2014年GRE考试阅读素材汇集（三）

　　Power Still Out For Many in New York City

　　Sandy flooded parts of New York Citys subway system and affected other transportation. It delayed movement of trucks carrying fuel to gasoline stations, resulting in long lines at gas pumps.

　　New York Governor Andrew Cuomo spoke about the problems at a press conference last week.

　　Many of the gas stations, especially in Nassau, theres gasoline in the tank in the ground but theres no power to run the pump. And thats been the problem.

　　Governor Cuomo said Superstorm Sandy has exposed problems with New Yorks infrastructure.

　　These systems are the circulatory systems of the region. And you stop the circulatory system, and you paralyze the region.

　　He said the failure of the citys public utility system is of real concern.

　　The utility system we have was designed at a different time for a different place. I believe the system is archaic and is obsolete in many ways.

　　The storm has led to calls for power companies to bury more electrical lines underground. But, at least one expert says similar efforts did not help New York. Otto Lynch is vice president of Power Line Systems in Wisconsin.

　　The reason many people in New York are out of power is because it was underground and when the water came onshore, water and electricity dont mix. And theyve got problems and it takes forever to find the problems. And when you do find the problems, its not just a quick fix. You have to dig. You have to work. Out of sight, out of mind is great until theres a problem.

　　Otto Lynch says a bigger national problem has to do with electrical distribution poles. He says the current poles do not have to meet industry weather requirements. And he says the ones in New York did not.

　　The structures arent designed for the ninety-mile per hour winds that occurred and there were a lot of distribution failures.

　　Mr. Lynch is a member of the Americas Infrastructure Committee at the American Society of Civil Engineers. The group produced its last report on the nations infrastructure in two thousand nine.

　　The two thousand nine grade for energy was a D+. Thats actually better than most of the rest of the infrastructure. The average grade for all of Americas infrastructure was a D.