{"id":21632,"date":"2010-09-18T16:17:06","date_gmt":"2010-09-18T22:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=21632"},"modified":"2010-09-19T21:16:48","modified_gmt":"2010-09-20T03:16:48","slug":"investing-in-infrastructure-is-not-busy-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/09\/investing-in-infrastructure-is-not-busy-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Investing in infrastructure is not busy work"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Eneas\/flickr.com<\/p><\/div>\n

As the smoke clears in San Bruno, Calif., where a gas pipeline exploded, likely as a result of improper maintenance<\/a>, I’d like to clear up some misunderstandings raised in the comments and e-mails that I received about my last post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of my proposals (borrowed from economists both national and local) was that we should help revitalize our economy by applying direct government spending to employ people to fixing our failing infrastructure. Along with others, my fellow columnist Thomas Molitor’s<\/a> comments likened investing in infrastructure to hiring “one unemployed to dig a ditch and hir(ing) another unemployed to fill it in.”<\/p>\n

More than digging a ditch<\/h3>\n

Many people will recognize that this is an overly-simplistic representation of any serious proposal to repair our crumbling infrastructure. In Molitor’s representation, there is not real work to be done, and the direct government spending would be wasted on what many people call make-work projects. That’s not what I’m talking about, of course. In fact, since we’ve put off improving our infrastructure for so long, there’s plenty of work to do.<\/p>\n

Plenty of work to do<\/h3>\n

The 2009 American Society of Engineers’ Report Card for America’s<\/a> infrastructure gave us an overall grade of D. They estimate that it would cost $5.5 trillion over the next five years to repair our infrastructure deficiencies. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Here’s how the New York Times summarized the findings<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“More than a quarter of the nation\u2019s bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Leaky pipes lose an estimated seven billion gallons of clean drinking water every day. And aging sewage systems send billions of gallons of untreated wastewater cascading into the nation\u2019s waterways each year.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s a summary<\/a> of the society’s findings for New Mexico’s infrastructure:<\/p>\n