Posted on 02/02/2013 6:38:48 AM PST by Uncle Chip
Officials in Pennsylvania’s state capital are dealing with an abysmal issue they can’t afford to fix: 41 massive sinkholes throughout the city as wide as 50 feet and as deep as a typical grave.
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But the city is too broke to replace many of the aging pipes and repave its roads as it deals with ongoing budget woes and the looming threat of bankruptcy, according to media reports.
The first of the recent sinkholes perforating Harrisburg was reported on New Year's Eve when a chasm measuring an estimated 50 feet long and eight feet deep, swallowed a neighborhood block, damaging water and gas pipes and forcing more than a dozen residents to evacuate their homes.
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In addition to the rising number of sinkholes, the struggling city has been unable to fix a sewage treatment plant that has been dumping toxic waste into the Susquehanna River, which flows into the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.
‘We can't do anything right now because no one will lend to us,’ William Cluck, chairman of the city agency that oversees the water-treatment facility, told the Journal. Harrisburg, which is in default on its debt, is unable to tap into the municipal-debt market, which cities and states use to finance their infrastructure, including bridges, roads and tunnels.
After city officials rejected a state-sponsored financial recovery plan in July 2011, Harrisburg ‘was briefly transformed into the Greece of Pennsylvania,’ the New York Times wrote in an article published at the time.
The city’s financial woes stem in part from a failed plan to borrow $350 million to upgrade an enormous trash incinerator. That plan fell through in 2010 after the federal government blocked the effort due to the threat of toxic air pollution.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
According to the Federal Govt. you just raise taxes and confiscate profits from business.
First homes.
Then cities.
Then nations.
Amazing that they can’t afford to fix these obvious slaps at the EPA and we don’t see any heavy-handed law suits being levied. If an average citizen had such discrepancies, they would be in debtor’s prison just for the interest on the fines...
Excuse me, half that. Still, $600k/hole. Geez.
And though the holes were rather small, they had to count them all.
5.56mm
‘We can't do anything right now because no one will lend to us,’
Of course once it reaches the national level it will no longer be a matter of lending; naked seizure by force will be the order of the day.
Pennsylvania has beautiful countryside, forests, mountains, & picturesque small towns. I have driven through PA often.
But its cities suck! Every single time the interstate runs through or near built up areas, traffic slows to a single-lane crawl. And I wouldn’t touch Philadelphia with a thirty nine and a half foot pole!
Fill them with water and turn them into duck ponds.
'learn something new everyday!
Governments have forgotten what their main function is.
The left has taken us down a road where the government provides the necessities of life for many. As the catch phrase of the day says, this is unsustainable.
A government that does not have the money to fix the infrastructure should not be spending any money on welfare.
This may sound heartless but before the government got involved private citizens and charities were available to assist the really needy
I am now convinced that governments have made everything worse and have not solved any problems.
Our nation is falling apart and the left continues with policies and laws that do nothing but hurry it along.
Part of Cleveland is over a salt mine.
The sewage pipes pre-date the civil war. The sink holes are probably from leaks over the last 150 years.
Maybe they can borrow some bucks from Egypt’s muslim Morsi....he’s flush with American tax dollars!
IIRC there was a 2 week training period to teach people how to use a shovel during the BP oil spill.
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2012/06/former_harrisburg_mayor_stephe_3.html
And this is the weekend the gun show would have been held in Harrisburg. Its ‘postponement’ had to be a total killer to the city’s economy.
I DO feel badly for the decent, hard-working people there, but they keep voting into office people who have no idea what they are doing, who think the public coffers are there to pay off their base and their cronies, while enriching themselves and their families. Not a Rx for success.
No. I believe Karst topography.
Perfect! Nicely done ;-)
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