Jul
8
Recovery Act Not Very Stimulating Relative to Water Investments
July 8, 2009 | Posted by admin
1 Comment
Jerry Sehlke, President AWRA
Over the weekend I heard and read much about the “stimulus package” and it made me wonder if it was really helping to address our pressing water resources needs in the United States (U.S.). We know that maintaining adequate quantities of clean water is essential to the health and economic prosperity our nation, and to protect our environment. However, after several decades of improvement, its seems we have been losing the battle to protect our water and associated land resources, to maintain the essential water resources infrastructure that provides us with clean, healthy water supplies, and to protect us from extreme events. I wondered whether the facts are matching the hype in the press; are we really putting adequate Recovery Act funding to work protecting our water resources and fixing and/or upgrading our water resources infrastructure?
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) recently issued a new “infrastructure report card“, including major water resources-related infrastructure. According to ASCE the U.S. has more than 85,000 dams that are on average about 51 years old, with approximately 4,000 being high potential hazard dams. Their overall condition was rated as poor (D); no estimate was given for upgrading or replacing them but it is surely in the 10s to 100s of billions of dollars. There are approximately 100,000 miles of levees in the U.S.; they too are aging and are estimated to require about $100 billion to repair and rehabilitate. Their overall condition was rated D-. It is estimated that it will cost at least $11 billion per year to replace aging drinking water infrastructure (D-) just to keep up with maintenance and upgrades, let alone expand our capacity to meet future needs, and approximately $20 billion/year to maintain existing and to meet future wastewater treatment needs (D-). In addition, it is estimated that it will cost more than $125 billion to upgrade or replace our existing inland waterways shipping locks (D-).
When proposing the Recovery Act, the Administration promised to educate the public, and to be transparent and accountable in the use of Recovery Act funds. In an effort to do this, the Administration developed a website to inform the public on its use of these funds (www. recover.gov). I anticipated that the website would allow the public to learn how much of the recovery funds will be spent on upgrading our aging infrastructure. It provides a very high level summary of allocations (e.g., total investments for infrastructure and science are about $126 billion); however, I found the site severely lacking in details. It offers some hope of finding more details by linking to USASpending.gov . However, after an hour or so of trying to navigate that website, with its mountains of bureaucratese, broken links, and “error” messages, it was apparent that it wasn’t going to enlighten me any further any time soon. Unfortunately, that forced me to look at unofficial estimates like Wikipedia for insights.
Wikipedia estimates that the total Recovery Act infrastructure investments to be $80.9 billion for all infrastructure (largely highways). It estimates approximately $20 billion for water-related projects; $6 billion for wastewater and drinking water infrastructure, $4 billion infusions into the Clean Water and $2 billion into the Drinking Water State Revolving Funds; and $4.6 billion in funding for Army Corps of Engineers environmental restoration, flood protection, hydropower, and navigation infrastructure projects. Another $3 or so billion of supplemental dollars are estimated to address rural drinking water and waste disposal projects, watershed projects and flooding along the Rio Grande.
The take home from my weekend “homework exercise” is two-part. First, the Administration has a long ways to go to meet its goals of educating, being transparent and being accountable to the public relative to the Recovery Act. Summary information should be readily available on its official website in tabulated, clear and easy to understand language. Second, while $20 billion is a significant amount of money, when compared to the estimated funds needed, it is clear that the U.S. is continuing to fall further and further behind in its effort to ensure the health and economic prosperity our nation, and to protect our environment.
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I agree with this I myself have been investigating where this money is going and it seems like a lot of “PORK” to me. I have not seen much money according to the companies I have talked to about hiring etc. I am mainly following it to help in my search for companies Hiring so I can help put people back to work. If you know of anyone looking for work in Engineering email me at klorenzo@eegrecruiting.com We are getting new jobs everyday.
Currently needing Wastewater Enginners with pumpstation and pipeline backgrounds as well as Electrical and Power supply Hardware designers. Thanks Karen