Next month The American Society for Civil Engineers (ASCE)
will release a new
report card that will grade our nations infrastructure in
several different categories and the results don’t sound promising.
In 2009 the ASCE’s report card gave the
United State’s infrastructure an overall grade of D. Multiple categories including drinking water, inland
waterways, roads, levees and wastewater even received a D- and the highest
scoring category, solid waste, only managed a C+. Furthermore, an international infrastructure ranking was put
together in 2011 that has the United States ranked in
23rd place. That is a whole 6 spots
behind Barbados and just 2 spots in front of Namibia, impressive huh? All in all the previous ASCE report
card estimated that 5 year investment of 2.2 trillion dollars needed to made in
order to help our infrastructure turn the corner and I’m afraid now it may be
more.
As the
anticipation of the report grows civil engineers are
beginning to wonder just how we are going to keep our nations infrastructure
from falling apart. With the
government currently more concerned about fixing our economy and spending money
on defense, funding for a total infrastructure reboot seems to be a distant dream. If this issue keeps getting worse it
could cause our public to lose faith in civil engineers. If this were to happen then I believe
we could see less people choosing to become civil engineers and thus have less
people around to solve this great problem.
However, the crumbling of our nations infrastructure will
not just effect the engineers struggling to keep it standing it will also affect
the average citizen. Civil engineers now fear that without more funding by 2020
our crumbling infrastructure could cost American families on average
$3,100 per year. Furthermore, an increased deterioration of our highway system
will cause increased traffic, and higher shipping costs. If drinking water systems are not
improved then our population will see an increased risk in contamination of
drinking water and maybe a shortage of it all together. Lastly, if levees are not improved then
we risk experiencing more devastating effects from natural disasters such as
Hurricane Katrina.
All in all the failing of our nations infrastructure is seen
as the biggest issue facing our nations civil engineers. There was once a time when the United
States had an infrastructure that was second to none but time has worn it down
and now it threatens the very fabric this nation is woven of. When the report comes out in March the
citizens of the United States will hopefully become more aware of the serious
deficiencies our infrastructure withholds. This awareness will hopefully bring about more funding that
will help civil engineers save our infrastructure before it collapses all
together.
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i think this is just a logical issue of the economy, as the economy becomes weak, sector such as infrastructure are not considered as priorities, so they experience the most budget cut, which is very unfortunate.
ReplyDeleteThis was a very intersting post. I did not relize that americas infrastructure was so bad. It kind of makes me happy to be going into civil engineering though, because assuming that the government starts fixing the infrastructure than that means there will be alot of job openings.
ReplyDeleteI was unaware of such a deficiency in the infrastructure within the country. Being from a small town, I tend to forget there is a whole lot more out there. This is a difficult fact to face since 2020 will soon be upon us, which isn't enough time to make all the changes needed.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that our infrastructure was that bad. This was a very interesting read, it makes me think of situations like the I-35 bridge and shows how important investing in infrastructure is.
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