Crumbling Infrastructure as Dangerous as Terrorism

Wednesday afternoon, a steam pipe installed in 1924 ruptured in downtown Manhattan creating a major explosion that sent debris flying for blocks, killing one person and injuring about thirty. In an effort to quell widespread fear that the incident was an act of terrorism, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, “There is no reason to believe this is anything other than a failure of our infrastructure.”

While we at the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) are certainly glad to hear that yesterday’s tragedy is not the work of terrorists, we hope that policy makers around the country take events to heart and realize the current level of disrepair of our nation’s infrastructure. Failing public infrastructure poses as much of a threat to human life as terrorism and should not be ignored. Adequate and efficient infrastructure is vital to the safety and economic welfare of the nation. The exploding steam pipe in New York is just a single example of the crumbling public facilities all over the nation.

ASCE has graded these facilities in our “Report Card for America’s Infrastructure” and has provided a list of eleven legislative actions to begin raising the generally poor grades in our “Infrastructure Action Plan for the 110th Congress.”