Welcome to Boondogglia
Why hasn't the
steel-bending, number-crunching competence of the nerds at Boeing and Microsoft
rubbed off on those who build this state's bridges, ferries, and nuclear
reactors? Why is this whiz kid's paradise also the world capital of
boondoggles, the heartland of the misconceived, misdesigned, and misbuilt?
A
tradition was born on Nov. 7, 1940, when "Galloping Gertie," the 4-month-old
Tacoma Narrows Bridge, writhed, snapped, and collapsed. Gertie would be hanging
still, a marvel of suspension design, but for one rather obvious fault: Her
stiffening girders--solid plates rather than the usual open trusses--caught the
full blast in a high-wind corridor. Caught on film, the catastrophe has
delighted generations of science students as a demonstration of oscillating
wave motion.
The day after Gertie opened, so did the world's longest
floating bridge, which connected Seattle to its Eastside suburbs across Lake
Washington. It took 50 years, but we finally sank this sturdy floater. During a
summer spruce-up, its pontoon hatches were opened to catch the dirty runoff
from hydraulic hoses that were being used to clean it. The hatches were
inadvertently left open till November, when rainwater topped the pontoons and
scuttled the whole show. These weren't the only Washington bridges to which
disaster paid a visit. In 1979, the Hood Canal Bridge to the Olympic Peninsula,
which had supplanted the Lake Washington span as the longest floater, sank in
high seas. (At least its pontoons were sealed.) The year before, the freighter
SS Chavez wrecked the West Seattle drawbridge, forcing authorities to build the
new high bridge that West Seattleites had long sought. It was whispered that
locals had arranged for the Chavez's 80-year-old pilot, Rolf Neslund, to ram
the bridge. Neslund took whatever secrets he had to the burn barrel two years
later, when his wife shot him and torched his remains.
When bridges fall, ferries still float. And if
any state ought to know how to build them, it's Washington, which operates the
country's largest ferry system. Even so, in the early '80s it built six
god-awful "super-ferries" that required more than $5 million in corrective
repairs. Their electronic propulsion systems tended to conk out, especially
when braking, causing them to smash one dock after another. On dry land,
government projects haven't fared much better. In 1987, the University of
Washington added a 100-foot-tall deck to the north side of its football
stadium. It was designed by the acclaimed engineers behind many of Seattle's
commercial skyscrapers, all of which remain standing, thank you. But this was a
state project: When a roof support buckled, the whole frame tumbled to the
50-yard line. Afterward, the recriminations flew: Was a bad weld to blame, or
defective steel from Korea?
Four
years later, Hammering Man , the 48-foot, 13-ton sculpture that today
stands outside the Seattle Art Museum, slipped its chains at installation and
hit the pavement. Could have happened anywhere? At least 20 other Hammering Men
have been raised around the world, two taller than Seattle's. None has
tumbled.
While Microsoft programmers made the company billions,
state agencies wasted millions on a failed computerization scheme. While local
boy Craig McCaw built his cellular empire, Seattle's transit agency procured a
$5 million bus-radio system that never worked. Inspired as these follies are,
they pale before the state's most expensive boondoggle (and history's biggest
bond default): the $26 billion WPPSS (Washington Public Power Supply System)
cash-toss. Consider: France has built 60 cookie-cutter nuclear-power plants
that work. WPPSS used three different designs to build five plants, one of
which worked.
Why does this high-tech haven
produce such jumbo turkeys? My guess is that Washington is the mirror image of
the old Soviet Union, where only the military and space industries functioned.
The Russians built the sturdy Sputnik, MiGs, and AK-47s, but they couldn't make
bras or toasters. In Washington, the private sector makes fine stuff and the
public sector sinks bridges. Perhaps competence is a finite quantity,
apportioned between the two sectors. When one gets too much, watch out for the
other. WPPSS is the price we pay for Boeing and the Silicon Forest.
Not that
the government can't build anything right out here. Amid political and legal
turmoil, it raised the Kingdome--Seattle's biggest building and the world's
widest concrete roofspan--for a third to half the cost of other 1970s sports
domes (about $160 million in today's money). Granted, this home to Mariners
baseball, Seahawks football, and everybody's favorite tractor-pulls is
plug-ugly inside and out. But its hyperbolic-paraboloid roof system is a
renowned engineering triumph. It has weathered moderate earthquakes with nary a
crack or untoward ripple, and looks as fit for the eventual big one as it did
20 years ago.
So how has the county government that owns the
Kingdome dealt with this unseemly achievement? By trying its best to undo it.
First it cheaped out on maintenance, letting birds peck away the roof's foam
covering. Then it accepted an implausibly low bid to re-cover that roof, from
an inexperienced contractor who blasted the old foam off with water jets. The
resulting leaks dislodged four ceiling tiles, which in turn prompted a
pull-out-the-stops rush to scour and re-cover the roof and ceiling before
football season. A $5 million job grew to $67 million.
After readying the dome's
roof for the ages, the county and state decided to raze it and replace it with
a $327 million roofless football stadium and a $414 million baseball
stadium with a retractable roof. (I'm sure both projects will come in on
budget, and that the retractable roof will work flawlessly.) Among the
arguments advanced in support of knocking down the Kingdome was one that
especially resonated with any child of Boondogglia: It had to be replaced
because its roof was "falling down." Ah, the things we'll do to snatch disaster
from the jaws of competence. Now can we get some of that Korean steel for the
new stadiums?
