"The Crumbling of America" can be seen on The History Channel from 5PM to 7PM (edt) today.
This is a HUGE wakeup call.
America's infrastructure is collapsing. Tens of thousands of bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. A third of the nation's highways are in poor or mediocre shape. Massively leaking water and sewage systems are creating health hazards and contaminating rivers and streams. Weakened and under-maintained levees and dams tower over communities and schools. And the power grid is increasingly maxed out, disrupting millions of lives and putting entire cities in the dark. The Crumbling of America explores these problems using expert interviews, on location shooting and computer generated animation to illustrate the kinds of infrastructure disasters that could be just around the bend.
This type of assumption is inaccurate. Bridges all across the US are monintored for wear-and-tear by county highway departments under the supervision of the highway engineers. and funds are available to make repairs or perform maintenance in a timely manner. The number of bridges in a single county is much greater than the average person would believe. Bridge failures rarely are a result of maintenance failures or lack of repairs. They are usually engineering failures.
A third of the nations highways being in mediocre (average") condition is not a failure of maintenance, it is a statistical likelihood.
There is very very little leakage of potable water lines, just not out there.
Sewerage problems are presently under a system of funding that allows them to be inspected constantly and repairs to be made as problems are discovered, and local authorities apply for and get partial funding for all work. There is presently in effect a system in which cities/towns are banned from adding any new residential development until they attain those standards, which in effect limits their growth and their taxing base with they desperately need. It is a self adjusting system, of sticks and carrots. Our streams are the cleanest they've been since the expansion west.
"Weakened and under-maintained levees and dams tower over communities and schools" Not likely. Sure corruption occurs like in New Orleans where money for maintenance and improvements of levees are sidetracked by corrupt politicians who pocket the money, or use it to buy their elections, but very very few schools are built in vulnerable valley drainage systems. Why not focus on those? Punish the owners of the dams with ongoing fines, or require they be drained down to safer levels.
The power grid? why not encourage its development and improvement rather than discouraging it? No electrical utility company wants their capacity to become strained. The worse case is California, and they inhibit the growth of electrical utilities, forcing the import of their electrical power from state further east. It's a political/ governing problem first of all.
When I guess all that film and interview material with private sector engineers is all manufactured just for an entertaining piece by The History Channel. Right?
Your solution seems to be just kill all politicians. How's that worked out for ya so far? If the tea party can demand that Washington listen to their selected complaints, and be successful, then why can't they simply add our crumbling infrastructure to their list?
Because there already is a tried and tested formal process for handling infrastructure maintenance and development, and the problems we have in it come, as usual from our politicians.
Take sewers: cities/towns with sewer systems and treatment plants get their revenue for maintenance and upgrades from the customer base. They also get moneys from tap-on fees. They do not have to accumulate enough money to upgrade, they can leverage enough money to make those with a much smaller amount. But the EPA and state departments of environmental management properly get involved and force they when upgrading to do things they might not want to take the time of resources to do. It may mean abandoning an old plant and going further downstream an build a new one there. but this means building a larger intercepting main line than they ordinarily would think needed, and they just want to get on with it so they can encourage growth and property tax base again. This is a good process, and means all levels of government are involved.
But there are times and places where the local government officials can move the money that would be used to leverage the needed work to pet projects, and they let their plant deterioriate. Again they are forced to pay attention because their constitutents suffer from lack of growth and development, and new jobs fail to materialize for their children as they graduate from high school or college.
The process is self adjusting and regulating if left alone. It has developed over the past 150 years, and works well when not short circuited.
I happen to live between two incorporated population centers. The larger one sees the revenues from sewage treatment as a boondoggle to expand other unrelated city sponsored services; an ice skating arena, a new park, buying a piece of real-estate for some future government expansion of unknown purpose, or some other scheme that would be better left to private enterprise, or at least put off until the budget permits; though I doubt that land speculation has a place in city government...ever. But when these diversions take place the budget soars, and property taxes become unbearable to many. Then the citizens rise up, a new governing body moves in and undoes the harm if the harm hasn't been too great. This is self regulating.
The smaller incorporated population center resolved its sewage plant problems by a process of study, and application, and leveraged financing from the FHA, and has move on. They operate with targetted taxes and revenues from the public they serve. That's because the process is so close to the citizens, and they have an need and an opportunity to be involved, attend meetings, serve on commissions to resolve the deficiencies; the American way.
When the government sends vast sums of moneys out to the precincts it short circuits this regulating system, and sets up an expectation for the same in the future.
The engineers who are involved in this study: I wonder how gainfully employed their businesses are in the work they see as needing to be done. Why not offer their services to any number of local authorities which they identify as those being in need? If the situation is dangerous, or at a tipping point there are plenty of ways to move these critical projects into actualization, and the financing process is there without their usurping it. They seem to be politically motivated in this expose. I don't want to kill any politicians at all; I'd just like them to find another way to seek prominence. This type of movement, if it took hold, would waste vast sums of money, and interupt the process.
