If they started that dam today, they'd spend 20 years and twice the money the dam actually cost just on lawsuits and papers and have nothing to show for it decades later.
That's a lot of deaths.
For comparison, only 147 total coalition deaths as a result of combat with the enemy [2] in the 1991 Gulf war, involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers, the liberation of Kuwait and the overrunning of most of Iraq.
And that's saying nothing of the comp, overtime and other externalized issues.
Of course, the failure of rail is pretty bad and we need to learn, but we can't hold the Hoover Dam up as 'the example'.
[1] https://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/history/essays/fatal.html
How many people die on Chinese infastructure projects?
1. http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/east/06/13/china.t... 2. https://www.statista.com/statistics/241572/death-rate-by-age...
If we built this project at the cost of 100 lives, but got it done on time and on budget, and as a result we save 500+ traffic fatalities, and 500+ early deaths as a result of pollution, while improving the quality of life of all of California… I would call it a resounding success. And yet, most people would just focus on the 100 lives paid upfront and call it an unmitigated disaster.
And people do die all the time in construction etc. - there are already risks, but they are low.
There are zero construction projects going on planet earth today that need to increase the level of risk such that 100 people die trying.
Not even China is putting people down in those numbers for any reason.
It's basically a non-starter - there's no reason for anyone to die these days building pretty much anything, other than in the most precarious situations.
The points is, even if people die building a big project, it's quite possible that that's for the greater good and more people are saved as a result.
A bunch of people died in the Apollo missions. Does that mean we should have never attempted it and let the Russians figure out how to get to the moon? There's no way it would fly politically these days.
What dollar value should we put on your life? $10,000? $200,000? $2,000,000? Should we encourage your boss telling you to do something stupidly dangerous, because the project's behind, and he doesn't want to pay your team overtime?
1000 people died building the Trans-Canada railway. In the early 20th century, 70 people died building a minor tunnel, used to construct a tiny hydro power plant in the greater Vancouver area. Any pre-WWII infrastructure project was built atop a literal graveyard.
Ironically, the son of the first construction worker to die on the job was the last to die on the job.