Here are two articles dealing with problems associated to the American infrastructure. I note the rail derailment because for over 150 years railroads have been run to and through civilian population areas, while toxic wastes these trains carry has risen dramatically. It is my feeling a federal law should be enacted to move train rails out of city limits, and have them follow roadways for the most part. There should also be a minimal easement placed around rail tracks (discounting roadways). Depots should be set up outside cities where trains can unload and where city commerical can pick up.
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(CBS/AP) Two rail cars jumped the track and overturned, leaking hydrochloric acid and ethylene oxide, forcing police to evacuate thousands of residents within a 1-mile radius of the accident.
The cars jumped the track around 2:20 a.m. Saturday. Lafayette Corporal Paul Mouton says a total of six cars derailed, and two of them began to leak.
CBS affiliate KLFY correspondent Hubert Tate reports that officers have blocked off the area within a one-mile radius of the scene, and local firefighters and state police are advising everyone within the area to leave.
Mouton says the area is mostly businesses, but there are also a few apartment complexes and a nursing home. He estimates thousands will have to be evacuated.
Acadian Ambulance official Clay Henry 20 bedbound residents of the Our Lady of the Oaks nursing home were being taken to a hospital.
He also says that two railroad employees had earlier been taken to a hospital for possible exposure and for observation.
Derailed Train Cars Spew Toxic Fumes, Police Evacuate Residents From Lafayette, La., After Rail Accident - CBS News
In the aftermath of last night's bridge collapse in Minneapolis, a lot of Americans may well have driven to work today wondering how things are where they live.
The American Society of Civil Engineers has raised the question in regular "report cards," the latest of them in 2005. They gave America's bridges a grade of C, saying it would cost "$9.4 billion a year for 20 years to eliminate all bridge deficiencies." There's more HERE.
The ASCE says there are 590,750 bridges in the country, and as of their last summary, 27.1 percent of them were "structurally deficient or functionally obsolete."
They worried more, though, about other parts of America's infrastructure--they gave grades of D-minus to drinking water, navigable waterways, and wastewater treatment systems.
Science and Society
