From Nygaard Notes Number 364, February 26, 2007

The headline in the February 8^th New York Times read: "Gaping Reminders of Aging and Crumbling Pipes." It was about the increasingly-frequent urban phenomenon of sinkholes. That is, big odd holes in the ground. And I mean, big enough to swallow trucks and stuff like that! The reason these things are increasingly common has to do with the part of our national infrastructure that handles water. It seems that we haven't been taking care of things too well in recent decades, with the result that, as the Times put it, "thousands of miles of century-old underground water and sewer lines are springing leaks, eroding and-in extreme cases-causing the ground above them to collapse."

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, says the Times, "unless cities invest more to repair and replace their water and sewer systems, nearly half of the water system pipes in the United States will be in poor, very poor or ‘life elapsed' status by 2020." That is, while everyone obsesses about terror attacks on our water supply, or whatever, a gradual process is taking out our infrastructure in a much-less-dramatic way. An EPA official made that point explicit, saying, "You can lose that system all at once because of terrorism, but you can lose it over time by just not taking care of it."

Well, we're not taking care of it, and a group mentioned by the Times-the American Society of Civil Engineers, or ASCE-has been telling us about it for years. They put out periodic "Report Cards for America's Infrastructure," and the last one that came out in March of 2005 gave the nation's infrastructure an overall grade of "D." That was down a bit from the "D-plus" grade awarded in 2001. I wrote about this, rather extensively, back in Nygaard Notes #261 (July 2, 2004), in an article called "Grading the U.S. Infrastructur[Comment1] e: "A Discouraging D-plus Overall," and I referred to it again last April ("Infrastructure, Schminfrastructure!").

Important as they are, the water and sewer problems (and the sinkholes they cause) are only the tip of the infrastructure iceberg. Here's a rundown of all the grades from the 2005 Report Card:

The grades for both DRINKING WATER AND WASTEWATER declined from a D in 2001 to a D-minus in 2005. "Federal funding for wastewater improvements in 2005 is less than 10 percent of the total national requirement," says the Report.

The nation's NAVIGABLE WATERWAYS? Down from a D-plus in 2001 to a D-minus in 2005. Nearly 50 percent of America's locks and canals "are functionally obsolete."

The nation's ROADS declined from D-plus to a D in those four years.

The nation's TRANSIT SYSTEM, 2001-2005: Down from a C-minus to a D-plus.

The nation's BRIDGES: No change. A "C" grade. "More than one in four bridges in the United States is deficient, and many of those must be closed to heavy vehicles like firetrucks and school buses."

The nation's DAMS. No change here, either. The grade remained a D. "It will take more than $10 billion over the next 12 years to address all critical non-federal dams, dams which can pose a direct threat to human life should they fail.

The nation's AVIATION infrastructure improved from a D to a D-plus.

SCHOOLS also improved slightly, from a D-minus to a D.

At the press conference announcing the release of the last "Report Card," ASCE president William P. Henry summed things up: "There you have it. Horrible commutes. Overcrowded schools. Crumbling bridges. Polluted water... We've given up time with our families, we've caved in to the stress of endless traffic, we spend a thousand times more on bottled water than we would on tap water. A generation ago, selling people water by the bottle was a joke, a bit like selling someone a bridge." And a crumbling bridge, at that.

So what is the solution to our infrastructure crisis?

"We estimate it will take a total investment of $1.6 trillion dollars over five years to bring the infrastructure up to acceptable levels." That is, approximately the projected cost of the occupation of Iraq.

Check out the Report Card for yourself at http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/