Shovel ready

 

 

To the magical dictionary that contains abracadabra and open-sesame you can now add shovel ready ”“ the phrase du jour that translates as: money, money, money.

 

The early word on infrastructure spending from the federal bailout is that it will target shovel-ready sites. That kiboshes pies in the sky that exist only in officials”™ heads, but it also means states without permit-approved sites will be left on the sidelines.

 

Let”™s hope New York state realizes the urgency of the situation and gets in line, cup in hand, all forms approved in triplicate. Toward that hope, we urge that, whatever every engineer on the state payroll may have been doing yesterday, today finds those engineers hunkered beneath bold-face banners that read: It”™s the shovel-ready projects, stupid.

 

Take the Tappan Zee Bridge. Please.

 

Everybody knows the bridge is shot. At the pace of replacement so far, it will be 2030 and we”™ll be driving on one uninterrupted raised construction plate from Westchester to Rockland. Knowing there will never ”“ repeat: never ”“ be a universally appealing solution, the logical thing to do is to replace the bridge within its own footprint and in the offing collect a get-out-of-jail-free card from the SEQRA process. We already know what putting a bridge in the Hudson on the spot will do; we”™re just going to do it again. Build a superstructure below the current bridge and blow tunnels through the rocky rises that flank the river to discharge trains and vehicles at junctures inland. Expensive? Billions upon billions, we suspect. Let”™s get that money and let”™s get laying steel. Because if we don”™t ”¦

 

Rest assured there”™s a backwater in Louisiana that, but for the lack of the already-approved 18-lane Jambalaya Freeway, could be the next Baton Rouge. And they want to be Baton Rouge very badly ”“ jobs, jobs, jobs! ”“ so yesterday by our estimate they Fed-Exed their plans to the people with the checkbooks in D.C. They”™d like a few extra billion for alligator tunnels: “Check the paperwork ”“ it”™s all in order!” The Jambalaya Freeway backers have no interest in the Tappan Zee Bridge and nobody is claiming this money hunt is about fairness.

 

The Mid-Hudson Valley Consortium for Economic Recovery has assembled a list of shovel-ready sites and we applaud the effort. The consortium consists of leaders from Ulster, Orange, Sullivan and Dutchess counties. The candidates include schools, libraries, roads and bridges in general and specifically:

 

Ӣ In Ulster: restarting the former Schrade manufacturing center in Ellenville;

”¢ In Orange: Taylor Biomass Energy’s energy-from-waste project in Montgomery;

Ӣ In Sullivan: the Concord Resort at Kiamesha Lake; and

Ӣ In Dutchess: the West Campus of the former IBM chip-fabrication site in East Fishkill.

 

We also see hope for the Winston Farm site in Saugerties and the infrastructure required to develop it properly. It”™s 800 acres of fields, woods and streams now, but its proximity to the Thruway makes it ideal for a business park of many uses. This is a clear example where boilerplating of much of the review process is called for. No, we”™re not advocating siltifying streams and clear-cutting mature forests. But we ask that a little common sense enter the environmental review process so that it takes months instead of years. Why must developers forever reinvent the wheel?