National Highway Bridge Reconstruction and Inspection Act of 2008
NATIONAL HIGHWAY BRIDGE RECONSTRUCTION AND INSPECTION ACT OF 2008 -- (House of Representatives - July 24, 2008)
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Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for bringing this important subject up. It is indeed ironic that we are considering today a bridge safety bill and the very stimulus of the bill was a bridge that was approximately 40 years old, and now then we have this motion to recommit that directs attention to this bridge which is over 100 years old.
The Massachusetts Highway Department recognized five significant problems with this particular bridge, the one that is in question under this motion to recommit; first of all, that it was structurally deficient; secondly, that the narrow horizontal clearance of the draw span opening is only 98 feet; thirdly, that the location of the channel opening on its side rather than the center; and then fourth, the vertical clearance through the draw span is only 27 feet above the mean water level; and fifth, there are of course traffic congestion problems at the Route 6, 138 and 103 intersection in Somerset.
The provision that was put in to keep this bridge in place was placed in the bill in order to allow emergency traffic and pedestrian traffic. Now, the emergency traffic, the large vehicles, the fire trucks, have already been prohibited from going across this because it's unsafe, and though still we're going to keep the bridge here, and we have to understand that with the prices of energy today, that this block has very little to do with the bridge itself but instead is to do with the fact that our energy policies have been hijacked by a small group of extremists who refuse, at any point, to have more energy brought into this country, either by our own resources or by external resources. And that is the end result of what is going on with this bridge.
So the motion to recommit simply says that the bridges that are unsafe as measured by a distinct standard that is available, would be actually torn down. The U.S. Coast Guard said that we need to tear the bridge down. The Massachusetts Highway Department said it's unsafe and would not like to use it. It's going to cost the taxpayers $1.5 million to keep it open.
Let's pass this motion to recommit. Let's do the right thing and get more energy into this country.
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