Courtesy of Michael Panzner, Financial Armageddon
Instead of squandering trillions on reckless imperialism and pointless wars, giveaways and bailouts for the rich, ill-conceived public works projects, bloated and dysfunctional bureaucracies, and a safety net that’s sown the seeds of its own demise, shouldn’t we have been saving for and investing in something that matters — our nation’s infrastructure? Unfortunately, as the following reports make clear, it looks like the bills are now coming due at a time when the public purse is almost bare. Third World America, here we come are!
"The Infrastructure Alarm" (The Post and Courier)
Severe spending restraint is a fact of life for governments at all levels across the land. But if sweeping budget reductions gut our already-insufficient investment in public infrastructure, Americans could end up paying a terrible price for an illusory bargain.
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell brought that urgent message to Charleston last week. Co-chair of Building America’s Future, a bipartisan coalition of elected officials sounding the infrastructure alarm, he said in a visit to this newspaper: "We are in serious danger of our infrastructure collapsing. The threat to public safety is enormous."
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Gov. Rendell, formerly the mayor of Philadelphia, joined Charleston Mayor Joe Riley in decrying our decaying infrastructure’s detrimental effects on not just safety but quality-of-life issues, including ever-growing traffic congestion and carbon emissions. The second-term governor offered this bottom line: "We’ve forgotten how businesses grow."
Gov. Rendell served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1999-2001. Now he’s teamed up with two prominent Republicans — outgoing California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg — who are his BAF co-chairs.
They correctly cite the growing gap between the infrastructure improvements being made by other economic powers and the U.S. — and the rising risks that without significant, timely upgrades in our roads, airports and port facilities, we will keep losing critical ground in the global marketplace.
Public infrastructure spending in the U.S. has dropped to less than 2.5 percent of gross domestic product. Some of our key international competitors commit three times as much of their GDPs to this vital purpose.
From a BAF fact sheet: "One-third of America’s major roads are in poor or mediocre condition, and 45 percent of major urban highways are congested."
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America’s infrastructure needs aren’t confined to transportation and commerce. For example, our overburdened and aging electrical grid increasingly suffers costly brownouts.
"EPA Issues Water Infrastructure Sustainability Policy" (WaterWorld)
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued its long-awaited Clean Water and Drinking Water Infrastructure Sustainability Policy.
EPA said U.S. communities face challenges in making upgrades and repairs to their aging sewer systems and treatment facilities. It said that making the infrastructure last longer while increasing its cost-effectiveness is essential to protecting human health and the environment — and maintaining safe drinking water.
"Aging Oil Rigs, Pipelines Expose Gulf to Accidents" (Wall Street Journal)
The deadly explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in April set off a fierce battle over deep-sea oil drilling aboard huge, state-of-the art vessels. But that debate has largely ignored what many experts say could be a bigger threat: The troubled state of offshore infrastructure that remains in place long after wells are drilled.
High-tech drilling rigs make up only a small piece of the Gulf’s energy infrastructure, a vast network of tens of thousands of fixed wells, hundreds of permanent platforms and thousands of miles of undersea pipelines. This network together accounts for nearly a third of the oil produced in the U.S. and more than 10% of the natural gas.
Much of that infrastructure is decades old. Roughly half of the Gulf’s more than 3,000 production platforms are 20 years old or more, and a third date back to the 1970s or earlier, long before the development of modern construction standards. More than half have been operating longer than their designers intended, according to federal regulators.
Older structures are more prone to accidents, especially fires, and more dangerous for workers. According to a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal accident records, platforms that are 20 years old or more accounted for more than 60% of fires and nearly 60% of serious injuries aboard platforms in 2009.
"There is an infrastructure issue confronting the industry," says Charles Swanson, a managing partner with Ernst & Young’s Oil & Gas Center in Houston. "We’re reaching a point now where we’re not going to be able to ignore it any longer."
"Budget Woes Force State Parks to Delay Maintenance" (Associated Press)
KAISER, Mo. — At state parks across the nation, this is the toll of the deepening budget crisis and years of financial neglect: crumbling roads, faltering roofs, deteriorating restrooms.
Electrical and sewer systems are beginning to give out, too, as are scores of park buildings, some of them built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression. In a few places, aging bridges have been detoured and tunnels blocked off because of falling debris.
The tough economy has made money scarcer for administrators at some of the country’s most treasured public spaces who have been forced to postpone maintenance and construction projects, creating a huge backlog of unfinished work that would cost billions of dollars to complete.
Park managers say they try to funnel money to the most urgent needs. Others have received help from private groups or volunteers to tackle work they cannot afford to finish on their own.
"We do what we can," said Denny Bopp, a supervisor for the Missouri district that includes the Lake of the Ozarks State Park, more than 150 miles southwest of St. Louis. The park’s centerpiece is a huge man-made reservoir that attracted more than a million fishermen, campers, boaters and vacationers in 2010.
Many states had backlogs long before the economy started to decline. But the lack of revenue has allowed more sites to decay, and no one can say how long the work will have to wait. At the Lake of the Ozarks, the list of needed repairs includes a historic home with a severely sagging roof and holes in the porch, and a restroom facility partially covered in moss.
"Is The USA Becoming An Aging Country?" (InsiderIowa.com)
I have been writing, commenting in video reports, and blogging for the Des Moines Register and at InsiderIowa.com on the declining infrastructure of the United States. From collapsing bridges to potholed roads, from ancient airport radar to aging natural gas pipeline explosions our country is getting old.
How we can refurbish and renovate the public as well as private tools we need to live modern lives remains a challenge and a puzzle.
We are so short term oriented in politics and in business and commerce that costly and routine replacements are not attractive investments. Thus, spending huge capital on these mundane expenses is neither glamorous nor rewarded.
Instead we rush from one new project to the next, from one product to the next. The past investments lie unattended, rusting and deteriorating.
It has been said that the true measure of civilization is the ability of society to maintain it’s infrastructure – to paint and pave and keep in working order the roads, bridges, sewers, vehicles, equipment, air traffic facilities, ports, power grid and other unglamorous infrastructure.
By that measure the United States is a failing civilization.
"America’s Capital Investment Deficit" (Washington Post)
"Lose weight and get fit" is a good New Year’s resolution. Not necessarily for you, dear readers, as half of you are extremely handsome and the other half, stunningly beautiful (and all of you have great taste in newspapers). But for the government, it’s spot on.
Of course, the government is constantly talking about losing a few inches around the deficit. What worries me, though, is that the "get fit" part will get forgotten. The government can no more cut its way to a strong economy than a person can starve himself to health. Andy Stern, the former president of the SEIU and a member of the president’s fiscal commission, nails the point in his dissent to the commission’s final report. America, he says, has two deficits: The budget deficit we’re all used to hearing about. And the investment deficit that often goes unmentioned.
The two deficits are more alike than people realize. Larry Summers, the outgoing director of the National Economics Council, explains it well: "You run a deficit both when you borrow money and when you defer maintenance that needs to be done. Either way, you’re imposing a cost on future generations." A dollar in delayed road repairs and a dollar in borrowed money are not, in other words, that different: Both mean someone is going to have to spend a dollar later. In 2011, America should stop passing that buck.
Infrastructure is the easiest place to start. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that the nation needs about $2.2 trillion in infrastructure repairs and upgrades merely to bring the existing infrastructure up to "good condition." But has America’s rallying cry really gone from "We’re No. 1" to "We’re only $2.2 trillion away from good condition"? How inspiring.
Our runways are clogged, our rail system is decrepit, and our levees – well, the ASCE gave our levees a D-minus – and its report came out four years after Hurricane Katrina. But in 2011, infrastructure is more than roads, rails and runways. The United States lags the rest of the developed world in broadband speed, penetration and cost. The country has no smart grid to speak of. We don’t just need to bring our infrastructure up to "good condition." We need to make it better.
