Editor’s Comments: What’s It Going to Cost Us?

June 7, 2016

One week last month, May 16–23, was designated Infrastructure Week. Its purpose was to make more people aware of the need to maintain and upgrade the nation’s infrastructure and of the role it plays in just about everything we do. As Infrastructure Week’s website puts it, “Roads, bridges, rails, ports, airports, pipes, the power grid, broadband…infrastructure matters to the goods we ship and the companies that make and sell them; it matters to our daily commutes and our summer vacations, to drinking water from our faucets, to the lights in our homes, and ultimately to every aspect of our daily lives.”

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) earlier this year issued a report called Failure to Act: Closing the Infrastructure Investment Gap for America’s Economic Future. It’s fairly blunt in its assessment of what our deteriorating infrastructure is going to cost us, not only as a nation, but also personally. If we don’t address the funding gaps at all, it predicts, “the US is expected to lose nearly $4 trillion in GDP by 2025 and $18 trillion in GDP over the 25 year period of 2016 to 2040, averaging over $700 billion per year.” In addition, it says, “From 2016 to 2025, each household will lose almost $3,400 each year in disposable income due to infrastructure deficiencies,” and those annual losses will only continue to grow, spurred by factors like increased travel times, more expensive goods and services, an eroding US trade position, and ultimately higher unemployment.

The report looks at many different sectors, such as surface transportation (which has the biggest gap between current investment trends and anticipated needs), water and wastewater, electricity, and various other transportation sectors. You can download the full ASCE report to see ASCE’s methodology and assumptions in reaching these figures.

We here at Forester Media have been taking our own look at the state of the infrastructure. Leading up to Infrastructure Week, our editors interviewed a number of people throughout the industries served by our respective magazines: Business Energy, Energy Storage Solutions, Erosion Control, Grading & Excavation Contractor, MSW Management, Stormwater, and Water Efficiency. We asked all of them the same four questions:

  1. Which infrastructure projects should be given priority? Roads and bridges? Dams and levees? Water supply? Electrical grid?
  2. Is there a solution to long-term infrastructure funding?
  3. What kind of harm is the current state of our infrastructure doing to the economy and the community?
  4. What can various government entities—from local to federal—do to attract private sector support and investment?

Interestingly, many responses—even from people involved more with water and stormwater systems than with transportation—ranked roads and bridges as one of the highest priorities. They had diverse ideas about funding and about the involvement the private sector should have—or not—in building and maintaining various pieces of the infrastructure. Some saw regional differences in how we should set priorities. Although it’s a just a small sampling of professionals in these industries, it provides some interesting reading and a glimpse into what’s uppermost on our colleagues’ minds.

You can read their responses here. And please add your own thoughts, either by leaving a message on the website, or by e-mailing [email protected]. What are your answers to those four questions? 

About the Author

Janice Kaspersen

Janice Kaspersen is the former editor of Erosion Control and Stormwater magazines.