NASHVILLE, TN – Every four years the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) grades the nation’s infrastructure. The ASCE released America’s 2021 Report Card last week. The overall GPA counting seventeen categories was C-minus.
There were 22 weather and climate disasters in the U.S. that cost at least $1 billion in 2020, the most in history, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
If the U.S. does not pay its overdue infrastructure bill, ASCE said by 2039 the U.S. economy will lose $10 trillion in growth and exports will decline by $2.4 trillion. More than 3 million jobs will be lost in 2039. In addition, each American household will bear $3,300 in hidden costs per year.
Public Transit scored a dismal D-minus. Eleven category grades were in the D range that is considered “poor” condition and at risk. Dams, levees, roads, and stormwater each scored “D”.
Only rail scored B and ports B-minus. Even so, the report card was better than the last one. The 2017 overall GPA was D+.
“This not a report card anyone would be proud to take home. We have not made significant enough investments to maintain infrastructure that in some cases was built more than 50 years ago,” said ASCE Executive Director Thomas Smith. He warned our quality of life will suffer and we will pay the price in significant economic losses, higher costs to consumers, businesses and manufacturers if we don’t act urgently.
For example, there is a water main break every two minutes and an estimated 6 billion gallons of treated water lost each day in the U.S., enough to fill over 9,000 swimming pools. Drinking water needs in Tennessee are an estimated $8.7 billion.
“Forty percent of the roads in the United States are in poor or fair condition. And some of them are local roads. Not all of them are interstates. The average motorist spends $1000 a year on wasted time, fuel, and repairs due to those poor roads,” said Maria Lehman, ASCE committee member.
In Tennessee, 5% of roads are in poor condition and each motorist pays $209 per year in costs due to driving on bad roads.
Lehman said there has been an increase in pedestrian fatalities and called for all levels of government to make strategic investments in the road system. When engineers talk about our “aging infrastructure” they include roads, bridges, dams, schools, and parks. Tennessee schools have an estimated capital expenditure gap of $768 million.
Bridges are inspected about every two years and when they can no longer support the weight they did when first built, they are weight posted. When you see a Weight Limit sign on the side of the road, it means the bridge you are about to cross is not in good shape.
Lehman said there are 16,000 bridges in the U.S. that are structurally deficient and getting worse every year. At the current repair rate it will take until 2071 to catch up on needed maintenance. Tennessee has about 20,000 bridges. In 2019, 890 of them needed fixing.
Americans produce 270 million tons of waste every day. That’s about 4.5 pound per person per day. Half of it winds up in landfills. Solid waste got a grade of C+, unchanged from four years ago. Tennessee produces about 6 million tons of waste every day.
“We need to invest in a national plan for waste infrastructure,” said Mike Tilchin.
“There are about 1,300 Superfund sites in the United State where cleanup activities are either incomplete or not yet begun,” he said. Tennessee has 30 hazardous waste sites. Hazardous waste got a D+, unchanged from 2017. Tilchin said climate change is only going to make it harder to deal with the poisons we bury in the ground and unless we do a better job, we will be living with them for generations to come.
Dams and levees got a “D”. There are 91,000 dams in the U.S. and 2300 need repairs or an upgrade. Tennessee has 276 high hazard dams. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened the floodgates of Old Hickory dam to prevent it from failing and causing even worse flooding in May 2010. Middle Tennessee got 13 inches of rain in two days that flooded downtown Nashville and outlying areas.
The ASCE hoped infrastructure would get funding in the $1.9 billion COVID-19 relief bill. However an extension of BART, a subway system in the San Francisco Bay Area, was dropped from the bill last Tuesday. And a $1.5 million bridge from upstate New York and Canada also got cut.
