New York is one of the West’s richest cities — and Flint, Mich., is one of the poorest. But both are making headlines for their water woes.
And their problems have something in common. Despite what the Democratic presidential candidates say, New York and Flint show that our national infrastructure crisis is mostly not a national problem, but a local and state one.
“Last week, Mayor de Blasio learned something interesting: New Yorkers care about their infrastructure. ”
Last week, Mayor de Blasio learned something interesting: New Yorkers care about their infrastructure. The New York Times reported that the mayor was delaying work on the city’s third water tunnel — a project that Gotham has been building for 46 years, spending $5 billion so far.
The reason we need this tunnel is that the city’s first two water tunnels are 99 and 80 years old. To do inspection and maintenance work, New York needs a backup. The longer we waited, the longer we risked catastrophe: We can’t live without water — and one of the reasons New York thrives is our clean upstate sources.
We were supposed to be done by 2021.
That’s because former Mayor Mike Bloomberg kept investing in the tunnel — even through bad times, and even when it didn’t have an immediate payoff.
In 2003, Bloomberg began construction on the Manhattan part — saying he “want[ed] to still be mayor when this is finished, so I can dedicate it.”
Three years later, checking up on progress, Bloomberg warned about complacency.
“Part of the reason that work . . . has stretched through six administrations is that the city’s funding for this project has sometimes dropped off during tough financial times,” he said. “But not on our watch. . . . When we faced record multibillion-dollar . . . budget shortfalls, we refused to shortchange this essential project.”
Seven years after that, Bloomberg was still mayor when the Manhattan part of the tunnel opened. But what about Brooklyn and Queens? New Yorkers found out last week that de Blasio recently decided to delay that part of the project.
That’s not because we’re in a budget crisis; when it comes to money, de Blasio has been the luckiest mayor of the modern era. It’s not because we have bigger priorities; poor and rich, we still kind of need water. It’s because . . . well, no one really knows.
One clue: Before he was mayor, de Blasio slammed Bloomberg for hiking water rates. On Friday, de Blasio was bragging about his low water-rate hike.
And it’s true that rates have skyrocketed, as the city’s water debt has doubled to $30 billion in a decade, some to pay for this tunnel. De Blasio may not have wanted someone else slamming him for raising rates more.
The good news: When the Times reported the delay, the mayor backtracked.
The moral of this happy-ending story? This wasn’t a case of a national infrastructure crisis, even though de Blasio has said our infrastructure problem is Washington’s fault. It’s a case of a mayor preferring something else now to a tunnel later.
We can pay for this tunnel because we’re absurdly rich. But look at Flint, whose water crisis prompted the Democrats to hold a presidential debate there.
Flint is terribly poor; nearly half its residents live in poverty. Flint, like New York, did have one valuable resource, though: abundant clean water.
But to save a few dollars, Flint and its state overseers threw that resource away. They connected to a new source of water that required them to prevent corrosion — and they didn’t do that part.
Lead leached into people’s water. This, too, had nothing to do with the feds. A broke city and an inept state ruined something that was working fine.
Flint’s water crisis only becomes a federal crisis because it has no money to cover up its own incompetence — and water is a basic human right.
During New York’s Democratic debate this week, when the two candidates are sure to talk about the subject, New Yorkers should remember: We don’t want to be too dependent on Washington for water, subways and roads.
Rich or poor, we’re not doing a good job of local infrastructure. By the time you have to turn to the feds, it often means you’ve failed.
Hillary and Bernie can’t make de Blasio care about our water; only New Yorkers can (and did).
This piece originally appeared at New York Post
_________________________________
This piece originally appeared in New York Post