And a short tale of woe:
You know, we read about the failings of the American infrastructure and it all seems so esoteric and significant, but often remote. During the last 72 hours my life has been changed dramatically for a short period by two events which occurred at my home neighborhood and my place of work.
A few days ago, a sewer main broke about six blocks from my house spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons of raw sewage into the main street of the Back Bay of Atlantic City and Ventnor New Jersey, and forcing the authorities to close a long stretch of the road for repairs and cleanup. Now the problem is that they need to graft a diverter pipe onto the existing sewer pipe and this will take about a week, and then Final repairs will take probably upwards of a month. During this time there is a giant risk that this entire roadway could collapse. The way in which the traffic patterns are designed here, is that this is an islet behind Atlantic City and Ventnor which is accessible by only two means: a bridge over the intercoastal waterway and this one road that comes from the Blackhorse Pike, US Route 40/322. Thousands of us live here and access has become a major problem, since not only did we have the sewer line issue, but the bridge required emergency repairs which have narrowed it to one lane during business hours. Suffice it to say that this is going to be a long-term issue for us. However, it will be survivable except for The poor folk who live right on the area of the spill. The stench is almost unbelievable and raw sewage is still pouring into the street because they don’t have the repair finished yet.
At my place of work, in Center City Philadelphia, there is presently an underground fire right on the corner where the building is in which I have my job. The building is Shut down indefinitely, and years ago we were victims of a similar underground fire and the power, phones, cable were out for days. These occurrences in the city are not a typical: the infrastructure is considered ancient and bursting pipes, fractured gas lines, and electrical problems are Legion.
So in conclusion, I’m living five blocks from what I would literally term a shit-lake and don’t have a job because I’ve been burned out of my place of employment. As an aside, I could add that the exit of the Atlantic City Expressway which I take daily for my drive into Philadelphia has been shut down because a dump truck was driving with its cargo sticking up and slammed into the bridge of the Cloverleaf. This was months ago, not an infrastructure problem as to its etiology, but it has taken this long to order the new parts to fix the bridge. Every morning I have to drive 6 miles out of my way through trafficked streets (even at 5:30 in the morning) to get to another exit of the expressway. That being said, I could be living in Texas, so I’m not complaining bitterly, simply saying that these issues which are discussed esoterically do occasionally hit home.
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I hope all of that is resolved faster than it has been.
I distinctly remember mocking and shaking heads over the Soviet Union infrastructure failures back in the day.
We have fallen so far. 
I watched that creep into industry for decades and with infrastructure as well, we all wind up paying extra for fixing things in the long haul.
Conservatives have instilled this mode of thinking into our nation to protect corporate profits and to cut governments budgets. They never consider the consequences, refuse to consider preventative measures and prefer band-aid methods instead. And, as you said the poor folks invariably suffer the most.
Best of luck in recovering from this shitstorm of trouble (no pun intended).....
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