I had never heard of the word “scupper” until my college-era, two-year summer stint as a highway bridge construction inspector for the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) in the late 1970s.
Apparently, City of Pittsburgh bridge maintenance crews never have, ever, according to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette investigation.
Simply put, a “scupper” is a drain designed to keep water from pooling inside everything from a building to a bridge and doing what pooled water does best – break down the structural integrity of just about everything if not directed away from said structures, whether it be rot or rust.
Think gutters and downspouts but writ large.
As the P-G reported it:
“For dozens of bridges across the city, inspectors say the most damaging oversight mistake is failing to clean the clogged drainage systems, which can give way to rust.
“’The number one problem was the clog[ged] scuppers and downspouts on almost all their bridges,’ Tim Pintar, who inspected Fern Hollow and several other Pittsburgh bridges over the years, told NTSB investigators.”
The Fern Hollow bridge collapsed two Januarys ago.
“When drainage systems aren’t cleaned out at least annually, corrosion can set in within three to four years. And once corrosion begins, experts say, it’s nearly impossible to stop,” the P-G reminds.
“’Long term, it can destroy’ a bridge, said Roberto Leon, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech. ‘I would characterize it almost as a cancer. We have treatments for cancer, but there are certain cancers that don’t respond very well to treatment.”
Keeping bridge scuppers in Pittsburgh clean should be as fundamental as keeping snow cleared from city streets. Ah, silly us – Pittsburgh has a lousy record of doing that, too. And for so many other things.
If government can’t deliver the fundamentals that the taxpaying public underwrites, and has every right to expect, that government should be changed.
But several iterations of city government, over scores of years, have failed to fulfill such fundamental responsibilities. Yet city residents continue to entrench in office the usual “leader” suspects who, in turn, entrench more of the usual “worker” suspects to not get the jobs done.
And what’s the common denominator, class? Typically, members of one particular political party whose priorities seldom jibe with reality and with overarching fealty not to the public but to organized labor.
Some will argue that there simply hasn’t been enough money to keep Pittsburgh’s bridge scuppers cleaned out. Sorry, but no. The real problem has been that Pittsburgh hasn’t had anything even closely resembling sound governance that, for decades, knows how to establish public infrastructure and public works priorities.
And for that, Pittsburgh voters have only themselves to blame for a cancerous climate that, uncorrected, will continue to metastasize until it kills its host.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
