More Shoes Drop In The Assault On Government Regulation
Accelerating Into The “Void” – What Could Go Wrong?
(caption: sinkhole collapse on River Road, Montague, NJ during gas pipeline construction (7/9/13 – Bill Wolfe)
We are now witnessing the effects of decades of privatization and deregulation, as Boeing planes crash, toxic bomb trains derail and burn, oil and gas wells blowout, and cargo ships take out bridges.
The coming years are likely to add various building failures to that list. ~~~ Wolfenotes.
A section of Interstate 80 in New Jersey has been closed since February 10 as a result of the roadway collapsing into a sinkhole.
The sinkhole was caused by an abandoned mine.
Fourteen years ago, we warned about abandoned mines:
During the investigation and repair of the February 10 sinkhole collapse, another road closure was caused by what NJ Spotlight called a “void”:
A sinkhole and a newly-discovered void along I-80 in Morris County has led to the closure of parts of the highway for a month, snarling traffic and enraging drivers.
Drivers are getting pissed off by the delays.
But this is only the beginning, as the shoes continue to drop on the last 40 years of attack on government planning and regulation and disinvestment in public infrastructure.
There’s a very big story here. The dots must be connected.
But instead of connecting these dots, in a textbook case of “burying the lede” – literally buried in the closing sentence – NJ Spotlight casually suggested today that there’s a much larger problem lurking:
New Jersey has about 600 abandoned mines statewide. While many abandoned mineshafts are located in fields and forests, some are located directly underneath buildings and highways.
They left out the pipelines, as we warned 12 years ago:
How Many Other Places Along Pipeline Are Prone to Collapse?
(caption: sinkhole collapse on River Road, Montague, NJ (7/9/13)
The sinkhole collapse is part of a pattern of seriously negligent, reckless, and illegal pipeline construction practices that have caused tremendous environmental damage in NJ (for warnings and photos of pipeline violations we’ve previously published, see this and this and this).
The latest sinkhole collapse raises important questions of how this could have been allowed to happen and whether there are other places along the pipeline route where sinkholes could cause the catastrophic collapse and rupture of the gas pipeline – there could be numerous literally ticking time bombs.
The collapse also raises questions about the adequacy of the environmental review, permitting, and construction compliance monitoring of the project by federal and state regulators, and whether the proposal to route the pipeline under the *Monksville Reservoir should be abandoned.
The limestone and karst geology in the northwestern portion of NJ and the risks of sinkholes have long been known to federal, state and local officials – and in exactly the location site where the sinkhole emerged.
How did Tennessee engineers and government regulators apparently miss that?
We urge the following immediate actions:
- We urge federal and state officials to issue an immediate stop work order and conduct an investigation along the entire pipeline route where there are risks from sinkhole collapse.
- We urge federal and state regulators to take aggressive enforcement action against Tennessee Gas Pipeline for this negligence and major violation of drilling permits, including penalties to assure that all damage is restored.
- In light of these kind of risks – created by known and unknown geological conditions – to reconsider and reject pipeline routing under the *Monksville Reservoir.
- We urge state and federal regulations to beef up inspection and enforcement oversight of this pipeline construction to prevent any more accidents and damage.
All those recommendations were ignored.
And NJ Spotlight story today also left out the risks caused by illegal disposal of construction debris at development sites. These disposal operations often cause sinkholes and land subsidence. DEP has know about this for decades and done little or nothing.
And they left out new construction in hazardous locations.
Despite these serious risks revealed back during that pipeline sinkhole, NJ State legislators and regulators simply ignored all that and did NOTHING to strengthen land use planning laws and regulations to assess and avoid these problems and mitigate the risks and impacts.
In fact, they’ve done just the opposite: major new development (warehouses, housing, pipelines, etc) are still being built over high risk geology.
Worse, existing NJ laws and regulations and inspection practices are being weakened.
For example, last year, we criticized Gov. Murphy for signing a privatization bill into law. We wrote:
NJ’s construction industry has a long history of corruption and dangerous practices – from shoddy construction, to sinkholes caused by burying construction debris on site, to illegal disposal of toxic fill (AKA “dirty dirt”), to building schools on hazardous waste sites – to name just a notorious few off the top of my head.
Now, builders and developers can hire their own private inspection crews to cover all that up.
We are now witnessing the effects of decades of privatization and deregulation, as Boeing planes crash, toxic bomb trains derail and burn, oil and gas wells blowout, and cargo ships take out bridges.
The coming years are likely to add various building failures to that list.
Add to that list: along interstate highways too.