatts of power, George Davis said that building the dam has also brought “less rain, drought, and the potential for increased disease.” In addition, in June 2003, a rock slide killed fourteen people, and dozens of landslides have taken place, one burying a bus and “killing at least 30 people.” Experts fear the worst may be yet to come. [7]
3. Canada’s 407 Express Toll Road
Canada has had its share of boondoggles, including “a bridge too far, an airport in the middle of nowhere, [and] a boat that won’t float,” writes Benjamin Hunting. One of its more expensive wastes was the 407 Express Toll Road.
Construction began in 1987 and was completed in 2001 at the cost of $3.1 billion, which was reduced to $1.6 million, the government claimed, by leasing the road to a “private consortium” for ninety-nine years. The deal didn’t include the $100 billion paid to expropriate the land through which the highway ran.
The company leasing the highway upped the toll so much that drivers, especially in commercial trucks, opted to sit in traffic on Highway 401 rather than use the toll road. Ironically, “a highway intended to ease congestion was now actually causing it, and toll rates continued to rise,” Hunting notes. To add insult to injury, in 2019, SNC-Lavalin Group, one of the partners in the toll road’s lease, sold 10.1% of its holdings for $3.25 billion, “valuing the entire operation at a whopping $30 billion [or] 10 times the price paid” to the Ontario government. [8]
2. USA’s Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository
The cost to build the U.S.’s Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository has soared to $38 billion, including its construction and the decades-long political fight between parties who endorse the opening of the site and others who oppose it.
Located near Mercury, Nevada, within a hundred miles of Las Vegas, the repository would hold the 88,000 tons (79,832 metric tons) of nuclear waste that the country’s eighty nuclear plants have produced. A $19 billion, five-mile (8-kilometer) tunnel, dug in 1987, leads into the mountain, but the fight for the site’s use continues.
Scientists express concern that the waste could contaminate underground water, endangering local farmers, a threat that the Department of Energy’s William Boyle told CBS News correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti was “manageable.” Nevada’s U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto added that the railroad cars carrying the spent radioactive fuel would travel through the heart of Las Vegas on their way to the repository.
While the debate rages, nuclear waste continues to pile up across the country. It’s too bad that the government didn’t arrange, years ago, for the safe storage of nuclear waste that remains radioactive for thousands upon thousands of years. [9]
1. Australia’s Submarine Purchase
In 2011, Australia’s federal executive government, aka the Turnbull Government, purchased a dozen French Shortfin Barracuda submarines. The initial cost was $50 billion, as John Menadue points out. However, this was just the start since the subs’ “design and pricing” took place in an unprecedented, virtually “competition-free environment,” and “buying from overseas suppliers” was prohibited.
There were also strategic problems with the purchase. The submarines were intended for use in the South China Sea alongside U.S. submarines. There, they would “be contesting the waters with Chinese submarines.” The Chinese subs, like their American counterparts, were nuclear-powered, while the French submarines were not. What deterrence would the French subs be against the Chinese vessels? Would the U.S. Navy “want to operate alongside [Australia’s] conventionally powered submarines?” Critics argued that it might be more in Australia’s interest to use its newly acquired subs to patrol and protect its own shores.
All things considered, Menadue concluded that the over-priced purchase was a boondoggle that proved “bad for policy, bad for the [Australian] navy, bad for the tax payer, and bad for the future defence of Australia.” [10]
Conclusion
From Japan’s tsunami walls to Australia’s submarine purchase, these projects show how easily large-scale undertakings can become wasteful and ineffective. Whether due to poor planning, political interference, or changing circumstances, these boondoggles serve as cautionary tales for governments and organizations worldwide.
What do you think about these boondoggles? Leave your comment below!
