America the Deteriorating

NOTE: This is copied & pasted, its real news, sometimes I'm serious about shit.

Top Stories - Reuters
By Alan Elsner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. roads, bridges, sewers and dams are crumbling and need a $1.6 trillion overhaul but prospects for improvement are grim, the American Society of Civil Engineers said in a report issued on Wednesday.

The group's first report since 2001 looked at 15 categories of public infrastructure, assigning each a letter grade. Overall, the nation's infrastructure received a D, down from a D+ four years ago.

"If we treated our own homes like we treat our infrastructure, we'd all live in shacks," said ASCE president William Henry.

Donald Plusquellic, Democratic mayor of Akron, Ohio, and president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, blamed a lack of political will over many years compounded by the policy of tax cuts pursued by President Bush.

"I don't know of a single tax cut that's replaced a bridge. When that bridge fails, killing people, nobody's going to care whether those people were Republicans or Democrats," he said.

The society estimated the cost of bringing infrastructure to an acceptable level at $1.6 trillion over five years from government and the private sector. The report was compiled by 24 top engineers who analyzed published material and surveyed 2,000 engineers in the field.

The report said that since 2001, the conditions of the country's roads, drinking water system, public transit, wastewater disposal, hazardous waste disposal, navigable waterways and energy system had worsened.

The nation's drinking water system alone needed a public investment of $11 billion a year to replace facilities, comply with regulations and meet future needs. But federal funding reached less than 10 percent of this amount. As a result, aging wastewater systems were discharging billionsof gallons of untreated sewage into surface waters each year, the report said.

Poor roads cost U.S. motorists $54 billion a year in repairs and operating costs while Americans spent 3.5 billion hours a year stuck in traffic jams.

The country's power transmission system also needed to be modernized, the report said. While demand continued to rise, transmission capacity failed to keep pace and actually fell by 2 percent in 2001.

As of 2003, 27 percent of the nation's bridges were structurally deficient or obsolete, a slight improvement from 28.5 percent in 2000.

But since 1998, the number of unsafe dams in the country rose by 33 percent to more than 3,500.