American Society of Civil Engineers: The Report Card on America's Failing Infrastructure

[Better Believe It]

2009 Grades on America's infrastructure

Aviation D
Bridges C
Dams D
Drinking Water D-
Energy D+
Hazardous Waste D
Inland Waterways D-
Levees D-
Public Parks and Recreation C-
Rail C-
Roads D-
Schools D
Solid Waste C+
Transit D
Wastewater D-

America's Infrastructure GPA: D

Estimated 5 Year Investment Need: $2.2 Trillion

See their video on what needs to be done at:

http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/



FAILING INFRASTRUCTURE CANNOT SUPPORT A HEALTHY ECONOMY

Decades of underfunding and inattention have jeopardized the ability of our nation's infrastructure to support our economy and facilitate our way of life. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) today released its 2009 Report Card for America's Infrastructure-assigning a cumulative grade of D to the nation's infrastructure and noting a five-year investment need of $2.2 trillion from all levels of government and the private sector. Since ASCE's last assessment in 2005 there has been little change in the condition of the nation's roads, bridges, drinking water systems and other public works, and the cost of improvement has increased by more than half a trillion dollars.


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Civil Engineers’ New Report Card Assesses Condition of Nation’s Infrastructure

Washington, D.C.—Decades of underfunding and inattention have jeopardized the ability of our
nation’s infrastructure to support our economy and facilitate our way of life. The American Society of Civil
Engineers (ASCE) today released its 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure—assigning a
cumulative grade of D to the nation’s infrastructure and noting a five year
investment need of $2.2 trillion from all levels of government and the private sector. Since ASCE’s last assessment in 2005 there has been little change in the condition of the nation’s roads, bridges, drinking water systems and other public works,
and the cost of improvement has increased by more than half a trillion dollars.

“Crumbling infrastructure has a direct impact on our personal and economic health, and the nation’s
infrastructure crisis is endangering our future prosperity,” said ASCE president D. Wayne Klotz, P.E.,
F.ASCE. “Our leaders are looking for solutions to the nation’s current economic crisis. Not only could
investment in these critical foundations have a positive impact, but if done responsibly, it would also provide
tangible benefits to the American people, such as reduced traffic congestion, improved air quality, clean and
abundant water supplies and protection against natural hazards.”

As the nation’s infrastructure receives focused attention from the White House, Congress and the
public, ASCE’s 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure provides an assessment of the condition and
need for investment of 15 infrastructure categories, including, for the first time, levees. While there has been
some improvement in energy since 2005, overall conditions have remained the same for bridges, dams,
drinking water, hazardous waste, inland waterways, public parks and recreation, rail, schools, solid waste
and wastewater, and have worsened in aviation, roads and transit. Security, a category that was added to
the Report Card in 2005, and which received an incomplete grade, has been removed from the list of
assessed categories and added into the methodology used to assess each individual category. Grades
ranged from a high of C+ for solid waste to a low of D for drinking water, inland waterways, levees, roads
and wastewater.

The Report Card also presents five key solutions for raising the nation’s infrastructure GPA. These
include:
· Increasing federal leadership in infrastructure,
· Promoting sustainability and resilience,
· Developing federal, state and regional infrastructure plans,
· Addressing lifecycle
costs and ongoing maintenance and
· Increasing and improving infrastructure investment from all stakeholders.

“The nation’s infrastructure faces some very real problems, problems that pose an equally real
threat to our way of life if they are not addressed appropriately,” said Andrew Herrmann, P.E., F.ASCE,
Report Card for America’s Infrastructure Advisory Council Chair. “However, while it may not happen
overnight, these problems are solvable if we have the right kind of vision and leadership.”

U.S. surface transportation and aviation systems have declined over the past four years, with
aviation and transit dropping from D+ to D, and roads dropping from a D to a nearly failing D.
A three percent annual growth is expected in air travel, and despite recent successes—such as the opening of three
new major runways—travelers continue to face increasing delays and inadequate conditions in the nation’s
airports as a result of the long overdue need to modernize the outdated air traffic control system and the
failure to enact a federal aviation program.

On the country’s roadways, Americans are spending 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic, costing
the economy $78.2 billion a year, or $710 per motorist. Additionally, 45 percent of major urban highways are
congested, and current annual spending is less than half of the actual need to substantially improve
conditions. And, while transit use increased 25 percent from 1995 to 2005, nearly half of American
households still do not have access to bus or rail transit. According to the Federal Transit Administration,
the cost to improve to good conditions is more than twice the current annual federal capital outlay of $9.8
billion.

Of the infrastructure categories that have seen no real improvement, solid waste remains the
highest grade, C+. This is due largely to the fact that more than a third of the 254 million tons of solid waste
produced in the U.S. was recycled or recovered, representing a seven percent increase since 2000, and
that per capita generation has remained relatively constant over the last 20 years. However, the increasing
volume of electronic waste and lack of uniform regulations for disposal creates the potential for high levels
of hazardous materials and heavy metals in the nation’s landfills, which poses a significant threat to public
safety.

Showing no significant improvement or elevated level of decline, the nation’s bridges were assigned
a barely average grade of C. While some progress has been made in recent years, more than one in four
(26 percent) of the nation's bridges remain either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. And, current
investment in bridge construction and maintenance, $10.5 billion, is less than the $17 billion needed
annually to improve current bridge conditions.

Additionally, at a grade of C, public parks and recreation, as well as rail, have shown no tangible
improvement. Despite the $730 billion per year they contribute to the U.S. economy, and the nearly 6.5
million jobs they support, parks, beaches, and other recreational facilities continue to be underfunded. There
has been record spending at the state and local level, but National Park Service facilities face a $7 billion
maintenance backlog. Rail is also facing a significant need for investment—more than $200 billion through
2035. Travel in a freight train is three times as fuel efficient as a truck, and travel on passenger rail uses 20
percent less energy per mile than vehicular travel.

While their shared grade of D may not have dropped in the past four years, dams, hazardous waste
and schools all demonstrate a need for immediate attention. As dams age and downstream development
increases, the number of deficient dams has risen to more than 4,000, including 1,819 high hazard potential
dams. And, over the past six years, for every deficient, high hazard potential dam repaired, nearly two more
were declared deficient.

Redevelopment of brownfields sites over the past five years generated an estimated 191,338 new
jobs and $408 million annually in extra revenues for localities, but federal funding for “Superfund” cleanup of
the nation's worst toxic waste sites continues to decline steadily. In addition, there has been no
comprehensive, authoritative nationwide study of the condition of America’s school buildings in more than a
decade. Currently, the National Education Association’s best estimate to bring the nation’s schools into
good repair is $322 billion.

Debuting on the Report Card at a barely passing grade of D,
the condition of the nation’s levees,
and their impact on public health, safety and welfare, requires significant investment and leadership. More
than 85 percent of the nation's estimated 100,000 miles of levees are locally owned and maintained. The
reliability of many of these levees is unknown, and many are more than 50 years old and were originally
built to protect crops from flooding. With an increase in development behind these levees, the risk to public
health and safety from failure has increased. Rough estimates put the cost of repairing and rehabilitating the
nation’s levees at more than $100 billion.

Also scoring a grade of D, the nation’s drinking water and wastewater systems and inland
waterways face equally difficult problems. Leaking pipes lose an estimated seven billion gallons of clean
drinking water a day, and there is an annual shortfall of at least $11 billion to replace aging facilities that are
near the end of their useful life and to comply with existing and future federal water regulations.

Additionally, aging systems discharge billions of gallons of untreated wastewater into U.S. surface
waters each year, and an estimated $390 billion must be invested over the next 20 years to update or
replace existing systems and build new ones to meet increasing demand. Finally, while the average tow
barge can carry the equivalent of 870 tractor trailer loads, 30 of the 257 locks still in use on the nation’s
inland waterways were built in the 1800s and another 92 are more than 60 years old. The cost to replace
the present system of locks is estimated at more than $125 billion.

The one positive note on the Report Card, energy, rose from a grade of D to D+. This comes from
the progress that has been made in grid reinforcement since 2005 and the substantial investment in
generation, transmission and distribution expected over the next two decades. However, as demand
continues to increase—by 25 percent since 1990—public and government opposition and difficulty in the
permitting processes are restricting much needed modernization, and projected electric utility investment
needs could be as much as $1.5 trillion by 2030.

The 2009 Report Card was developed by an advisory council of 28 civil engineers representing
each of the infrastructure categories, as well as a broad spectrum of civil engineering disciplines. Each
category was evaluated on the basis of capacity, condition, funding, future need, operation and
maintenance, public safety and resilience. A detailed report, which accompanies the grades released today,
will be released on March 25, 2009. For more information, including solutions for solving America’s
infrastructure problems and ASCE’s Principles for Economic Stimulus Investment, visit
www.asce.org/reportcard.

Founded in 1852, ASCE represented more than 146,000 civil engineers worldwide, and is
America’s oldest national engineering society. For more information, visit www.asce.org.
###


Read or download the complete 168 page report at:

http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/sites/default/files/RC2009_full_report.pdf

[tularetom]

1. Gas lines?

[Better Believe It]

4. Here's the link to their Pipeline Division

http://www.asce.org/Content.aspx?id=2147488649

[Better Believe It]

2. What's the state of your State's infrastructure? Find out now and here:

Click on this link:

http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/states

[NJmaverick]

3. Thanks for finally posting something Pro-Obama

no doubt the President has done an outstanding job making this badly neglected issue a priority.

[izquierdista]

5. What a bargain!

That's only HALF of what will be spent by the Pentagon over the next five years.

Something tells me that in five years, the grade will be D- and the military will have lots more toys.

[burrowowl]

6. K&R

[TheKentuckian]

7. Come on folks what's your plan when water doesn't come to the house

and your poo has a problem leaving if you don't give it a ride to a new home.

If we sit her with our thumbs up our ass the wealthy are going to leave us to die with exhausted poison earth, dirty air, and terribly toxic water.

[Better Believe It]

8. Kick for weekend DU'ers

[nightgaunt]

9. Whose infrastructure do the oligarchs care about?

They just won't use those streets and bridges we need repaired. Or they will take them over an make them private to use. Or they will just use helicopters to get around way above us, the milling faceless workers to them. But only if we work at wages too low to survive our economic cost of living.