Source: ASCE
By Kevin Policarpo
American infrastructure has been in stagnation for several decades with a few areas being graded at B or C according to the American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) 2021 Report Card For America’s Infrastructure[1], which is published every 4 years. Progress has been made recently to rectify this issue, with the overall grade of the nation’s public works being at a C-. This is a small part of President Joe Biden’s infrastructure Plan, which will aim to repair and improve infrastructure across the nation in the face of debilitation, neglect, overuse, and changing weather. While there are several promising solutions to improve all sectors of industry, it will take many years and billions of dollars to bring them to high grade status.
Making an Excel sheet is the most obvious method of displaying the information in a manner for most people to understand. The first page should be a list of the various sectors with their names and grades in separate columns. If needed, having the various states and their grades in the same infrastructure sectors should be used with the overall grades of the nation being the last column.
The next page should have the numerical statistics. These can include percentages of the infrastructure that is in poor condition compared the amount that is in fair or good condition, funding gaps, how much they are affected by weather, and how much were designed to be used.
Finally, there should be summaries of the status of the infrastructure sectors. They should be short and to the point, mainly paragraphs to have enough information since single sentences would be difficult to do.
Here is a list of the summaries I have made which could be examples used for the paper:
- Aviation D-: Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, US airports had been dealing with several issues: The number of passengers traveling via air increased to 1.2 billion passengers per year. Meanwhile flight service only increased to 10.2 million flights per year. These delays has led to 96 million delay minutes for airline passengers in 2019. [2] Current airport infrastructure is not able to meet the needs of a growing passenger base prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The airport system was projected to deal with a funding gap of $111 billion prior to the outbreak, and it has increased due to the drop in passengers. Luckily, Congressional funding has increased to over $15 billion between 2017 to 2020 for improvements. The additional investments are showing promising results through improved economic performance from the airports.[3]
- Bridges C: Currently, 42% of all 617,000 bridges are over 50 years old with 7.5% of them being structurally weak. The number of weakened bridges could go up as they experience up to 178 million trips per year and continue to age. A recent estimate for bridge repair across the country is at $125 billion. To improve the state of the bridges. The United States must increase rebuilding funding to around $22.7 billion per year. Additionally, there should be a systemic program for all the states to follow that focuses on preventive maintenance and deterioration.[4]
- Dams D: Over the past 20 years, the number of dams at risk of failure and hazard potential to surrounding areas has doubled. The current estimates put the number of high-hazard dams at over 2,300 dams out of 91,000. These dams are seen as high risk due to the potential damage they could cause if they fail. Luckily, around 81% of these high-risk dams have Emergency Action Plans set up for them. Emergency Action Plans (EAPs) are procedures that detail proper responses to various emergencies. Since 2018, 81% of the 2,300 deteriorating dams have such plans in place for future incidents, compared to 5% in 2015.[5]
- Drinking Water C-: The current U.S. drinking water system composes 2.2 million miles of underground pipes and is aging and underfunded. There are 6 billion gallons of safe water being lost due to water main breaks per year. However, steps are being taken to repair the whole system. In 2020 around 12,000 miles of pipes across the country were being replaced. Additionally, about 33% of all drinking water authorities have asset management programs in place to improve efficiency in maintenance and operations with limited resources. Water authorities, who are groups responsible for distributing clean drinking water are using several methods to protect the water. These include technologies like sensors and smart water quality monitoring to improve resilience along with updating risk assessments and emergency response plans.[6]
- Energy C-: Over the past few years, investments in reliable pipelines to transmit and distribute electricity have increased. Annual spending on high voltage transmission has increased to over $20 billion along with expansions on the number of distribution systems. However, over 90% of outages in recent years have been due to severe weather events. To counter this, additional transmission, and distribution infrastructure with improvements in reliability will be needed along with smarter planning for future plants.[7]
- Hazardous Waste D+: Around 35 million tons of harmful waste is accumulated per year in the US. The current capacity of hazardous waste sites is sufficient for treating and disposing harmful waste. However, mitigation at older sites where the waste was produced but was not disposed of has stalled. There are one thousand three hundred highly contaminated so called Superfund sites in the United States that have had little to no cleanup activities in years. The budget for waste disposal work has stayed at around $1.1 billion for the past 10 years. This is causing problems as the dollar’s value has been decreasing over the years, meaning that the Superfund budget is less in overall value. The stagnant budget is due to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) getting the same amount in their annual budget. In addition, 60% of the Superfund sites are in areas where they can be impacted by severe weather events caused by climate change.[8]
- Inland Waterways D+: The navigation channels, locks, and dams in rivers such as the Mississippi, Columbia, Sacramento, and San Joaquin make up 12,000 miles of navigable waterways. These waterways help to move immense amounts of cargo. Recent investments have been reversing the effects of decades of neglect and declining infrastructure. This will go a long way to tackling the $6.8 billion backlog in construction projects and continual lock closures. The lock closures also impact travel time down the waterways, costing around 5,000 hours of delays between 2015 and 2019. According to the US Department of Agriculture, the delays end up costing around $44 million dollars per year, impacting industries that rely on the waterways for business.[9]
- Levees D: Up to $2.3 trillion in property value, 4,500 schools, and over 17 million people across the country are in proximity to levees. Currently, the US has 30,000 miles of levees throughout the country with an estimated 10,000 miles under local ownership. The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) estimates that $21 billion will be needed to maintain and improve the nation’s levees. Around 15% of America’s levees are in poor condition and are listed as being high risk. This is also compounded by the effects of severe weather events which exacerbate the deterioration of the current levee system. To tackle this issue, a national inventory of all levees will be needed to be taken along with giving communities resources to assist with repairs and make them more resilient to floods.[10]
- Ports B-: The nation’s 300+ coastal and inland ports support up to 30.8 million jobs and 26% of the country’s GDP in 2018. The ports’ tenants propose investing $163 billion between 2021 and 2025 to increase capacity and efficiency levels of the ports to keep up growing levels of tonnage and ship size. However, the ports have a funding gap of over $12 billion for use in dredging operations and infrastructure projects. Smaller and inland ports have exceptional challenges in getting federal funding for maintaining infrastructure. In addition, the roads railways that connect the ports to areas further inland are often in poor condition. In the full ASCE Infrastructure Report Card, “A 2017 Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) report collected pavement condition readings from the 798 designated freight intermodal connectors and found that 37% of pavement condition was rated as poor.”[11] In fact, only 9% of the intermodal system is rated at or above good while the rest is either at or below fair condition.[12]
- Public Parks D+: Americans spend hours at parks for recreational purposes. These recreational sessions help support over 7.6 million jobs at the parks. However, investment in state and local parks has been lagging. This slowdown in business has led to deterioration of trails, parking areas, drinking water distribution, etc. The National Park Service‘s maintenance backlog has grown to nearly 10% over the last ten years and has over half of National Park assets in poor condition. Fortunately, the Great American Outdoors Act of 2020 will increase federal funding for both state and public parks. Currently, state parks and public parks have backlogs of $5.6 billion dollars and $60 billion dollars respectively in deferred maintenance costs. In addition, local governments, utilities, and nonprofits have been working on projects which provide multiple benefits to the communities and people, including spaces that serve as flood control.[13]
- Rail B: The 140,000 miles of rails in the US is divided between freight and passenger rail lines. Freight rails are supported by direct shipper fees, while the passenger rail lines funded via government and passenger support. However, governmental support has been lacking as of late. The rail system is currently dealing with $45.2 billion. The Northeast Corridor (NEC), the busiest railroad segment in the nation has been hit hard by the decline of the rail infrastructure. The NEC is mainly owned by Amtrak, providing 18.8 million trips for 12.5 million passengers in 2019.[14] This neglect has caused 328,000 minutes of delays, annual delays worth around 700 train trips between Boston, Massachusetts, and DC for passenger rail lines and freight rail lines.[15]
- Roads D: Roads and highways are crucial for moving both goods and people. Over 40% of the network is in poor condition. With the growing backlog for the road infrastructure, Americans are being forced to pay over $1,000 a year in delays and fuel loss. Additionally, 36,000 people die per year due to road-based accidents and is increasing. All levels of government, local, state, federal, will have to prioritize strategies to improve current road networks to increase public safety and makes plan for what future roadways will confront.[16]
- Schools D+: There is comprehensive data source on the national level that has collected information about all K-12 schools. Available data states that 53% of public-school districts are in need for funding to update or replace multiple buildings. More than 33% of US Schools use portable buildings to deal with capacity constraints. However, 45% of these portable buildings are in poor or fair condition. Meanwhile state capital funding for schools were cut by 31% in 2017. Compared to the amount of state capital funding in 2008, this is a loss of around $20 billion dollars. This has reduced the funding gap for schools to around $38 billion per year. Improvements for the public schools are needed badly, especially as they serve as emergency shelters and community resource facilities during disasters.[17]
- Solid Waste C+: The US produces hundreds of millions of tons of solid waste per year and has been increasing over the years. Of the total amount of solid waste, 53% of it is sent to landfills, 25% is recycled, 10% is composted, and 13% is burned up to produce energy. The private sector mainly funds and manages the municipal solid waste (MSW) plants. Over the years, the plants have been confronting plateauing recycling rates, contaminants being found in old landfills, and the changing global markets. Funding is needed to invest in a national overall solid waste infrastructure for MSW to be utilized as a resource.[18]
- Stormwater D: The nation’s stormwater systems include concrete storm sewers, roadside ditches, flood control reservoirs, rain gardens and natural riverine systems. Continual expansion of cities and suburbs has been outpacing stormwater utilities, and it is causing more damage during flooding which results in $9 billion in damage per year. Around 600,000 miles of rivers and streams and over 13 million acres of lakes, pounds, and reservoirs are listed as impaired. While the stormwater infrastructure has gotten more federal funding, it only averages around $250 million,[19] which is not enough to cover the $8 billion funding gap in infrastructure to fulfill current regulations. With few options for sourcing funds, “…complicated governance and ownership structures, expansive networks of aging assets, increasingly stringent water quality regulations, and …climate change projections…”[20] , the overall system is declining in effectiveness. The current state of the legacy systems requires upgrades to address flooding in urban areas and climate change. In 2020, “…the Water Environment Federation’s National MS4 Needs Assessment estimated that the sector’s annual funding gap is $8 billion among MS4 permittees.”[21] In addition, ASCE carried out an economic analysis which showed “…a water related infrastructure investment gap of $434 billion over 10 years for drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater combined.”[22][23]
- Transit D-: Public transit is key for people across the country, providing access to jobs, school, shopping, etc. However, 45% of Americans lack transit access. In addition, most of the current system is aging, and agencies lack the funds to keep these systems running in good order. The transit industry currently has a $176 billion backlog in transit investments, which is projected to rise to $270 billion 2029.[24] This increase is due to the transit system’s operating budgets relying on fare revenue and funding from both local and state governments. If these deficiencies and transit spending shortfalls are not addressed, cutbacks will result in extended delays and reliability issues. These issues in turn will lead to increasing congestion and negative impacts on both the economy and air quality.[25]
- Wastewater D+: Currently, within the United States operates there are over 16,000 wastewater treatment plants. Of these, 81% of capacity with 15% reaching or exceeding their limits. As urban areas grow; more pressure will be put on current wastewater treatment plants to keep up. While some improvements have been made, these efforts have slowed down recently. Estimates state that utilities spent over $3 billion in 2019 to replace around 4,700 miles of pipeline across the country. To effectively manage the entire wastewater infrastructure system, wastewater treatment plants are engaging in asset management plans. These plans center around improving the efficiency of the plants’ limited resources by extending “…the lifespan of assets and prioritize limited funding.”[26] Recently, the asset management plans have allowed up to 62% of surveyed utilities at the plants to proactively manage maintenance on the wastewater infrastructure. Plans to deal with the investment gap of $81 billion include resilience-focused planning and new innovations which could produce useful byproducts or save on costs from wastewater treatment.[27]
FOOTNOTES
[1] 2021 ACSE Report Card For America’s Infrastructure, https://infrastructurereportcard.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/National_IRC_2021-report.pdf, Accessed June 27, 2021
[2] 2021 ACSE Report Card For America’s Infrastructure – Executive Summary, https://infrastructurereportcard.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/2021-IRC-Executive-Summary-1.pdf (p.11)
[3] Ibid (p.11)
[4] Ibid (p.11)
[5] Ibid (p.12)
[6] Ibid (p.12)
[7] Ibid (p.13)
[8] Ibid (p.13)
[9] Ibid (p.14)
[10] Ibid (p.14)
[11] 2021 ACSE Report Card For America’s Infrastructure – Ports, https://infrastructurereportcard.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Ports-2021.pdf (p.4)
[12] Ibid (p.15)
[13] Ibid (p.15)
[14] 2021 ACSE Report Card For America’s Infrastructure – Rail, https://infrastructurereportcard.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Rail-2021.pdf (p.4)
[15] Ibid (p.16)
[16] Ibid (p.16)
[17] Ibid (p.17)
[18] Ibid (p.17)
[19] Ibid (p.18)
[20] Ibid (p.18)
[21] 2021 ACSE Report Card For America’s Infrastructure Stormwater, https://infrastructurereportcard.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Stormwater-2021.pdf (p.6)
[22] 2021 ACSE Report Card For America’s Infrastructure Stormwater, https://infrastructurereportcard.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Stormwater-2021.pdf (p.6)
[23] Ibid (p.18)
[24] 2021 ACSE Report Card For America’s Infrastructure – Transit, https://infrastructurereportcard.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Transit-2021.pdf (p,4)
[25] Ibid (p.18)
[26] 2021 ACSE Report Card For America’s Infrastructure Wastewater, https://infrastructurereportcard.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Wastewater-2021.pdf (p.9)
[27] Ibid (p.19)