I fully agree with those of New Yorkers

Really? Tell me why, cjhsa, if so, otherwise stop with the hijacking.

Administrations have been ignoring infrastructure for decades, except for varied pork barrel episodes. Enough blame to go around.

Put up or shut up, cjhsa.

Naw, Bush said it was 'Sewercide Bombers, we have those in Irack.'

The feds aren't concerned with your fricking pipes. Fix your own house.

So wait.

First for six years now we're supposed to believe that 9/11 was NOT an attack by Islamic terrorists, but a devious conspiracy just to make it look that way.

And now we're supposed to believe that this steam pipe expliosion thing IS a terrorist attack, and its just made to look like it isnt by a devious conspiracy.

These conspiracy theorists are making my head hurt.

You have no clue what this story is about, do you?

(Hint: it wasnt about some one house's pipes. It's about the city's electricity network. Also not the responsibility of feds, but nothing to do with people fixing their own house.)


OK that was funny..

Infrastructure is not within our houses, cjhsa, by definition.

Infrastructure connects all of our houses and all of us. We pay taxes to keep it working. Some do not believe they are their brother's (and sister's, of course) keeper -- they've isolated themselves in their house, still using the infrastructure with no idea how it works.

Yeah, and it's falling apart multiply over and over.

Lesse, in every state I've lived in, and in every city I've lived in, there are CITY and STATE operated road and infrastructure crews.

So, you're telling me, that a steam pipe exploded in NYC and it's all Bush's fault. Right?

Your running into as may potholes as there are on California roads. I haven't read anything here that specifically says the exploding pipe is Bush's fault. It's a small symptom of the deterioration of the US infrastructure, not as big as the great North Eastern blackout and probably not nearly as annoying as running over potholes in the road. The infrastructure isn't entirely the responsibility of the state, county and city governments. The federal government funds and even builds some of the infrastructure. This administration would rather waste lives and money on a theocracy in Iraq and their infrastructure. They had forgotten the Potter Shack rule.

I completely agree with you, LW, that Cjhsa is peddling a strawman because no one claimed that Bush was responsible.

However, the great North East blackout in 1965 (as well as those in 1977 and 2003) were not a product of deteriorating infrastructure. In all three cases, the transmission grids failed due to overloads. In 1977 and 2003, this was because of the irresponsibility of corporations which had bought into the electrical transmission grids as investments, but were clueless about what their responsibilities were in electrical generation and transmission. They just sent greater and greater wattages through the grid as demand increased without considering the effect on the entire grid.

The 1965 "Great Blackout," however, is the classic case which shows how this happens, even when all the players are acting in a responsible manner, but have failed to anticipate future electrical demand. The Sir Adam Beck power plant at Queenston Heights on the Niagara Peninsula had three fail safe "cut-outs" which had been set to the power demands of Toronto (all of Hydro's distribution system first went through Toronto, even if the eventual destination were elsewhere, or were being sold to the American side) in 1958 when Adam Beck 2 went on line. The fail safe point was 375,000 watts, and there were three "cut-outs" (similar to a circuit breaker in your house), which was fine, because the original capacity of Adam Beck 2 was 1.2 megawatts. By 1965, though, the demand was much higher, and Adam Beck 2 was producing over 3 megawatts of power. Although they had added more cut-outs and other transmission lines, no one had taken steps to change the override which automatically fed more wattage to the three Toronto transmission lines in response to demand. The current always fluctuates, and the draw on those three lines was actually only reaching the 1.225 megawatt capacity which was the original output of the plant (by now, 2007, Adam Beck 2 generates 380 megawatts). But fluctuations on one of the lines exceeded the 375,000 watt limit, and remained above that level for the few seconds it took for the breaker to trip. When that happened, the entire load was thrown on to the two remaining lines, and their breakers tripped and shut down the entire supply from Adam Beck 2.

That meant that there were "brown-outs" and blackouts all over southern Ontario, and the automatic systems switched to other sources, producing a "cascade" effect where one cut-out after the other exceeded load and shut down. From the very beginning of electrical generation at Niagara Falls in Ontario, the Canadians have sold power to the Americans. When that power no longer arrived from the Canadian side, the automatic systems switched load and drew excess capacity from plants on the American and Canadian side, overloading and shutting down those systems, too.

No one in 1965 acted irresponsibly in the sense that no one willfully exceeded fail-safe capacities--they had simply failed to anticipate increasing demands. In 1977 and 2003, corporate "re-sellers" of electrical power were operating systems without a clue, and were exceeding load limits for the system because they were too greedy and stupid to have hired people to oversee the entire system and calibrate fail-safe devices to increasing load demands. Electrical generation and transmission systems are probably the best maintained of the modern infrastructure, even if they are not perfect. It's a good thing that there are fail-safe systems, because blackouts are far less damaging and expensive than it would be if transformers and generators blew up because no one took the time and care to attempt to protect them. A blackout is actually evidence that the system is working to protect all of its parts.

For the best short discussion of the 1965 blackout, i highly recommend Niagara: A History of the Falls, by Pierre Berton.

Deteriorating infrastructure is not just repair and reclamation. In the electrical gird, it's not building new power plants. Let's see, just how many people would that employee? Or would those employess rather go to Iraq at super wages to take the risk of being shot, kidnapped, beheaded or blown up.

It would employ a lot of people.
Now,do you propose we build coal powered plants,Nuclear plants,gas fired plants or what?
All of those plants are opposed by environmentalists for some reason or another.
Then there is the NIMBY factor for building more power plants.

How do you propose to get around that?

In fact, when Adam Beck 2 and the Robert Moses plants were built in the 1950s, each of them employed thousands, many thousands, for years. The electricity they generate goes primarily to corporate customers, who themselves employ thousands of people.

You're way off base talking about the power grid, LW, and i suspect that you don't know much about it.

In response to that, the industry was re-regulated and the transmissions lines and even power plants were sold off, so now you see three companies where there used to be only one. Look at your power bill. Somewhere on there will be a fee for "transmission recovery" or something similar. That is the middleman, who now owns the high voltage transmissions. It's a rough business too, and the folks that play in that space are some real tough cookies. The power mafia.

This is pure bullshit, you're just making up lies now. You know no more about this than LW does. It was late in the Reagan administration, more than 20 years after the great blackout that regulation was changed allowing energy "re-sellers" (which is the business Enron was in) to stick their noses in the power industry.

We are surrounded by people who don't know jack **** about the electrical generation system--but that doesn't stop them from making **** up.

How do I propose to get around those environmental stumbling blocks? Isn't that what the elected politicians responsibility? The Republicans and Democrats don't have a good record in that area. Would an independent or libertarian get some action?

http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2005/11/69528

But this administration prefers to spend a trillion dollars on a country with a theological government that is only vaguely democratic.

Thanks for bringing up Enron and it was exactly what was going to be in my post. I know more about it than you think I do.

The Enron comment was directed at Cjhsa, not at you. My comment is, that no matter what you may know about Enron, your claim that the great blackout was caused by crumbling electrical generation and transmission infrastructure is bullshit.

I only stated that I was going to reply to MM and cjhsa by pointing out Enron and regulation. Sorry, "crumbling" wasn't meant to just include the grid itself but the lack of improvement in the grid by building new power plans and not political manipulation and machinations by de-regulating in an attempt to privatize the industry and exacerbated their Rube Goldberg machine of delivering power.

Put some rum in your coffee, Setanta and calm down -- I'm on your side.