Infrastructure under stress

Last night I watched the excellent History special "The Crumbling of America". This documentary raised several areas of concern for every American. They detailed several classes of infrastructure that are degrading quickly:

Bridges

Dams - Some states, such as Alabama, do not even have a dam inspector.

Levees - Surprisingly, the state most in danger is California, particularly Sacamento.

Roads

Sewers

Water Mains - Montgomery Co. MD, a rich suburb of DC, was singled out in this segment.

For anyone who has drived around the Rust Belt (e.g. Detroit) this will not come as any surprise. As a country, we spent several decades and a lot of money building this infrastructure. But since the boom in the 50s and 60s the state and federal governments have not taken action to properly maintain these roads, generally because they were too busy spending money on other items, which they deemed more important.

At this point, it will likely cost several trillion dollars to repair our infrastructure. Some of this will be done with the recent stimulus package. While republicans may balk at this figure and claim that it is the responsibility of the states, the states simply do not have the money to undertake this project. Once the tap water shuts off for weeks due to major water main breaks, or a bridge near your house fails and you need to drive an extra 50 miles to work each day, I think this issue would hit home with any American.

This is going to cost a lot to fix. This is also not a partisan issue. Today in Detroit, the democratic city council voted against an increase in the sewer/water tax. Sure, people in Detroit may have trouble affording an increased water bill; but if the infrastructure which delivers and cleans the water fails, they will be paying a lot more.