Paulsboro, NJ. Rail bridge failed caused seven Conrail rail cars derailed, some with toxic cargo leaked vinyl chloride into Mantua Creek into water.

More news here or here.

Dominant social theme: Infrastructure in USA needs big money for repairs

It is well known that in the last dacades there is an average 1 failed bridge in 8 months.

“The collapse of the Minneapolis bridge that carried Interstate 35W over the Mississippi trained a spotlight on a long-standing national problem: how years of neglect, underfunding, and a lack of leadership and vision allowed America’s infrastructure to deteriorate.” The Infrastructure Crisis

“America has scrimped on taking care of the public furniture, endangering people and weakening the economy as bridges rust, roads crumble, dams weaken and water mains leak,” writes David Cay Johnston, author ofThe Fine Point, in an article for the Daily Beast.

The worst infrastructure is corporate-owned, writes Johnston. High-pressure oil and natural-gas pipelines can easily explode without warning, electric power poles need to be replaced, and the telecommunications system is gradually getting worse.”

RT, America facing infrastructural collapse, 09/05/2012

America’s Crumbling Infrastructure

*According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, more than 25 percent of America’s nearly 600,000 bridges need significant repairs or are burdened with more traffic than they were designed to carry.

*According to the Federal Highway Administration, approximately a third of America’s major roadways are in substandard condition – a significant factor in a third of the more than 43,000 traffic fatalities in the United States each year.

*The Texas Transportation Institute estimates that traffic jams caused by insufficient infrastructure waste 4 billion hours of commuters’ time and nearly 3 billion gallons of gasoline a year.

*The Association of State Dam Safety Officials has found that the number of dams in the United States that could fail has grown 134% since 1999 to 3,346, and more than 1,300 of those are considered “high-hazard” – meaning that their collapse would threaten lives.

*More than a third of all dam failures or near failures since 1874 have happened in just the last decade.

*According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, aging sewer systems spill an estimated 1.26 trillion gallons of untreated sewage every single year, resulting in an estimated 50.6 billion dollars in cleanup costs.

It is not just aging of infrastructure. Bad engineering, like in Tacoma Narrows bridge case, is another factor.

For some reason Wikipedia has not complete lists

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure