Is America's Aging Infrastructure a Disaster Waiting to Happen?

from the Westside Gazette, via MassTransitMag:



Is America's Aging Infrastructure a Disaster Waiting to Happen?


Chandler, Westside Gazette


"When you throw the switch & the power doesn't come on; when you turn your faucet & clean water doesn't come out, then you pay attention tO it. That's too late." - Patrick Natale, American Society of Civil Engineers(ASCE)

The Aug. 1st collapse of the eight-lane, 1-35 bridge over the Mississippi River in Minnesota, in which 5 were killed, 80 injured and unknown numbers missing, has cast an acute spotlight on America's aging infrastructure from bridges, roadways and dams, to the rail system, electrical grid, and this country's outmoded water treatment facilities.

It might be noted that the 1-35 bridge failure comes on the heels of a rupture in a century-old steam pipe in Manhattan that left one dead and massive property damage; the catastrophic breakdown of the levee system in New Orleans, resulting in over 1,500 casualties, and the 2003 Silver Lake Dam failure in Marquette, Michigan that led to the evacuation of over 1700 residents. Ominously, the threat to the country's infrastructure comes at a time when the funding for the War on Iraq could surpass $1 trillion, and currently is costing $200 million per day, per MSNBC News.

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), in the three years between 2000 and 2003, roughly 27 percent of the country's 590,750 bridges were rated "struc-turally deficient or functionally obsolete," representing one out of every three bridges in urban centers, and one of every four bridges located in rural areas.

"There was huge boom in bridge building after Eisenhower created the Interstate system, the boom lasting from the late '5Os to the early '7Os," says Edwin Rossow, a civil and environ-mental engineering profes-sor at Northwestern Univer-sity in Chicago. "Being 'structurally deficient' doesn't mean the bridge is no good. It means... that because of changes in the allowable loads a vehicle can carry, and the fact that cars are bigger these days these can all strain an older structure. But all bridges deteriorate over time."

The cost to bring all of these bridges up to satisfactory safety standards will be around $200 billion and will take years to accomplish, civil engineers estimate.

Similarly, the number of dams, under state, local and private control considered to be in a hazardous, unsafe condition has increased by 33 percent to over 3,500 nationwide since 1998, including the massive Wolf Creek Dam in Tennessee the largest dam this side of the Mississippi River. The situation is further compounded by a lack of inspectors to monitor these dams in many instances. Roughly $10.1 billion will be needed to repair all the highhazard dams. Failure to do so could be catastrophic, the ASCE warns.

The U.S. electrical grid is also perilously close to disaster. This is due in Large part to the fact that existing electrical transmission facilities have not been able to keep up with the enormous demand for electricity. Exacerbating the problem, the construction of new power plants has far outpaced efforts to mode-rnize existing power trans-mission facilities or build new ones. In addition, there has been a marked decrease in the amount of funding allocated for maintenance and upkeep of these facilities, resulting in increased consumer costs and greater risks of future blackouts, as 'bottlenecks' clog the system, particularly during the peak summer periods when airconditioning use spikes. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.masstransitmag.com/online/article.jsp?siteSection=3&id=4627

from levees failing and steam pipe explosions to bridge collapses, I say that since the 1980's days of 'screw you guys, I got mine' the infrastructure has been failing. We have roads in severe disrepair and utilities failing here in my home town on a regular basis. People then scream "fix it, but dont raise taxes". I hate to break it to people, but things cost money.

That's the prevailing trend in America.

tragic failure of the self absorbed denizens in the government, I am appalled at the self-indulgent, factually challenged editorializing of the matter. When an ignorant writer or commenter makes up facts to support his thesis it casts a pall on any factual reporting and complicates the process of bringing about important change.

The statement that cars are bigger today than in the heyday of bridge building is simply false. Most cars, those days, weighed two tons and more, with my '62 Ford convertible tipping the scales at over five thousand pounds, more than a half-ton pickup truck, today.
Today's cars generally come in at a ton and a half or less.

Big trucks, however, in the pursuit of profit, have been repeatedly been authorized to carry larger and larger loads, at the cost of roadway destruction and increased fuel usage.

Also, the problems of increasing demand on transmission and generation of electricity is not the cause of the current and impending catastrophes, although it contributes.
The problem arises from eating the seed corn--the practice, demanded by profit hungry investors, of deliberately canceling or deferring scheduled maintenance and upgrading, trying to get a few more years out of a failing system is the real culprit.
Those few years are now gone. The devil is now here to collect his due.