America's infrastructure is crumbling

[2-0-Sixx]

2009 Report Card:


Aviation...........D
Bridges...........C
Dams...........D
Drinking Water...........D-
Energy...........D+
Hazardous Waste...........D
Inland Waterways...........D-
Levees...........D-
Public Parks and Recreation...........C-
Rail...........C-
Roads...........D-
Schools...........D
Solid Waste...........C+
Transit...........D
Wastewater...........D-

America's Infrastructure GPA: D
Estimated 5 Year Investment Need: $2.2 Trillion

http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/

 

[2-0-Sixx]

Good article from today...

Heat wave exposes decrepit infrastructure in US, Canada
By Tom Eley
8 July 2010

A major heat wave in the eastern US and parts of Canada has further exposed the decrepit state of infrastructure in North America and the perilous conditions created by private ownership of utilities.

Seven deaths have been attributed to the heat wave so far, a number likely to rise. In Philadelphia, a 92-year-old woman was found dead in her non-air-conditioned apartment on Tuesday. And in suburban Detroit the body of a 56-year-old homeless woman was discovered near her car.

Temperatures in New York City, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Providence, Rhode Island, broke records on Tuesday. Baltimore Washington International Airport topped 105 degrees, and Philadelphia and Washington D.C.’s airports recorded temperatures of 102 and 101 degrees, respectively.

High humidity made the heat more intense. New York’s Central Park—usually one of the cooler spots in the city—recorded a temperature of 103 degrees on Tuesday afternoon. But humidity made it feel like 111 degrees, according to AccuWeather.

Wednesday saw temperatures in the high 90s for most of the region, with some cities once again hitting 100. Forecasts say the heat wave will lessen somewhat over the weekend, but will intensify again next week.

Extra demand for power associated with the use of air conditioners shut down electricity service to parts of New York City and Washington D.C., the nation’s financial and political capitals, while Tuesday’s largest blackout occurred in Canada’s most populous city, Toronto. Partial power failures also occurred in Philadelphia, Detroit, Boston, Baltimore, and many smaller cities and towns in the US and Canada.

In metropolitan New York City, nearly 19,000 homes and businesses lost power, 6,300 of which had yet to be restored to service as of Wednesday afternoon. In the city 4,000 customers lost power due to the grid nearing its capacity, according to the region’s privately-held energy monopoly, Consolidated Edison (Con Edison). At least four of the five city boroughs were affected by power outages, exposing the population to serious health risks.

“I was panicking because my daughter has a seizure disorder,” a city resident told a New York news station. “I told them we cannot put up with this. But I put her in the water, to cool her down a little bit. I was able to handle that … My neighbor also, her husband is on oxygen. She was calling all day. I saw her outside calling, calling.”

Con Edison also imposed 5 percent to 8 percent voltage reductions to twenty neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens because of failures in electrical cables. About half a million customers were affected.

“It’s scary that in what we refer to as the first world, the most modern city in the world, these things can happen,” Aseem Chhabra, a 53-year-old native of India, told the Wall Street Journal.

In the Detroit metropolitan area, hundreds of households in Hamtramck and Birmingham lost power due to overheated transformers owned by Michigan’s energy giant DTE, whose winter shut-off policies have led to the deaths of a number of area residents over the past year.

In and around Stamford, Connecticut, nearly 20,000 households lost power on Tuesday when a transformer caught fire and melted. Some residents were still without power Wednesday. In Baltimore, 8,700 customers lost power on Tuesday, and 8,000 Philadelphia homes were without power on Monday. In Boston, 1,500 households still had no power on Wednesday morning after heat-related outages on Tuesday. About 3,000 homes in Washington D.C. lost energy after a power line incinerated due to the high temperatures.

The only response of the major US power utilities has been a media campaign requesting residents to restrict their use of power. “We are anticipating a potential record-breaking day for electric usage,” said John Miksad of Con Edison. “It’s not a record we’re hoping to break and we are encouraging conservation among all our customers.”

By far the worst power outage occurred in Toronto, where a breaker belonging to utility Hydro One burst into flames, leaving 240,000 residents without power on a day when the temperatures reached the mid-90s. The failure was directly attributed to the age of the power grid.

“Much of the Crown-owned utility’s equipment is nearing the end of its design life,” complained the Globe and Mail. “The outage was a stark reminder that an aging electricity grid is leaving many regions vulnerable to blackouts.”

“You get what you pay for,” said Canadian energy policy analyst Keith Stewart. “If you aren’t willing to pay for a reliable system, then you get an unreliable one.”

Unlike most US utilities, Hydro One is a crown corporation owned by the province of Ontario. However, the Energy Competition Act of 1998, passed by the Ontario government under Conservative Mike Harris, created a “free market” in the electricity markets. While energy rates have risen drastically since 1998, there has been no major investment in the power grid.

To the embarrassment of the Ontario elite, the Toronto power outage coincided with a visit from Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, leaving her in a hotel with no electricity in advance of a meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Visiting New York, the queen “made it through the day without being affected by the outages,” noted the Hindustan Times. “But on Monday, as she wrapped up a week-long visit in Canada, power crashed across large swathes of Toronto, including the hotel where she was staying.”

In the eastern US and southern Ontario, power usage this week has approached, but generally not surpassed, the record levels reached in the heat wave of 2006. This may be owed, ironically, to the economic slump. “Fewer industrial users, fewer commercial users just simply because their production is down due to the economy,” commented Joe Hoagland, of Eastern Tennessee’s energy utility, TVA. Nonetheless, the North American power grid began to stutter and stop.

The heat shut down or limited other components of major East Coast cities’ infrastructure.

The New York City Transit Authority suspended elevators and escalators at several subway stations, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority determined that it could not raise a series of century-old drawbridges along its New Haven Line, allowing the Metro-North train to proceed as usual, but blocking boats from passing below.

New Jersey Transit canceled nine trains due to the high temperatures, forcing passengers to wait for hours in the heat. In Washington D.C., commuter trains were ordered to slow their speeds after welded rails began to warp.

In Baltimore, a nursing home for the elderly was evacuated on Tuesday after its air conditioning system broke down.

It is not the first time that the East Coast has been hit by major power outages related to high temperatures. A heat wave in 2006 claimed dozens of lives while setting power usage records and overwhelming the grid in numerous locations. And in 2003, massive blackouts cascaded across the East, Midwest, and southern Canada, leaving some 50 million households without power in New York, Cleveland, Detroit, Toronto, Ottawa, and elsewhere.

At the time, the World Socialist Web Site commented: “Privatisation, mergers, costcutting and restructuring have resulted in a lack of investment in new plant and maintenance. As a consequence, the various power grids across the US have become increasingly unstable, particularly at times of high demand such as during heat waves. Any fault in one plant or at one point in the transmission system creates a cascading effect as one station after another shuts down automatically to avoid dangerous overloading.” (see “Massive power blackout hits millions in Canada and the US&#8221.

After the 2003 disaster, numerous promises were made by utility company and government officials in the US and Canada that the power grid would be revitalized. Seven years on, next to nothing has been done.

The situation in New York City is particularly telling. Con Edison’s operations have now suffered major blackouts numerous times in recent years, including 1999, 2003, 2006, and 2010.

This would appear surprising in the nation’s largest and richest city, except that the purpose of energy giants such as Con Edison is in fact not to deliver energy, but profit.

Con Edison reported net income of $226 million in the first quarter of 2010 alone. This enormous sum is primarily distributed to shareholders and executives—CEO Kevin Burke was paid nearly $9 million in 2009, according to Businessweek.

 

[2-0-Sixx]

An article in regards to the report card:

America’s crumbling infrastructure
By Jeff Lassahn


A January study by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), “The 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure,” depicts the advanced decay of roads, bridges, water, and sewerage in the US. The report makes all the more glaring the Obama administration’s steadfast refusal to undertake a major public works program that could put the nation’s unemployed to work.

The study was originally scheduled to be released in March, but ASCE released it early in an attempt to influence the debate over the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The $787 billion “stimulus package” ultimately allocated only $71.76 billion directly to construction projects, and most of this money has yet to be spent.

The report card gave an abysmal overall score of “D” for the state of American infrastructure, stating that the investment need in infrastructure over the next 5 years is $2.2 trillion, about 30 times what the Obama administration’s stimulus package has invested. The report estimates $903 billion will be provided in this period from government spending at all levels, making the funding shortfall for infrastructure needs over the next five years $1.176 trillion.

Since the report was released in January, economic conditions have likely eroded a substantial portion of estimated government spending on infrastructure. Tax revenues for states, localities, and the federal government have plummeted as millions lose jobs and businesses cut back. States across the country face unprecedented budget shortfalls, which has led to draconian cuts. Various states and cities have closed parks, reduced road maintenance, stalled long term road and rail projects, and put off critical water and sewerage investments.

Many of the states facing the worst economic conditions also have the most decrepit infrastructure. An astonishing 66 percent of California’s major roads are in poor or mediocre condition, and 68 percent of its urban interstates are congested. Of the state’s bridges, 30 percent are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. According to the report card, “California spends $2 billion less each year on highway maintenance and rehabilitation than is needed.”

The nation’s infrastructure has worsened since 2005, the report concludes. “US surface transportation and aviation systems declined over the past four years, with aviation and transit dropping from a D+ to D, and roads dropping from a D to a nearly failing D-,” it says. “Showing no significant improvement since the last report, the nation’s bridges, public parks and recreation, and rail remained at a grade of C, while dams, hazardous waste, and schools remained at a grade of D, and drinking water and waste water remained at a grade of D-. Just one category—energy—improved since 2005, raised its grade from D to D+.”

For the first time the ASCE report has included levees in its findings, giving them a grade of D-. It states that of the estimated 100,000 miles of levees across the country, many are more than 50 years old, and “the reliability of many of these levees is unknown.” Four years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, a pitiful $1.13 billion in government spending is destined for levees over the next five years, compared to $50 billion dollars in need.

Dams, which provide critical energy and water resources, have been rapidly deteriorating. In 2001, the number of deficient dams was 1,384; by 2007, the number had nearly tripled to 4,095. The number of “high hazard” deficient dams has increased from 488 in 2001 to 1,826 in 2007. “Many state dam safety programs do not have sufficient resources, funding, or staff to conduct dam safety inspections, to take appropriate enforcement actions, or to ensure proper construction by reviewing plans and performing construction inspections,” the report notes.

The report finds that many drinking water systems—pipes, purification plants, and resources—are approaching or beyond service life, unreliable, and insufficient for growing needs. Thousands of ancient water mains and pipes will rupture over the next few months as cold weather stresses their aged cast iron to the breaking point. The report notes that leaking pipes “lose an estimated 7 billion gallons of clean drinking water a day.” At least $11 billion annually is needed to address these problems.

Waste water received a grade of D- for persistent problems of aging equipment and lack of investment. Clogged, broken, or insufficient drainage leads to 850 billion gallons of sewer overflow discharge per year, and as much as 10 billion gallons of raw sewage is released per year from sanitary sewer overflows, according to an EPA report from 2004.

It is ironic that much of the infrastructure falling apart in 2009 was put in place during the nation’s last great economic crisis, the Great Depression of the 1930s. Then, the Democratic president, Franklin Roosevelt, put in place significant public works programs associated with names like the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Works Progress Administration. The aim was to forestall revolutionary change by putting millions to work.

While the social need for infrastructure is just as great as it was in the 1930s, the Obama administration insists that for the jobless crisis only “market solutions” can be considered.

 

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Well this seems like a good place to add this;

NEW ORLEANS — More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one — not industry, not government — is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The oldest of these wells were abandoned in the late 1940s, raising the prospect that many deteriorating sealing jobs are already failing.

The AP investigation uncovered particular concern with 3,500 of the neglected wells — those characterized in federal government records as "temporarily abandoned."

Regulations for temporarily abandoned wells require oil companies to present plans to reuse or permanently plug such wells within a year, but the AP found that the rule is routinely circumvented, and that more than 1,000 wells have lingered in that unfinished condition for more than a decade. About three-quarters of temporarily abandoned wells have been left in that status for more than a year, and many since the 1950s and 1960s — even though sealing procedures for temporary abandonment are not as stringent as those for permanent closures.

As a forceful reminder of the potential harm, the well beneath BP's Deepwater Horizon rig was being sealed with cement for temporary abandonment when it blew April 20, leading to one of the worst environmental disasters in the nation's history. BP alone has abandoned about 600 wells in the Gulf, according to government data.

There's ample reason for worry about all permanently and temporarily abandoned wells — history shows that at least on land, they often leak. Wells are sealed underwater much as they are on land. And wells on land and in water face similar risk of failure. Plus, records reviewed by the AP show that some offshore wells have failed.

Asked in multiple requests over several weeks how often abandoned wells have failed, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged Tuesday — as this story was being released — that it has had to deal with leaks at abandoned wells in shallow state waters of Louisiana and Texas. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement — which oversees wells in federal waters — also acknowledged Tuesday that it has dealt with "a few" failed abandoned wells farther out in the Gulf. But the information was released only through the public affairs offices and neither agency provided experts for follow-up.

Experts say abandoned wells can repressurize, much like a dormant volcano can awaken. And years of exposure to sea water and underground pressure can cause cementing and piping to corrode and weaken.

"You can have changing geological conditions where a well could be repressurized," said Andy Radford, a petroleum engineer for the American Petroleum Institute trade group.

Whether a well is permanently or temporarily abandoned, improperly applied or aging cement can crack or shrink, independent petroleum engineers say. "It ages, just like it does on buildings and highways," said Roger Anderson, a Columbia University petroleum geophysicist who has conducted research on commercial wells.

Despite the likelihood of leaks large and small, though, abandoned wells are typically not inspected by industry or government.

Oil company representatives insist that the seal on a correctly plugged offshore well will last virtually forever.

"It's in everybody's interest to do it right," said Bill Mintz, a spokesman for Apache Corp., which has at least 2,100 abandoned wells in the Gulf, according to government data.

Officials at the U.S. Interior Department, which oversees the agency that regulates federal leases in the Gulf and elsewhere, did not answer repeated questions regarding why there are no inspections of abandoned wells.

State officials estimate that tens of thousands are badly sealed, either because they predate strict regulation or because the operating companies violated rules. Texas alone has plugged more than 21,000 abandoned wells to control pollution, according to the state comptroller's office.

Offshore, but in state waters, California has resealed scores of its abandoned wells since the 1980s.

In deeper federal waters, though — despite the similarities in how such wells are constructed and how sealing procedures can fail — the official policy is out-of-sight, out-of-mind.

The U.S. Minerals Management Service — recently renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement — relies on rules that have few real teeth. Once an oil company says it will permanently abandon a well, it has one year to complete the job. MMS mandates that work plans be submitted and a report filed afterward.

Unlike California regulators, MMS doesn't typically inspect the job, instead relying on the paperwork.

The fact there are so many wells that have been classified for decades as temporarily abandoned suggests that paperwork can be shuffled at MMS without any real change beneath the water.

With its weak system of enforcement, MMS imposed fines in a relative handful of cases: just $440,000 on seven companies from 2003-2007 for improper plug-and-abandonment work.

Companies permanently abandon wells when they are no longer useful. Afterward, no one looks methodically for leaks, which can't easily be detected from the surface anyway. And no one in government or industry goes underwater to inspect, either.

Government regulators and industry officials say abandoned offshore wells are presumed to be properly plugged and are expected to last indefinitely without leaking. Only when pressed do these officials acknowledge the possibility of leaks.

Despite warnings of leaks, government and industry officials have never bothered to assess the extent of the problem, according to an extensive AP review of records and regulations.

That means no one really knows how many abandoned wells are leaking — and how badly.

The AP documented an extensive history of warnings about environmental dangers related to abandoned wells:

— The General Accountability Office, which investigates for Congress, warned as early as 1994 that leaks from offshore abandoned wells could cause an "environmental disaster," killing fish, shellfish, mammals and plants. In a lengthy report, GAO pressed for inspections of abandonment jobs, but nothing came of the recommendation.

— A 2006 Environmental Protection Agency report took notice of the overall issue regarding wells on land: "Historically, well abandonment and plugging have generally not been properly planned, designed and executed." State officials say many leaks come from wells abandoned in recent decades, when rules supposedly dictated plugging procedures. And repairs are so routine that terms have been coined to describe the work: "replugging" or the "re-abandonment."

— A GAO report in 1989 provided a foreboding prognosis about the health of the country's inland oil and gas wells. The watchdog agency quoted EPA data estimating that up to 17 percent of the nation's wells on land had been improperly plugged. If that percentage applies to offshore wells, there could be 4,600 badly plugged wells in the Gulf of Mexico alone.

— According to a 2001 study commissioned by MMS, agency officials were "concerned that some abandoned oil wells in the Gulf may be leaking crude oil." But nothing came of that warning either.

The study targeted a well 20 miles (32 kilometers) off Louisiana that had been reported leaking five years after it was plugged and abandoned. The researchers tried unsuccessfully to use satellite radar images to locate the leak.

But John Amos, the geologist who wrote the study, told AP that MMS withheld critical information that could have helped verify if he had pinpointed the problem. "I kind of suspected that this was a project almost designed to fail," Amos said. He said the agency refused to tell him "how big and widespread a problem" they were dealing with in the Gulf.

Amos is now director of SkyTruth, a nonprofit group that uses satellite imagery to detect environmental problems. He still believes that technology could work on abandoned wells.

MMS, though, hasn't followed up on the work. And Interior Department spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said agency inspectors would be present for permanent plugging jobs "only when something unusual is expected." She also said inspectors would check later "only if there's a noted leak."

Companies may be tempted to skimp on sealing jobs, which are expensive and slow offshore. It would cost the industry at least $3 billion to permanently plug the 10,500 now-active wells and the 3,500 temporarily abandoned ones in the Gulf, according to an AP analysis of MMS data.

The AP analysis indicates that more than half of the 50,000 wells ever drilled on federal leases beneath the Gulf have now been abandoned. Some 23,500 are permanently sealed. Another 12,500 wells are plugged on one branch while being allowed to remain active in a different branch.

Government records do not indicate how many temporarily abandoned wells have been returned to service over the years. Federal rules require only an annual review of plans to reuse or permanently seal the 3,500 temporarily abandoned wells, but companies are using this provision to keep the wells in limbo indefinitely.

Petroleum engineers say abandoned offshore wells can fail from faulty work, age and drilling-induced or natural changes below the seabed. Maurice Dusseault, a geologist at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, says U.S. regulators "assume that once a well is sealed, they're safe — but that's not always the case."

Even fully depleted wells can flow again because of fluid or gas injections to stimulate nearby wells or from pressure exerted by underlying aquifers.

Permanently abandoned wells are corked with cement plugs up to 200 feet (60 meters) long. They are placed in targeted zones to block the flow of oil or gas. Heavy drilling fluid is added. Offshore, the piping is cut off 15 feet below the sea floor.

Wells are abandoned temporarily for a variety of reasons. The company may be re-evaluating a well's potential or developing a plan to overcome a drilling problem or damage from a storm. Some owners temporarily abandon wells to await a rise in oil prices.

Since companies may put a temporarily abandoned well back into service, such holes typically will be sealed with fewer plugs, less testing and a metal cap to stop corrosion from sea water.

In the Deepwater Horizon blowout, investigators believe the cement may have failed, perhaps never correctly setting deep within the well. Sometimes gas bubbles form as cement hardens, providing an unwanted path for oil or gas to burst through the well and reach the surface.

The other key part of an abandoned wells — the steel pipe liner known as casing — can also rust through over time.

MMS personnel do sometimes spot smaller oily patches on the Gulf during flyovers. Operators are also supposed to report any oil sheens they encounter. Typically, though, MMS learns of a leak only when someone spots it by chance.

In the end, the Coast Guard's Marine Safety Laboratory handles little more than 200 cases of oil pollution each year.

And manager Wayne Gronlund says it's often impossible to tell leaking wells from natural seeps, where untold thousands of barrels of oil and untold millions of cubic feet of gas escape annually through cracks that permeate the sea floor.

:hurt::hurt::hurt:

 

[Unknown Poet]

Yeah a D that's about right.
I used to get better grades than that in high school.

 

[Smile]

People really need to start to train their bodies how to live in the natural world again, that is the only answer to the ultimate survival of the physical existence.

Put yourself through extreme heat, and allow yourself to get used to it, then it won't be so shocking when you have to deal with companies screwing you in the ass again.

Also, we need to remember that people have lived in forests and deserts their entire lives without a/c or power, and somehow they learned how to live and even be happy. Its not as hard as its made out to be by the media.

 

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Also, we need to remember that people have lived in forests and deserts their entire lives without a/c or power, and somehow they learned how to live and even be happy. Its not as hard as its made out to be by the media.

I definitely agree with this.




People also need to realize that we are ALWAYS on the threshold of reverting back to life without modern technology. With the collapse of key infrastructure readily available clean water, power, food, AC, heat, transportation, fuel, etc could all be unavailable overnight.

If you haven't made some preparations for life with these modern luxuries, I would have a hard time feeling bad for you.