Every four years, the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Report Card for America’s Infrastructure reviews and evaluates the condition and performance of American infrastructure. The ASCE assigns letter grades based on the physical condition and needed investments for improvement. The 2021 Infrastructure Report Card released this month reveals America’s overall GPA is C-. This is the highest overall grade in 20 years that ASCE has been doing this. However, their report found that the long-term infrastructure investment gap continues to grow. That gap has risen from $2.2 trillion over 10 years in the last report to $2.59 trillion in the latest study, which translates to a funding gap of nearly $260 billion per year.
The individual 2021 grades ranged from a B for rail to a D- for transit. Despite some gains, 11 of the 17 categories received a grade in the D range. As you can see in the accompanying chart, five categories –aviation, drinking water, energy, inland waterways, and ports – went up from the last report card in 2017, while one category – bridges – went down. Stormwater is a new category which has no historical comparison. Stormwater, included in the 2021 report card for the first time as a stand-alone category, debuted with a grade of D. The grades are improving where there has been investment.
Drinking water advanced from a D in 2017 to a C- in the latest report card. The improvement reflects the “tremendous strides” that the drinking water sector made during the past four years spurred by the publicity from the water problems in Flint Michigan. The biggest change has been an increase in the pace at which water agencies are replacing their existing waterlines to eliminate lead service lines and waste. In its 2017 report card, the ASCE found that water utilities, on average, were replacing waterlines at a rate of 0.5% per year- a rate that would take 200 years to replace the water lines that only last about 75 years. In this report the ASCEE found that the replacement rate has increased significantly in the last four years, ranging from an average of 1.5 to 4.8 percent, depending on the utility. Water utilities found the will to raise rates to fund these capital projects after decades of underfunding maintenance and capital programs to keep water rates artificially low.
Today a growing number of drinking water utilities are developing asset management plans. It is reported that 29% of water utilities have asset management plans, up from only 20% in the 2017 report card; and another 55% of water utilities are developing asset management plans.
The energy sector has also see some improvement despite the rapid changes being seen in energy regulation. The U.S. energy sector has managed to maintain its power generating capacity even as it undergoes a major shift in the nature of its generation sources. The ongoing transformation from a mainly carbon-based system to one that relies more on renewable energy sources will necessitate extensive new transmission infrastructure to convey electricity from remote energy sources to where the demand is located.
The storm-hardening efforts by power utilities are beginning to make an impact. There is reported to have been a slight decrease in the number of outages, but the widespread power outages that have occurred in recent years in California as a result of wildfires and extreme weather, in Puerto Rico as a result of hurricanes and Texas as a result of extreme weather show just how much investment our power infrastructure needs and regulatory changes that are necessary to improve our systems.
“To build a transmission line, you have to contact, at a minimum, 47 different federal agencies. … It takes 10-plus years to permit a transmission line. We can build them in a year.” Otto Lynch, P.E., F.ASCE, F.SEI “It takes 10-plus years to permit a transmission line,” Lynch says. “We can build them in a year.” Of course, time is money. “There have been some lines (for which) the cost of permitting was five times higher than the cost (to build) the actual line,” he says. Infrastructure is the backbone of the U.S. economy. It is critical to every nation’s prosperity and the public’s health and welfare. For the U.S. economy to be the most competitive in the world, we need a first-class infrastructure system – transport systems that move people and goods efficiently and at reasonable cost by land, water, and air; transmission systems that deliver reliable, low-cost power from a wide range of energy sources; and water systems that drive industrial processes as well as the daily functions in our homes. Yet our investment in infrastructure has not kept up. In the first ASCE Report Card for America’s Infrastructure in 1988, America’s grade was about a C+. We have failed to maintain and expand the infrastructure built by our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents.
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