Civil Service Cynicism

As Americans prepare to hold their nose through four months of non-stop negative ad campaigns for the November 2024 election, Americans still have a responsibility to properly differentiate between issues merely framed as odious for political purposes versus those involving policy goals that are TRULY odious and dangerous. Dangerous to the nation certainly, but dangerous to individuals as well.

The best example of this is the laundry list of policies being circulated among uber-conservatives as Project 2025. Project 2025 is a manifesto of immediate -- often unilateral -- initiatives that will be undertaken by a Trump Administration to complete their destruction of the Deep State and return America to a prior golden age of "freedom" from chronic, stifling government regulation by the nanny state that is preventing every 'Murican from becoming a billionaire pillow entrepreneur. (Uh huh...)

In reality, the Project 2025 laundry list itemizes a set of actions with a coherent goal -- a goal to instantly eliminate over one hundred years of learning about workplace safety, public health, public safety and financial protections against billion-dollar scale frauds. All of which can be lumped together under one overarching theme... The "gut" of any individual conservative is more worthy of trust than decades of expertise baked into building codes, safety regulations and professional standards enforced by conscientious civil employees who are protected from persecution for doing their job to protect the rest of us.

But rather than talking in general platitudes, it might help if people on the fence about the wisdom of Project 2025 could instead look at a few examples of the value provided by civil servants. Or, more appropriately, examples of the potential harm created when true professionals aren't sufficiently involved when the public's welfare is at stake.

Flint, Michigan Water

One of the most famous failures of government to protect the public is the operation of the municipal water supply in Flint, Michigan. Amid an existing financial crisis that placed the city under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager, that emergency manager, the mayor and Flint city council voted to contract with a different entity to supply water to the city via new pipeline from Lake Huron, switching away from the existing contract with Detroit's municipal water and sewer system. While waiting thirty months for the construction of that new pipeline, those same city managers decided to switch Flint away from the Detroit source to Flint's existing backup source, the Flint River itself. Thought those in charge: It's already in place as our backup, it will save us $5 million in two years while waiting for the new pipeline, what's to lose?

Turns out there was plenty to lose. The Flint River water was not treated with the same chemicals as the Detroit source. The Detroit source included an anti-corrosion chemical that prevented flowing water from stripping away a layer within the piping that prevented lead from the pipes from leaching into the water. Shortly after switching to the backup supply to save money, residents began complaining of poor taste and cloudy water almost immediately. More tellingly, a local GM plant stopped using Flint municipal water after six months because it was traced to premature corrosion on parts being made in the plant.

In less than a year, the city council voted to return to the prior Detroit source but their vote was rejected by the city's appointed emergency manager. The city remained on the contaminated source for eighteen months until October 2015 when the Michigan Governor allocated $9 million dollars in funding for switch-back costs.

As a result of the change, over 100,000 citizens including children were exposed to lead levels far exceeding EPA limits. By 2020 the costs to correct the infrastructure and pay civil damages resulting from the episode totaled $641 million dollars.

Flint was particularly bad but there are more recent examples of situations where the public is being put in a position of having to trust elected and appointed government officials who are likely far beyond their skis in terms of decision making authority versus actual expertise.

Highway Safety

On June 8 of 2024, an elevated loop section of State Highway 22 connecting Jackson Hole to nearby Victor in Wyoming was completely wiped out after water pooling on the inner loop side of the road seeped down, then underneath the road then undermined an even steeper embankment on the outer loop side, triggering a collapse of the seventy foot embankment. Officials had seen signs of pending failure in the road and no vehicles were on the road when it washed out. The road and elevated embankment were constructed in the early 1960s so while the original design might have turned out to be insufficient by modern understanding of soil structures and behavior, the design seemed to do okay for work sixty years ago.

The problem lies in the recovery work led by the Wyoming Department of Transportation. That road segment is apparently vital to the state economy. Or at least it is vital to the wealthy citizens of Jackson Hole who rely on the ability of residents in Victor to be able to get to Jackson Hole to work in local businesses -- none can actually afford to LIVE in Jackson Hole. As such, re-opening this route was a top priority for Wyoming state officials. The embankment required for the road was temporarily shored up and a new asphalt road paved within three weeks to re-open the route to traffic.

Unfortunately, civil engineers on the outside looking into the re-opening effort have identified concerns. As one civil engineer Casey Jones summarized on his YouTube channel, WyDOT engineers and their spokesman:

• cited a minimum 1.2 factor of safety in federal guidelines for temporary construction related to gradings, etc.
• claimed the new road exceeds that minimum 1.2 factor
• would not publicly share their actual calculated safety factor of the new embankment
• in further rationalizing their work, stated that each decimal point of the safety factor is a 100% increase in safety

Civil engineer Casey Jones and others like him are raising concern about these statements from WyDOT because they CLEARLY indicate the leadership of WyDOT and the contractors it hired for the reconstruction don't understand the applicable regulations and don't understand the engineering mathematics involved.

Specifically...

The federal highway standard cited regarding factor of safety requires a MINIMUM 1.2 factor of safety for "temporary construction" on "low risk slopes." That doesn't mean a temporary arrangement that is carrying TRAFFIC. That means temporary construction DURING CONSTRUCTION to ensure worker safety. And a slope with a seventy foot height does not qualify as a low-risk slope. Actual factor of safety levels are typically 2x to 3x and beyond.

Second, numbers in factor of safety calculations are RATIOS, not logarithmic numbers. A design with a factor of safety of 1.3 is NOT one hundred percent greater than one of 1.2. It is only 8.3 percent greater. Any engineer working in this field who performs this design work or signs off on it knows that. Were these numbers and the spokesman's comments not reviewed by ANYONE within WyDOT or its contractors who knew better?

Finally, multiple engineers who have seen video of the original collapsed roadway and the "temporary" workaround have noticed the temporary arrangement seems to replicate the flaw that triggered the original failure. The inside portion of the loop has more fill and a gentler slope than the prior incarnation but it can still pool water that runs off the road or lands on the fill. That means it can still seep down, then under the road then through the fill on the other side and trigger sudden shifts in that fill. Casey Jones made the point that it is highly unlikely a engineering firm could have completed a design for rebuilding the embankments on both sides, much less submitted them to another firm for review, much less completed collection of new soil samples required to evaluate the underlying layers of soil, sand, sediment and rock that would have to factor into those new designs -- all in three weeks. Yet the road is open for traffic and permitting twenty thousand pound vehicles at forty miles per hour on a TURN.

Dam Safety

Meanwhile, recent heavy rains have triggered concern in Houston, Texas after officials found water releases from Livingston Dam on the Trinity River north of the city earlier in June damaged the spillway of the dam. The dam provides some flood control and power generation for the larger area but its flood prevention capability is not terribly great. It lacks the height to allow operators to arbitrarily retain much more water than its normal watershed collects every day. That's a concern for two reasons. First, fixing the damage to spillways will require an extended period where the spillways are NOT used yet hurricane season has arrived and Hurricane Beryl is headed for Houston. This has triggered operators to attempt to lower water levels by one foot behind the dam with a release the night of July 6 into July 7.

Second, even prior to the early June release that appeared to cause damage that was noticed by the media, the dam's operators were already having meetings with federal regulators who oversee the dam's power plant operation regarding the dam's operating condition. Earlier bouts of heavy rain between March and May also required unusually large releases of water which shifted rip rap (large rocks at the bottom of spillways used to slow down water and block erosion) and began serious erosion at the dam's base. Damage to the spillway and risks to the dam's foundation were already being addressed prior to the June incident via letters from external engineering firms hired by federal regulators.

It is possible the dam exists in a state where its spillway cannot sustain the erosion that will be created by pre-emptive efforts to lower reservoir levels ahead of an expected hurricane yet not enough space exists in the reservoir to absorb the precipitation from a hurricane to avoid overtopping the dam. That puts thousands of residents near the dam and downstream of it along the Trinity River in a stressful position. Should they trust local and state officials to provide them an evacuation order if further risks at the dam become apparent? Have local and state officials earned that trust via honest communications with residents in the past?

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If you talk to anyone who deals with construction, manufacturing, transportation or maritime businesses, they will often state that the codes governing their profession are written in blood. This is a dramatic way of reminding those responsible for FOLLOWING those codes or certifying the work of others that every character in every sentence in those codes exists because, at some point in the past, someone probably died in an accident that could have (should have) been avoided that resulted in that new rule being added to the code. The saying is intended to cut through the complacency and arrogance that can take root with people doing complicated work over and over who may think they know better or don't need to follow the code "this time."

The larger universe of government regulation is the equivalent of these professional codes over a wider scope of activities. Because government regulations are created by actors selected via political processes, there are ABSOLUTELY cases where regulations exist to favor one group over another or preserve some special advantage unfairly. However, it is ABSOLUTELY the case that the MAJORITY of regulations exist because of prior abuses of economic power or prior incidents where public health and safety were ignored in favor of individuals or firms.

Any organization publicly claiming it will

1. systematically ELIMINATE most government regulation and
2. cut budgets of agencies enforcing crucial government regulation and
3. eliminate protections of civil servants attempting to enforce regulations

is essentially claiming they are smarter than over one hundred years of accumulated history in industrial society. Anyone supporting such actions is claiming they believe that every man, woman or child is equal in power to the wealthiest billionaire or largest multi-national corporation.

Of course, none of those beliefs are true. In reality, people advocating for the Project 2025 agenda are selfish cynics who believe there is money for them to pocket by helping the already-powerful further subjugate average citizens and that those average citizens are stupid enough to take the bait, vote against their own interest and expedite the process of these cynics gathering their cut.

WTH