Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/860257
A mid the ruins of the health care bill, we learned what's next on the Trump Administration's agenda. One guess: It's not infrastructure. The 42 in the headline is a random number, and my point is this: Infrastructure has become a permanent resident in the anteroom of Congressional attention. There, to the discomfort of seemingly no one, we've staked out a homeless shelter, patched with scraps of trillion-dollar spending promises. The numbers now apparently leave everyone numb. The American Society of Civil Engineer's 2017 report card pegged our highway and bridge repair backlog at $836 billion. Yawn. There are more than 2,170 high-hazard potential dams in the United States. Shrug. The EPA estimates $271 billion is needed to meet wastewater infrastructure demands from 56 million new users over the next 25 years. Next. The Minneapolis, Minnesota, I-35 bridge collapse was 10 years ago this month. The Flint, Michigan, water crisis first grabbed national attention two years ago. And every four years, the ASCE issues its report card, which since 1998, has given the United States a solid D or D-plus. Hands are rung when this report is released…for a day. But these are the big narratives. The true tell is in the day-to-day stories. An inspection diver discovers a crack 30 feet below the water in a Townsends Inlet toll bridge pier, closing the bridge connecting two New Jersey seaside communities during both Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. A television inspection of a sewer line shows a large hole in the line underneath Johnson Street in Dowagiac, Michigan, closing down the street. A storm sewer underneath a walkway in Madison, Wisconsin, fails, creating a large sinkhole. And two months after the drama in Oroville, California, an earthen dam at the Scheckler Reservoir outside of Fallon, Nevada, develops a hole, threatening a nearby highway. Most of these recent stories are not dramatic tales. But these smaller stories, strung together, highlight the cracks, holes and too-soft places of the structures that support our everyday lives. It's a pity that collectively they don't seem to move the needle. But then neither do the major headlines. When something big happens again – and it will – predictably there will be laments about the sorry state of our inner workings. The ASCE report card again will be quoted innumerable times. Individual Congressional delegates again will pledge to put infrastructure on the front burner. But will any of this prompt the nation to make a true commitment to accomplish this basic civic responsibility? I'm losing my inherent optimism. EquipmentWorld.com | August 2017 9 on record | by Marcia Gruver Doyle MGruver@randallreilly.com Same story, 42nd verse