Dare if you will, to watch the History Channel special, “The Crumbling of America.” While this show initially comes across like a doomsday scenario, you quickly realize it's not. This is not a hypothetical “what if?” special, but rather a documentary about real infrastructure nightmares here in the U.S.—and there are plenty of them.
Here are a few facts I learned: In 1961 the U.S. spent 12 percent of GDP on its infrastructure—it now spends 2.5 percent. Meanwhile India spends 8 percent and China 9 percent. According to the documentary, we would need to spend $2.2 trillion over the next five years to bring our infrastructure to “acceptable” levels. Meanwhile, only 9 percent of the stimulus package was earmarked for infrastructure repairs. I'm no mathmetician, but I can see where this is going.
The documentary sums it up this way: “Tens of thousands of bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. A third of the nation's highways are in poor or mediocre shape. Massively leaking water and sewage systems are creating health hazards and contaminating rivers and streams. Weakened and under-maintained levees and dams tower over communities and schools. And the power grid is increasingly maxed out, disrupting millions of lives and putting entire cities in the dark.”
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