MEMORIES OF SEABROOK
The current
festering scandal in Boston known as The Big Dig has stirred up memories for
me. The young woman who died there last week may well be remembered as a
folk-hero of sorts. In a less than unusual unfolding of events, it has taken
a death for an obvious catastrophe to get it's due attention. There must not
be a thinking soul on the planet who has not watched this project from the
beginning in sheer wonderment. The ever-escalating cost, the omnipresent
stench of corruption between politics and big business, the mistakes along
the way...remember Bechtel forgetting The Fleet Center was there; all
enveloping a construction project that was ambitious from it's inception.
Giant construction is an American tradition. We have much to be proud of.
The brilliant minds that came together with brute men to create such wonders
as The Hoover Dam, The Panama Canal, The Empire State Building, The Golden
Gate Bridge...the list goes on and on. Like most men, I find the design,
engineering and construction of such structures to be of endless interest.
Particularly those projects done decades ago, when construction technology
was just breaking its teeth. These things are icons of American intellect
and technology. There was something else in play back then which has all but
disappeared, that was the moral decency of the people involved. Folks
actually cared about their workmanship, their craft. "My name is on that."
You can see it now in relation to the Big Dig as hundreds of ex-workers
begin to air their stories of the flaws, poor work and endless other
transgressions they witnessed on the job. They all kept collecting those fat
checks, though. Out of sight; out of mind. It's hard to imagine it happening
earlier in the century.
Lot's of folks have been saying how they've never seen anything like The Big
Dig scandal. It reminded me of the mid 1970's when Public Service of New
Hampshire, our electricity provider, decided to build a nuclear plant in
Seabrook, NH. The plant site is a stone's throw from Hampton Beach, a very
popular section of New Hampshire's very limited coastline. Given the general
trepidation surrounding nuclear power at the time, the thought of erecting a
nuke plant within view of this crowded beach seemed ludicrous. An evacuation
of that area during the summer would probably take 12 hours. Narrow,
congested little streets, thousands of people...families. A lot of folks,
including me, thought the whole idea was ridiculous. Canada had, and still
does, excess power from its hydro projects which are amazing, simple
structures producing clean power from....a river. New Hampshire still buys a
good deal of power from Canada.
Not surprisingly, politics and business got involved. The lure of
high-paying jobs, lucrative local contracts and "cheap" electricity
overruled the lingering issues of safety, the intake of seawater to cool the
plant and the discharge of heated water back to the ocean. The plant design
called for two reactors, the huge, dome-shaped structures. In keeping with
"scandalous project tradition", there were a multitude of reports and press
coverage related to construction quality, the usual rash of workers making
money they never dreamed of and using it to develop a raging cocaine habit.
Oh, and the cost overruns...how could I forget? In keeping with the Big Dig,
the cost escalation from original estimates went from millions to billions.
The elite club of PSNH stockholders began to crow, and crow loud. The
inevitable "adjustments" to electric rates began, passing on the cost of
corruption to the little guy, where it always ends up.
The project became so entangled in itself that completion of the second
reactor was never realized. It stands to this day, half-completed, steel
reinforcing rods rusting in the weather, never having consummated its
intended marriage to concrete. The single reactor is approaching the end of
its useful life and will be "de-commissioned" and left, as they all are, a
radioactive hazard for future generations. Our state is left with the
second-highest electric rates in the country.
So move over, Boston, make some room on the couch for your neighbors from
the north. We have many memories to catch up on.