Wilmington Star-News, 02.27.22
EDITOR: Your recent story “Bridges of the Wilmington…” was a very poignant reminder how much repairing/rebuilding our region’s long-neglected and worn-out infrastructure will cost. Currently in the state 1,325 bridges are rated in poor condition. Just fixing one local bridge, the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge, has an estimated price tag of about $600 million.
But all of these projects must be done because roads and bridges are our society’s lifelines. They carry our goods and services, get us to hospitals and the police to us, our children to schools and us to work.
The Cape Fear Memorial Bridge is 53 years old: a 50-year-old bridge recently collapsed in Pennsylvania. Survivors were saved by onlookers. President Joe Biden viewed the wreckage hours later. “We’ve got to move,” he said, “We don’t need headlines that say someone was killed when the next bridge collapses.”
We must have major federal funding to help us pay the billions these projects will cost. So why did our Congressman, David Rouzer, vote at least three times against Biden’s federal infrastructure funding plan? We need representatives in Washington who will devote themselves to getting us as much money as possible to help us pay this enormous tab.
Mahlon G.‘Lon’ Anderson
Leland