 But 15 years later, press reports laid the failure of the project to a decision by Congress and the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development to withhold funds for the project.District officials built a fence around the shores of Kingman and Heritage Island in the early 1980s to protect them from illegal dumping and vandalism, but the fences did not work.Businesses and members of the public dumped discarded construction materials and other waste on the islands, and homeless people often tried to live there.