Old bridges need new money to replace.
Credit: Phil’s 1stPix/Flickr
By itself, concrete is a very durable construction material. The magnificent Pantheon in Rome, the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome, is in excellent condition after nearly 1,900 years. And yet many concrete structures from last century – bridges, highways and buildings – are crumbling. Many concrete structures built this century will be obsolete before its end.
Given the survival of ancient structures, this may seem curious. The critical difference is the modern use of steel reinforcement, known as rebar, concealed within the concrete. Steel is made mainly of iron, and one of iron’s unalterable properties is that it rusts. This ruins the durability of concrete structures in ways that are difficult to detect and costly to repair.
While repair may be justified to preserve the architectural legacy of iconic 20th-century buildings, such as those designed by reinforced concrete users like Frank Lloyd Wright, it is questionable whether this will be […]
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A Kansas church is asking a court to help punish two girls who sued over sexual abuse by a former vacation Bible school volunteer.
Kessler Lichtenegger, a former volunteer at Westside Family Church, pleaded guilty last year to attempted rape and attempted electronic solicitation involving two girls who attended the church.
The girls, who were both younger than 14 years old, and their families filed a lawsuit June 9 that alleges church officials knew about Lichtenegger’s extensive past sexual conduct and crimes involving children.
Officials at the Southern Baptist church denied knowledge of those previous juvenile convictions, but admittedly knew they should pay close attention to Lichtenegger, who was 17 years old when he volunteered for the summer Bible school in 2014 and assaulted one of the girls in the parking lot.
However, the lawsuit accuses church officials of ignoring their own protocols and allowing Lichtenegger to be around children outside of his father’s supervision.
The lawsuit, and its timing, apparently angered church officials — who have taken the unprecedented […]
Duke Energy paiud 102.2 million for this coal ash spill
CreditL WSJ
RALEIGH – The NC House of Representatives approved a coal ash bill that environmentalists are describing as a bailout and a giveaway to Duke Energy, which will no longer be required to excavate toxic coal ash from all of its waste sites across the state.
H630 was approved in a concurrence vote Thursday evening. The bill takes the unprecedented step of requiring Duke to provide clean drinking water to residents living within a half mile of its coal ash waste dumps — a provision which amounts to an acknowledgment from legislators that leaving coal ash in leaking pits poses serious risks to people around it.
Concern for residents in coal ash territory did not extend any further, however, as H630 builds in mechanisms that will allow Duke to leave its toxic ash next to many of these residences indefinitely. So long as drinking water and some dam safety concerns are addressed, the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) will be required to classify several […]
