Big Dig, Big Scandal

Originally Posted by Yahoo News

BOSTON (Reuters) - From loose bolts to gaps between ceiling plates, the number of potentially dangerous flaws in Boston's $15 billion "Big Dig" highway project keep rising, reaching 362 on Friday, after a fatal tunnel collapse.

With public confidence deeply shaken in America's most expensive public works project, Massachusetts' governor took over inspections of the "Big Dig" and U.S. transportation officials expanded their investigation into the collapse.

"There are a large number of potential areas of concern and those will be inspected," Gov. Mitt Romney told a news conference. "I will not reopen a tunnel until I am personally convinced that it is safe to do so."

Romney signed an emergency bill on Friday giving him broad powers over the inspections and reducing the oversight responsibilities of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, a semi-public agency whose chairman is under pressure to quit.

Romney, a potential Republican White House contender, now has authority over records and staff as well as inquiries on the potentially dangerous areas that have climbed from 242 on Thursday and 60 on Tuesday, a day after the ceiling collapsed.

The decision to reopen the tunnel is now his.

The governor met with federal and local inspectors at the area where 38-year-old Milena Del Valle was killed late on Monday when a three-metric-ton concrete ceiling panel crushed her car. Her husband, Angel, crawled through a window.

"Although I lost my wife, I thank God it didn't happen earlier in the day when it would have been a bigger tragedy," Angel Del Valle, his forehead visibly scarred from the accident, told reporters in Spanish.

"I lost my wife but maybe that will now serve a purpose. And when they finish a job like this, they do it right," he said through a New England Cable News interpreter.

FEDERAL REGULATORS

Also on Friday, the
National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending more engineers and the agency's director of highway investigations to the site.

"This tragic accident raises some serious safety issues that require independent investigation," said Mark Rosenker, the acting chairman of the panel.

The NTSB is independent of the U.S. Transportation Department, which is also investigating the collapse. Safety board investigators will try to determine the likely cause. Its major investigations usually include public hearings.

The collapse occurred in a three-year-old tunnel that connects Boston's Logan Airport to downtown. The nearly completed $15 billion highway project has been marred by construction problems, cost overruns and scandals.

There have been leaks and falling debris but Monday's incident was the first that killed a motorist. The collapse triggered outrage from Bostonians fed up with faulty work, scandal, and questionable oversight.

Federal and state highway and criminal investigators are also probing the collapse, which comes two months after six men who supplied concrete to the Big Dig were arrested, accused of delivering sub-standard material.

It's a damn shame that it took the death of an innocent motorist to draw attention to the major problems with the "Big Dig." So many laws and regulations have been bent and ignored completely, (Perhaps even with a few politicians walking away a little richer) and even with all this rule breaking, the project continues to soak up more money and provide less results.

Hopefully, this will be enough to shock the city of Boston into doing something about this mess.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

The Big Dig has been expensive, but the word-on-the-street is that they didn't spend enough, watering down cement and obviously skimping in other areas. If they had the budget they needed now back when the project started, it would not be as laffable as it has been. But the budget has grown and it's been over 10 years and Bostonians and all Massachusetts taxpayers want it to be over with. Now that this death has happened, it needs to end right.

There's nowhere I can't reach.