NO PLAN FOR INFRASTRUCTURE

When Michigan Governor, Rick Snyder stepped up to the mike yesterday and declared that there’s no immediate plan to replace Flint, Michigan’s corroded lead pipes, despite the fact that toxic lead has been leaching from those pipes into homes and already poisoned thousands of Flint residents, he wasn’t saying anything about infrastructure that the public hasn’t heard before. There’s no real plan at any level of government to repair or replace our aging infrastructure.

Aging American infrastructure isn’t a new problem. It’s been well-documented and publicized. We already know there are over 61,000 structurally deficient bridges in America and 215 million people cross them daily. It’s no secret that 162,000 miles of highway in the United States are in need of resurfacing and/or reconstruction. The number of potholes out there probably reaches several hundred million. It’s been documented that thousands of miles of natural gas and water pipelines in cities and towns are in desperate need of replacement, but everywhere you go, the response is the same – there is no plan to correct the problem.

Why is that? Why can’t the most technologically advanced nation on the planet fix the stuff it relies on most?

The simple answer is money, but the harsher reality is our collective refusal to spend taxpayer dollars on something that benefits more than just ourselves. You see that refusal play out every time a politician summons the courage to propose a tax increase to spend on infrastructure repairs. He or she is immediately vilified as a looter of the public purse and unfit for public service. Last year, when Congressional leaders floated the idea of an increase in the federal gas tax to address our Nation’s crumbling bridges and highways, you would have thought the apocalypse was coming down upon them. Of course, under such withering criticism, not to mention the fear of not being re-elected, Congress kicked the can down the road for others to address, but that’s nothing new. They’ve been doing it for decades and the rest of us are content to keep our heads, and yes our wallets, buried in the sand. That’s why there’s no plan to fix our infrastructure before it collapses.

Okay, maybe that is the plan – watch it fall and see what happens!