Cleaner water but troubled bridges

When it was first released in 1970, Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Waters,� originally written about friendship and trust, also made a lot of sense environmentally. After all, America’s bridges were still strong but the waters beneath them were getting dirtier by the day. Now it seems we have come full circle. The nation’s rivers, including the Housatonic, have been getting cleaner for at least a generation, while its bridges, dams and levees have been neglected and, in some cases, are crumbling before our very eyes.

The recent bridge collapse disaster in Minnesota, in which at least eight people have died, as well as a fatal steam pipe explosion last month in Manhattan, have served to refocus attention on the nation’s aging infrastructure. Unfortunately, those incidents and others like them have also occasioned some finger-pointing on the part of safety advocates and political partisans clamoring for more spending on infrastructure. Many are blaming government skinflints, particularly Republicans, for their reluctance to increase taxes, or for their diversion of funds away from infrastructure to less worthy causes such as the war in Iraq. But before we spend more money on public works, it behooves us to look at how current funding is being spent.

From 1991 to 2005, for example, federal highway spending almost doubled. But far greater was the rise in the number of earmarks, or anonymous Congressional set-asides, attached to such bills. In the 1981 highway bill, for example, there were only 10 earmarks. Ten years later there were 1,850, and by 2005 the earmarks had blossomed to 6,371, or nearly 10 percent of total spending, according to The Wall Street Journal. The $315 million “Bridge To Nowhere� in Alaska was a classic example of a wasteful diversion of resources. And, as Boston’s “Big Dig� and a scandal-plagued highway project on I-84 in and around Waterbury clearly show, throwing money at an infrastructure problem without proper oversight is a recipe for a huge waste of taxpayer dollars.

In order to repair the nation’s infrastructure, our elected representatives on both sides of the aisle will have to change the culture — both in Washington and in state houses throughout the country. Let’s face it: Up to this point, it’s always been much more politically astute for a legislator to announce he has secured funds for a new highway, bike path or light rail system, appear at a ribbon cutting ceremony and get his mug in the paper, than to wrestle his colleagues for money to maintain a crumbling bridge or aging water system in his district.

Fortunately, several structurally deficient bridges in the Northwest Corner are slated for improvement or repair, including the Emmons Lane and Old Turnpike North bridges in Canaan Valley, and the much larger Route 7 bridge over the Housatonic between the towns of Salisbury and Falls Village [see story on page B1].

The Route 7 bridge, along with nine other bridges statewide, has been identified as having a similar design to the one that collapsed in Minnesota. All are currently being reviewed and re-inspected after a directive from the commissioner of the state Department of Transportation.

Work on the replacement of the heavily traveled, 75-year-old Route 7 bridge will cost an estimated $15 million and is likely to begin sometime next year. Demolition of the old bridge and construction of the new 225-foot span will last two and a half years and will likely cause considerable disruption to the traffic in and out of the nearby Housatonic Valley Regional High School. Of course, it will be well worth the trouble.

Returning to the matter of funding, it’s ironic, for example, that Minnesota had the fifth best bridge safety rating in the nation before the accident, with a little more than 13 percent of its bridges rated deficient in 2005, according to an annual report by the Reason Foundation. Connecticut ranked 43rd with 34 percent of its bridges so rated. But it should be pointed out that “deficient� doesn’t mean in danger of imminent collapse — just that attention must be paid sooner rather than later.

After the shocking Mianus River Bridge collapse that killed three people 24 years ago in Greenwich, state officials increased funding for roads and bridges. Gov. William O’Neill proposed spending $5.5 billion for bridge rehab and other transportation projects in the state. There haven’t been any more calamities since then. But we should not let our guards down. And our elected officials should roll up their sleeves and see to it that existing transportation funds are being spent responsibly before taxpayers are asked to open their wallets again.