by Mark Cobb
Every four years, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) produces a report evaluating the state of America’s infrastructure and grades them on a scale of A+ (great) to F- (lousy), and they recently released their 2013 report card. Their report card covers 16 infrastructure categories and provides information on all 50 states in each of the 16 areas including bridges, drinking water, roads and schools. Sadly, the cumulative national grade (or C.P.A.) was a D+. Although this is abysmal, Georgia’s individual score was slightly higher coming in with a C-.
I don’t know about you, but my parents would not have been happy if I had come home with these grades!
Here’s a breakdown of the 16 categories showing the national performance and Georgia’s performance:
In addition to providing the overview of the infrastructure, the ASCE also pinpoints specific facts which led to the scores. Here are some of the key facts relating to Georgia’s Infrastructure and our future construction possibilities:
- Dams: Georgia’s dam safety program has 7.5 full-time employees that each oversee over 4,000 state regulated dams, 484 of which are considered his hazard dams;
- Drinking Water: Georgia has reported that it has $8.9 billion in drinking water infrastructure improvements needed in the next 20 years;
- Hazardous Waste: Georgia has 15 sites on the National Priorities List;
- Wastewater: Georgia has reported that is needs $89 million in wastewater Infrastructure improvements;
- Bridges: Six percent (6 %) or 878 bridges in Georgia are considered structurally deficient; another 12.7 % or 1,871 bridges in Georgia are considered functionally obsolete;
- Roads: Nineteen percent (19 %) of Georgia’s roads are in poor or mediocre condition; in addition, driving on roads in need of repair costs Georgia motorists $374 million a year in extra vehicle repairs and operating costs which amounts up to $60 per motorist;
- Parks and Recreation: Georgia has an unmet need of $123 million for its parks system; and
- Schools: It is estimated that Georgia schools have $5.2 billion in infrastructure funding needs.
IS THERE ANY GOOD NEWS?! If there is a silver lining to this report, it is the fact that our future depends upon financing and completely a lot of infrastructure improvements in Georgia which means, of course, there should be quite a bit of work for Georgia’s contractors and specialty contractors (and the suppliers to those jobs too!) To see the full report and many more details, please click here; to read more details related to Georgia’s state report card, please click here.
Don’t forget to leave your comments about the state of our infrastructure below: