It was a blast that made the mighty skyscrapers of New York shudder. Immediately, people thought the worst. It was the height of rush hour. The explosion took place just a block from Grand Central Station. It killed one person and injured dozens.
But it turned out not be a terrorist attack. It was an 83-year-old steam pipe -- installed when Calvin Coolidge was president -- that finally gave way.
The event, reports the Associated Press, “sent a powerful message that the miles of tubes, wires and iron beneath New York and other U.S. cities are getting older and could become dangerously unstable.”
The aging U.S. infrastructure is crumbling. We see it in the record number of sinkholes and sewage spills -- all due to old and leaking pipes.
At the Gabelli Water Infrastructure Conference. Tom Rooney -- the CEO of Insituform, a company involved in pipe replacement -- practically shouted at attendees that this was a major crisis in the making. His company’s stock was hit the previous day because it reported an earnings miss. It missed because cities have been reluctant to spend on pipe repair. Rooney chastised these cities for political small-mindedness. He warned that, as bad as last year was, this year would be far worse. “From Hawaii to New York, Alaska to North Carolina and everywhere in between,” he wrote in one of his columns, “an epidemic of breaking pipes is causing unprecedented havoc.”
We’re seeing some tangible evidence of this in New York. Scary thing is, you can’t know in advance which pipes will go. There is just too much of it. And it is hidden from view. As the Associated Press reported yesterday: “Thousands of miles of underground water and sewage pipes are nearing the end of their expected life, sometimes with a bang and a flash flood.”
It’s water pipes. It’s electrical systems. It’s a complex maze of underground cables, pipes and more -- sometimes hundreds of feet below ground. Replacement costs are staggering. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates it will cost more than $1.6 trillion over the next five years to fix America’s infrastructure.
Cities can either find the money to fix this or we’ll see more days like what happened in New York.
I think the sentiment of people is probably summed up pretty well by the comments of this lawyer, quoted in an AP release: "They need to do something about the infrastructure. It's really getting out of hand. It could take 20 years, it could take 30 years, but they've got to take 10 blocks at a time and replace things before they break."
It’s not hard to see how companies with the solutions to fix all of this stuff should have a nice run. Northwest Pipe (NWPX:nadaq), in water pipes, and ABB (ABB:nyse), in electrical systems, have been good for us so far. They are up 52% and 41%, respectively.
But it turned out not be a terrorist attack. It was an 83-year-old steam pipe -- installed when Calvin Coolidge was president -- that finally gave way.
The event, reports the Associated Press, “sent a powerful message that the miles of tubes, wires and iron beneath New York and other U.S. cities are getting older and could become dangerously unstable.”
The aging U.S. infrastructure is crumbling. We see it in the record number of sinkholes and sewage spills -- all due to old and leaking pipes.
At the Gabelli Water Infrastructure Conference. Tom Rooney -- the CEO of Insituform, a company involved in pipe replacement -- practically shouted at attendees that this was a major crisis in the making. His company’s stock was hit the previous day because it reported an earnings miss. It missed because cities have been reluctant to spend on pipe repair. Rooney chastised these cities for political small-mindedness. He warned that, as bad as last year was, this year would be far worse. “From Hawaii to New York, Alaska to North Carolina and everywhere in between,” he wrote in one of his columns, “an epidemic of breaking pipes is causing unprecedented havoc.”
We’re seeing some tangible evidence of this in New York. Scary thing is, you can’t know in advance which pipes will go. There is just too much of it. And it is hidden from view. As the Associated Press reported yesterday: “Thousands of miles of underground water and sewage pipes are nearing the end of their expected life, sometimes with a bang and a flash flood.”
It’s water pipes. It’s electrical systems. It’s a complex maze of underground cables, pipes and more -- sometimes hundreds of feet below ground. Replacement costs are staggering. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates it will cost more than $1.6 trillion over the next five years to fix America’s infrastructure.
Cities can either find the money to fix this or we’ll see more days like what happened in New York.
I think the sentiment of people is probably summed up pretty well by the comments of this lawyer, quoted in an AP release: "They need to do something about the infrastructure. It's really getting out of hand. It could take 20 years, it could take 30 years, but they've got to take 10 blocks at a time and replace things before they break."
It’s not hard to see how companies with the solutions to fix all of this stuff should have a nice run. Northwest Pipe (NWPX:nadaq), in water pipes, and ABB (ABB:nyse), in electrical systems, have been good for us so far. They are up 52% and 41%, respectively.
1 comment:
If it ain't broke...Usually seems to go that way in almost all aspects of life. Deaths occur to bring these things out of the darkness and into the reality of those who do not know or comprehend. Younger Generations thinks these events just happen with no knowledge of why. It's terror I say! Man have the terrorists won in each of those categories! Try asking someone which way is North for example.
Man can you write!
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