CNN新闻英语第 72 课：Gribble Nibble 千里之堤，毁于水虱

LILLIAN KIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT 莉莲·金，CNN记者
With its breathtaking skyline and proximity to the water, Seattle is considered one of America's premiere port cities, but tiny crustaceans threaten this major metropolis. They're called gribbles, so small you can't even see them, only the damage they've left behind. 西雅图与海洋为邻，拥有令人叹为观止的地平线，一直以来被认为是美国最重要的港口城市之一。但一种微小的甲壳类动物正威胁着这个大都市。这种被称为蛀木水虱的动物，小得肉眼看不到，你只能看到他们给人们造成的危害。

RICHARD MILLER, SEATTLE TRANSPORTATION DEPT. 理查德·米勒，西雅图运输部
Creates a lot of holes in the wood and weakens the wood, to the point where it just falls apart. 它们在木头上咬了许多洞，使木头脆弱到就要断裂的程度。

KIM 金
These pieces of wood are what holds Seattle's seawall in place. At 60 feet wide and 8,000 feet long, the seawall is a tourist Mecca, home to a ferry dock and adjacent to a major thoroughfare. But with gribbles chomping away at a rate of nearly an inch a year, the seawall, engineers say, will ultimately collapse, especially if another earthquake hits the Pacific Northwest. 这些木头各就其位地支撑着西雅图的海堤。60英尺宽，8000英尺长的海堤是旅游者的天堂，渡轮码头的家，并且紧邻主要公路。但是，蛀木水虱以每年1英寸左右的速度啃蚀着木头。工程师说，海堤迟早会倒塌，特别是在太平洋西北部再发一次地震的情况下。

MAYOR GREG NICKELS, SEATTLE 格雷格·尼柯尔，西雅图市市长
The seawall is just a critical place where we interface with the ocean, and it's important that seawall remain intact, so that the activities built on the water are attached to our city. 海堤的位置十分关键，它把西雅图市与大海隔开。保持海堤的完好无损至关重要，只有这样才能将水上活动同城市联系起来。

KIM 金
The push is now on to construct a new seawall and rebuild the double-decker highway that runs next to it. If the city goes ahead and replaces the seawall, then the people who live and work here will have to endure years of nonstop construction, and the project is costly. Estimates run as high as $1.5 billion. The decision will ultimately be left to Seattle voters, leaving the city on shaky ground for now. 现在已经准备建设新的海堤，并且在海堤两旁重建双层公路。如果施行了这一计划，旧海堤将被取代，那时生活和工作在那里的人们将不得不忍受历时数年的施工建设，并且这一工程造价昂贵，估计预算高达15亿美元。最终，西雅图市民将投票决定是否重建海堤，而目前城市的根基正岌岌可危。