Earthen Dam Roulette
 

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/23/tennessee.sludge.spill/index.html?imw=Y&iref=mpstoryemail

One wonders how many earthen dams are heading towards the bursting stage. This is the dark side of American economic life. We produce bundles of electricity that we absolutely have to have and we shunt part of the cost of producing that electricity off to the side -- in this case, the gynormous lake of toxic muck located above nearby waterways.

But then, there's always something below, the ocean if nothing else.

This is not good. Not good at all. And it's far from the first time it's happened. Cyanide leech pond containment dams have failed in the past, as well as other coal sludge ponds.

We started distilling our own drinking water about a year or so ago.

Costs us about $0.50 per gallon.

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What is that term used in capitolism where you get someone else to pay for your profits.

Kinda like when we switched from trains to cars.
Railroads had to build their own tracks for trains.
But automobile manufacturers dont have to build roads.

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What a wonderfull mess we are leaving our grandchildren to clean up.

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Drill, baby, drill !!!

This is beyond understanding!
30 years ago ( maybe 32 or 33), a dam retaining coal mining refuse slide down the valley pushed by tons of water and sludge, killing several families, in WVA, KY or TN, or somewhere close. http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/763/Another failure was the Grand Teton Dam failure, at about the same time. (http://www.usbr.gov/pn/about/Teton.html )Those tragedies triggered a nation-wide investigation of all small dams in the country. The investigation was run by the Army Corps of Engineers. It also resulted in new regulations regarding the construction of small dams throughout the country. I was involved in several of these investigations, and remediations on dams in the MD area, including coal mining areas in VA.. We found the trees had been allowed to grow on the slopes of many earthen dams, weakening them. Also many small dams had not ever been engineered--they were simply built.
It was a boon to my industry --geotechnical engineering. But after the initial investigations the program just sort of died. MD instituted new small dam design requirements, but surrounding rural areas seemed to just go back to business-as-usual.
Politicians do not want to use tax money for "invisible" jobs like infrastructure. A new bridge or highway gets funded, but basic infrastructure isn't very sexy. ( I cannot see how the construction of the "Lexus" toll lanes on I 95 around Baltimore can ever be made to pay for the tremendous costs of construction.-They would have to charge dollars per vehicle mile to recoup the costs). I guess its the same story as the NOLA levies. but on a national level.
I am encouraged to hear the President-Elect talk about increased spending on basic infrastructure. I only hope it actually results in actual work; not some egghead studies ( apologies to eggheads). With the down-turn in housing starts over the last few years, spending on small dam safety, sewer, and water system, and bridge remediation will provide for jobs in the civil engineering sector, and allow me to call back to work some good people.

Railroads didn't suffer much. Most of that trackage was built on land given to them by the US government.

Cadillac Desert is a damned good read on the subject of the wars between the Bureau of Reclamation and the Corps of Engineers.

Teton was a bad idea from the git-go.

From Wikipedia:
There were four key reasons, known prior to construction, why the Teton Dam should not have been built in the first place:

1. it failed cost-benefit analysis, delivering irrigation water at prices far out of reach of local farmers;
2. supposed flood control benefits were illusory, in light of subsequent events tragically so;
3. a significant number of local interests did not want it built and challenged the legality of it in court;
4. it was sited in an area of known instability.

That was what I was going to say. In some cases the right of way land was just the beginning, the government also gave them additional land to sell to help pay for the cost of building the railroads.

Didn't you ever wonder how they managed to shoot those railroads across the whole country in one fell swoop?

Still have not thought of that word.

Some company builds a sports stadium and the residents
have to pay for the roads, water, sewer, electric, etc upgrades
it takes to facilitate the new stadium.

You may call it something else but, I think of it as Corporate Welfare. Very, very popular on the right-hand side of the road.

Yes, that sucks. Maybe the cities that house these stadiums should NOT try to win them into building the stadium in that city so as to draw additional revenue.

Stephen Ambrose's "Nothing Like It in the World" is a very readable account of the history of the trans-continental railway. According to Ambrose the task was a bit more complicated than a fell swoop. But the railroads did receive considerable land, up to 15 miles, on either side of their tracks as payment.

Its called eminent domain. Usually thought of in terms of a city or county or federal government taking land for the "public good" like building a highway. Apparently now it means your house can be taken so Jerry Jones can build a new stadium for the Cowboys.

The land grants were every other section of land 20 miles on each side of the main line of the railroad.

Kind of a chicken and egg situation, nobody would buy the land from the railroad until the railroad had a line in so you could get there in the first place. Also a lot of the land was not very desirable. The railroads floated a lot of the funding until critical mass was reached on infrastructure.

Perhaps if they did a cost-benefit analysis and did it correctly (instead of simply listening to the NFL or whoever), the former would occur without the latter.

Are big sports teams really moneymakers for a city, given that they need so much care and feeding from the public? I don't buy it. Prestige is one thing that you can certainly buy, but it means little in the end.

You'll get no argument from me on that. Are they really a big money draw? I don't know for sure. However, like the GM Factory in Janesville, the city gives them sweetheart deals to stay. Maybe in some cases it is good and maybe not. Yes, they should not simply swallow what the NFL tells them but my point is that the general theory is that they are given all of these sweetheart deals so they locate themselves in that location to benefit the town, city, state, etc, etc.

If they get the taxpayers to build the stadium, the team owners make out like bandits. Probably some political donations in there too.

When I lived in Houston, they build Enron field on taxpayer money because the owner of the Astros threatened to leave town. I think it was like 250 million. Seems like if the city was really interested in helping the city, they might build something like, you know, schools.

For baseball you have around 80 home games a year to support a stadium, for the NFL 8. 8 days out of 365. Seems like the money could be better spent....