American Infrastructure: The Misallocation of Pork
By Lance Olsen, Unfiltered 8-04-07
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When federal funds made possible the construction of a new Orange Street bridge in Missoula, Montana, a critic or two called it another bit of pork barrel spending. An editorial in the Missoulian replied that it may be pork, but hey, it's our pork.
That scenario has been repeated all across America. As some commentators have lately pointed out, Americans dislike pork unless it comes to their locales. After all, bringing home the bacon is what their U.S. Senators and Representatives are supposed to do, right?
Right.
Just look at incumbents' re-election campaigns, and you find them reminding us of all the money they've steered to our states and districts, and all the jobs they've "created" with their largesse. Put mildly, pork makes voters cheer.
Although it may abrade to say it this way, incumbents buy votes this way, just about the same as lobbyists buy politicians by steering money to the pols election campaigns. And the beauty of pork is that pols can spend billions that they never need declare as part of their election campaigning.
Looked at this way, ordinary voters set an example for their politicians, showing that a willingness to be bought is part of the American way.
That said, the worse problem may be that the nation is endangered while all its varied locales are fattened with pork, and that problem probably lies at the core of the growing crisis of U.S infrastructure.
Yes, pork can bring local benefits, but the collapse of a bridge has demonstrated that pork can be mis-spent as easily as it can be well spent. Think negligence. Despite civil engineers' clear warnings, the extravagant, pork-riddled highways bill of a few years back did replace Missoula's aged Orange Street bridge with a new one, but neglected thousands of others, all across America, leaving local pride tarnished by the collapse of the one in the Twin Cities.
Now the national need has made headlines, and it's decidedly not just a matter of roads and bridges. Here in Montana, for example, one of the biggest infrastructure crises-in-waiting endangers at least 15,000 lives and threatens up to 75,000.
Hungry Horse Dam is susceptible to collapse, either from heavy runoff in the upstream mountains or from earthquake. And Montana policians know it.
Montana governor Schweitzer showed that he knows it when he had the state's various emergency services run a drill to test their response to the threat from heavy runoff. This official drill was run to test a scenario wherein some 75,000 people would have to be evacuated.
And the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, has warned that an earthquake could kill 15,000 Montanans outright, simply because this (aging) dam was not build to withstand the big quake plausible for the ground underneath it.
Which raises a question: Where is the pork when we really do need it? Perhaps that's something Montana's Democrats will ponder this weekend, as their party rallies to forge its future.
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Comments
With Hungry Horse Dam being in federal hands, what is the position of Senators Baucus and Tester on the urgency to prevent the disaster you indicate may happen? If the dam goes when full it would wipe out the town of Hungry Horse, take a major swipe at Columbia Falls, and then head south along the Flathead River basin to Kalispell, and then south to the Bigfork area and into Flathead Lake. If the dam is unsafe, perhaps the water level should be reduced to half or a third until safety is addressed.
I'm not sure that Senators Baucus and Tester are aware that Hungry Horse Dam could collapse, either from earthquake or from heavy runoff. Governor Schweitzer, however, does know that the dam is vulnerable to collapse from heavy runoff. And I followed up on his order to run a drill on that scenario by writing him a letter urging him to look at the earthquake scenario, which has been acknowledged by FERC, and which would come without warning, thus killing thousands who could and likely would be evacuated in the heavy runoff scenario.
Schweitzer did not reply. And western Montana's major newspapers did not respond when I urged them to cover the risk of earthquake. This failure to respond may have been simply because news is not news until it has already happened.
The only media response I got was from Missoula's weekly Independent, which subsequently ran a major feature (cover) story on the dam as part of a broader coverage of potentials for natural disaster in Montana.
When I spoke to emergency planners in the area, one scoffed at the risk, plausibly because earthquake risk is difficult to anticipate. Another reminded me that his organization is only set up to respond after the fact of disaster, and has no mandate or funding for prevention. And I believe that federal funding for emergency planning has been solely devoted to post-9/11 issues.
Alas, however, Montana is the fourth most seismically active state in the nation, and Hungry Horse Dam is located on and/or very near major faults.
I stumbled across the earthquake risk to the human population downstream from Hungry Horse Dam while poking around the 'net for information on another topic. Feeling the weight of guilty knowledge, I gave it all the time I could, hoping that people living under the dam's shadow would pick up the issue on their own.
My own take is that this dangerous dam could be replaced by two lower dams that would deliver the same amount of power generation (provided that our new climate will keep river flow at levels we've come to expect), and with great reduction of quake-driven risk. Due to lack of interest, however, I expect this option to remain shelved until after runoff or quake forces the issue, similarly to the option for strengthening levees around New Orleans.
Lance Olsen
Why not submit your column with the additonal info of a Tin Ear problem as a Letter to the Editor to the GFT, Daily Interlake, Whitefish Pilot, Hungry Horse News, and the Missoulian? Worth a shot.
Alas, that was what I thought a couple years back, when I sent newspapers a press package including documents from FERC and FEMA, when the story was still hot -- soon after Governor Schweitzer ordered emergency service to run a drill testing their readiness for evacuation of thousands of people.
I think I've already played my hand, and that the media and politicians need to hear from other than me. Complicating things even more, I'm already overcommitted with some other demanding topics, including the consequences of rising temperatures on the spaces and species (for example, a lively prospect of widespread forest death) of the Northern Plains and Northern Rockies.
The Hungry Horse Dam risk was worth the shot I gave it when I set other matters aside for that reason. Unfortunately, I've had to let it go at that although, as you know, I did take some time to compose a little something about it again, for New West.
Lance
Lance
The problem is that there is no carnage to boost media ratings if a disaster is prevented. A million airplanes may land safely at airports around the world today. Ho-hum. No photo-ops there.
Apparently there was "no money" for adequate maintenance available to make sure the bridge was safe, but as soon as it collapsed, millions or billions suddenly appeared as if by magic to build a new bridge.
Just like the levees in New Orleans. The US was not willing to spend any money on them, but now multiple billions have been misspent in Louisiana after Katrina, with abysmal results. Katrina was not a natural disaster at all. Few of the disasters are, except possibly for tornadoes. Even damage from earthquakes can be prevented, we have the technology and know-how. What we lack is the interest until after the "disaster" strikes.