The quarter-century-long saga of financially-irresponsible owners of the Poughkeepsie Bridge, which began when then-Conrail Chairman and CEO L. Stanley Crane had it sold to a convicted-felon bank swindler from suburban Philadelphia named Gordon Schreiber Miller on November 2, 1984, continues past the Walkway's October 3, 2009 grand opening. Though everyone has been led to believe that the Bridge was conveyed to the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Development by the Walkway corporation on or about October 3, 2009, the facts are drastically-different. All that was conveyed to NYS was the eastern approach viaduct (2,640 feet long) over the City of Poughkeepsie. The Walkway corporation still owns the overwater portion of the Bridge proper (3,094 feet long) and its western approach viaduct (1,033 feet long). A Bill to authorize the New York State Bridge Authority to acquire the entire Bridge died in the last session, due to the "Senate leadership struggle" (this fascinating and disgraceful bit of news arrived from NYS Parks' Deputy Commissioner for Open Space Protection, Erik Kulleseid, in an email to me dated October 15, 2009). Mr. Kulleseid further stated, in an October 16, 2009 email to me, that conveyance to an appropriate New York State entity "will not happen before CY2010 or CY2011." In the interim, the Walkway corporation reportedly has a paltry few million dollars'-worth of liability insurance on the Bridge, and zero funds to provide future maintenance. It has obviously not occurred to anyone in NYS Government that the appropriate solution to the horrendous liability and maintenance-guarantee problem is to have the Walkway corporation convey the Bridge and its western approach viaduct to NYS Parks, which does NOT require Legislative approval. If this is done, the "deep pockets" of New York State will finally provide adequate liability on a structure of this magnitude, plus guarantee future maintenance of any kind, for the first time in 25 long years. After that, NYS Parks can re-convey it to the New York State Bridge Authority when the do-nothing NYS Legislature finally gets away from Byzantine political shenanigans and belatedly acts to protect the citizens of the Mid-Hudson region. Or, it can re-convey it to any other appropriate NYS entity. It is an amazing-but-true statement that New York State is far more vigilant in enforcing the NYS law that requires motor vehicle owners to maintain minimum liability insurance on all NYS-registered vehicles than it is with regard to mandating responsible liability insurance on the mammoth Poughkeepsie Bridge. Poughkeepsie and Highland residents are just damned lucky that an oceangoing freighter never collided with an unlighted Bridge pier between November 2, 1984 and whenever the Walkway group restored the Bridge's navigation lights after its own Bridge acquisition of June 5, 1998. They are also damned lucky that six abandoned and de-energized 115kv power lines, attached to the south side of the Bridge by Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corporation in 1949 and not maintained since 1985, did not collapse as a result of their 2,200-pound support brackets corroding. Had that occurred, the lines would have fallen across the busy CSX West Shore freight line, and possibly derailed HAZMAT cars into the adjacent Hudson River at a point directly across from the City of Poughkeepsie's drinking-water intake point. The U.S. Coast Guard levied over $500,000 in fines against the Miller corporation for permitting the Bridge's navigation lights to fail over an extended period, and could easily have foreclosed on the Bridge. However, everyone at the Federal level was terrified of assuming the liability. Similarly, Ulster and Dutchess Counties were owed $550,000 in unpaid taxes from the Miller corporation, and could also easily have foreclosed on it. But every single elected representative was similarly terrified of assuming the liability. This included then-Poughkeepsie Mayor Colleen Lafuente; State Senator Stephen Saland (as to New York State acquisition); Rep. Maurice Hinchey (as to Federal acquisition); the Ulster and Dutchess County Legislatures; plus non-elected, top officials at NYSDOT. (I should know, as I spoke to all of them several times over the years.) In my personal opinion, though they have achieved a real miracle with the new Walkway Over The Hudson, the Walkway group is fiscally insane to have assumed the liability and maintenance risk burdens on June 5, 1998, and permitted this enormous exposure to persist "until CY2010 or CY2011." Should any kind of disaster occur between now and total NYS Bridge acquisition, the individual Walkway group officers and directors will be sued personally for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, along with their shell corporation (which has no assets but the negative-net-worth Bridge itself). And no one should buy the old saw that, "Nothing can now happen to the Poughkeepsie Bridge following the $38.8 million recently spent on Walkway construction." The Kinzua Viaduct, in northwestern Pennsylvania, was abandoned by the Erie Railroad in 1959 and became a Pennsylvania State Park (sound familiar?) in 1963. Rebuilt in 1900, it was 12 years newer than the Poughkeepsie Bridge, and even higher @ 301 feet above a wild, forested valley, though a good deal shorter @ 2,052 feet. On July 21, 2003, a tornado struck it and demolished most of it in less than thirty seconds, after it had stood for over a century. Clearly, no one but a large railroad corporation or a governmental entity of at least NYS-size should EVER be permitted to own a 121-year-old structure such as this. It is long-overdue that all of the Mid-Hudson region's elected representatives bestir themselves for something other than their re-elections, and put enough pressure on New York State to get the ENTIRE Poughkeepsie Bridge out of Walkway corporation ownership and into ownership by an appropriate NYS entity/entities at the earliest possible moment. Until then, a "Sword of Damocles" continues to hang over every resident of the area, and all commercial and pleasure traffic from the eastern bank of the Hudson River to the CSX West Shore freight line in Highland.
Last edited by DonPevsner on Sun Nov 01, 2009 3:08 pm, edited 3 times in total.
And a CSX hat. Dead give-away, that hat!
