The looming sinkhole crisis....

[LynzM]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rooney28mar28,0,2169993.story?coll=la-home-commentary

Is this really as bad as it sounds like it is?

[NMDemDist2]

1. yup

the Dems (Nancy Pelosi comes to mind) were suggesting years ago we needed to send money to our infrastructure. the USA with out our good roads and railways quickly becomes the the USSR in terms of quality of life and distribution issues

[iamjoy]

2. Problem Here In Florida

sinkholes aren't just caused by sewer pipe damage - the limestone dissolves, it can happen in drought or heavy rain in brief time.

[Monkeyman]

3. Double Yup more and more roads and house going down

[whistle]

4. The pipes do not necessarily have to be aging, just badly constructed

....they are sewr pipes running under the main strreet entrance to my development which undermine the street causing it to collapse every rainy season. The city refuse to dig up the faulty section and so they wait until the payment drops then come and fill it in and cover it over. I really hate republicans

<snip>
The looming sinkhole crisis
Aging pipes badly needing repair are to blame for craters cropping up in cities worldwide.
By Thomas Rooney
March 28, 2007


WHEN THEY SAW the recent pictures of a giant sinkhole in Guatemala, some folks in Los Angeles may have thought: "It could never happen here."

They're wrong.

The Guatemala City sinkhole that killed three people and swallowed dozens of homes was formed by the same thing that creates sinkholes in Los Angeles. Not weather. Not an act of God. Not strange rock. Bad sewer pipes created this sinkhole. And the problem is getting worse, around the world and in the United States.

Last year was the worst ever in the U.S. for sinkholes. Almost every state in the country experienced record problems.

In San Diego, the mayor held a news conference near a yawning abyss. A 64-year-old Brooklyn woman fell into a 5-foot-deep sinkhole in front of her house. <end>

[rodeodance]

5. several yrs ago it was all over-----some Report about bridges and dams

that were deterioting--

[DemBones DemBones]

6. Yes. Sinkholes also develop in areas that

have Karst topography. Read about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karst

I don't usually recommend Wikipedia but this looks like a decent overview and some other sites may tell you more than you want to know, in more boring and technical terms.

In Florida, houses and cars have been swallowed up suddenly by sinkholes, sometimes with people inside them.

Mining (using dynamite) in areas with Karst topography can cause sinkholes to develop miles away. I could show you where a thirty acre lake used to be, before years of dynamiting in a mine probably five miles away. And this is in a state that Wiki does not list as having a high risk Karst topography. It drained more like a bathtub with a clogged drain than a sudden swoosh, but it drained completely and you can imagine what a 30 acre lakebed full of rotting fish smells like.


The world is a fairly dangerous place, especially where we humans go in and "improve" things without knowing what the possible consequences could be .

[LynzM]

7. I agree about the world being a dangerous place....

Egads, the number of things we can die from. Been reading Bill Bryson's "Short History of Nearly Everything" recently, and to put humans and our existence on the big scale, we're just a blip, if that. Learning about the big magma chamber under Yellowstone, and its history? We're all in big trouble, it's just a matter of when.

[southerncrone]

8. We have 2 dams that could cause problems for Nashville. There is

a huge controversy over what to do to fix them & public is worried about how quickly & how far reaching the flooding would be if they broke.

Corp of Eng. dams. Haven't been maintained properly over the last 50 yrs. Sounds like some levees in New Orleans, huh?

Bridges in TN are being repaired & refurbished because of scare that they were subject to failure. Again, age. This is a large project over a number of years, & lots of $.

No $ has been spent on our infrastructure in a long time. The interstates were built so we could maneuver armed forces across this country in case of a national attack. That's a laugh in lots of states now. Arkansas comes immediately to mind! So much for national security! :dilemma:

We also have geographic sinkholes here. Limestone honeycomb subsurface. I have one in my back yard.
There a number all across the mid-state. A family's house foundation partially collapsed last year when one developed under one side of their house.

My sister-in-law had a horse fall through into one in her yard about 15 years ago. Horse not hurt, but scared; had to be pulled out w/tractor.

They are real.

[tularetom]

9. My grandfather lived in your area - he always told us his cow fell into

a sinkhole and was never seen again. We just thought it was a bullshit story to amuse us kids but I've since learned much of the area is underlain with the kind of limestone that is prone to suddenly develop sinkholes so maybe there was actually something to it.

[southerncrone]

10. Supose it could be true. Although I've never seen one that deep,

it doesn't mean they aren't around.

[GreenTea]

11. Hmmmmm.....