{"id":2551,"date":"2010-12-28T08:12:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-28T13:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2010\/12\/harrisburg-pa-loses-solvency-and-trust-over-incinerator.html"},"modified":"2010-12-28T08:12:00","modified_gmt":"2010-12-28T13:12:00","slug":"harrisburg-pa-loses-solvency-and-trust-over-incinerator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2010\/12\/harrisburg-pa-loses-solvency-and-trust-over-incinerator.html","title":{"rendered":"Harrisburg, PA loses solvency and trust over incinerator"},"content":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/05\/21\/us\/21harrisburg.html\">\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\" width=\"200\" height=\"110\"   src=\"http:\/\/graphics8.nytimes.com\/images\/2010\/05\/21\/us\/JP-HARRISBURG_337-span\/JP-HARRISBURG-articleLarge.jpg\"><\/a>\nMichael Cooper wrote in the New York Times on 20 May 2010 about\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/05\/21\/us\/21harrisburg.html\">\nAn Incinerator Becomes Harrisburg\u2019s Money Pit<\/a>:\n<blockquote>\nHARRISBURG, Pa. \u2014 Officials here decided seven years ago to borrow $125\nmillion to rebuild and expand the city\u2019s enormous trash incinerator,\nwhich the federal government had shut down because of toxic air pollution.\n<p>\nBut the incinerator burned through the money faster than the trash,\nleaving Harrisburg residents feeling like they were living through a\nsequel to the 1986 movie \u201cThe Money Pit.\u201d\n<p>\nThere were contractor troubles, delays, cost overruns and squabbles. The\ncity borrowed tens of millions more, shoveling good money after bad into\nthe job.\n<\/blockquote>\nThe Patriot-News Editorial Board wrote on 12 April 2010 about\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.pennlive.com\/editorials\/index.ssf\/2010\/04\/how_did_it_happen_incinerator.html\">\nHarrisburg incinerator fiasco deserves an investigation to understand how it happened<\/a>:\n<blockquote>\nOver nearly a decade, officials at the Harrisburg Authority and City\nHall made a series of decisions that sought to get the trash incinerator\nworking and profitable, but which instead brought Pennsylvania\u2019s\ncapital to the brink of bankruptcy.\n<p>\nThe 2003 deal that took on $125 million in debt to repair the incinerator\nneglected to include a performance bond.\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\nInexperienced firms were hired. Fees were paid for work poorly done. Loans\nwere taken on disastrous terms.\n<p>\nOfficials were aided, or rather misled, by the advice of numerous\nattorneys, bankers and engineers apparently far more interested in\ncollecting handsome fees than they were in protecting the interests\nof taxpayers.\n<p>\nAs a result, there is a deep distrust of the fundamental institutions\nthat created this fiasco.\n<\/blockquote>\nSomething else sounds familiar about this situation:\n<blockquote>\nWhile some of the seats have changed, many of the same people in\ngovernment today had their fingerprints on these decisions.\n<\/blockquote>\nIt&#8217;s the same old boy network locally as approved Sterling Chemical,\nand the chair of the county commission at that time is now on the\nIndustrial Authority.\nAnd the VLCIA has taken on what is reputed to be a $15 million bond issue.\n<p>\nHow big is Harrisburg?\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/05\/21\/us\/21harrisburg.html\">\n50,000 people,<\/a>\nsame as Valdosta.\nWhat is Harrisburg considering?\nBankruptcy.\nWho profited anyway?\nLocal developers.\n<p>\nWhat&#8217;s the moral?\n<blockquote>\nAll of the guarantees proved worthless.\n<p>\nAll of the fail-safes failed.\n<\/blockquote>\nWhat say we have the investigation now, before the fail-safes fail?\n<p>\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Cooper wrote in the New York Times on 20 May 2010 about An Incinerator Becomes Harrisburg\u2019s Money Pit: HARRISBURG, Pa. \u2014 Officials here decided seven years ago to borrow $125 million to rebuild and expand the city\u2019s enormous trash incinerator, which the federal government had shut down because of toxic air pollution. But the [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,556,120,48,14,49,16,2,41,19,21,32,23,73,178],"tags":[8738,275,714,1968,5185,8701,2589,4242,876,4131,7,2495,4530,1798,8715,6,180,8749],"class_list":["post-2551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-air","category-biomass","category-code-enforcement","category-economy","category-elections","category-environment","category-government","category-health-care","category-history","category-planning","category-pollution","category-renewable-energy","category-safety","category-vlcia","tag-biomass","tag-bond","tag-debt","tag-developers","tag-fail-safe","tag-georgia","tag-guarantee","tag-harrisburg","tag-health","tag-incinerator","tag-lowndes-county","tag-mayor","tag-particulates","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pollution","tag-valdosta","tag-valdosta-lowndes-county-industrial-authority","tag-vlcia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-F9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2551\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}