Invest in infrastructure now or pay much more later

After every natural disaster, it seems, there is talk about being better prepared for the next one. Yet little usually happens. People often move back to dangerous settings, and U.S. infrastructure continues to deteriorate.

True to form, ideas and promises emerged after Hurricane Sandy devastated much of the East Coast. In his Newsweek article “Everyday Armageddon” (Nov.26/Dec. 3, 2012), David Cay Johnston writes: “If we are to avoid the next major catastrophe—and it will come—then we have to start paying the bill now.”

Johnston notes that “America spends just 2.4 percent of its economy on infrastructure, compared with 5 percent in Europe.”

As New York and New Jersey (among other states) look at rebuilding, their governors and others are calling for a clear strategy. New York mayor Michael Bloomberg says, “You cannot build a skyscraper economy on a foundation designed for a farmhouse; it will collapse under its own weight.”

Johnston points out that if we fail to make sufficient investment in infrastructure, we can expect bursting dams after heavy rains, falling highway and railway bridges, sinkholes, massive electrical outages, more flooding, forest (and urban) fires and commutes disrupted for weeks, maybe months, as rail lines, roads and tunnels are rebuilt.

He goes on to suggest 12 projects “where investing corporate and tax dollars would not only pay off now by creating jobs and making the economy more efficient but would save lives while reducing future costs.”

Here is a summary of his 12 projects:

1. Accelerate replacement of natural gas pipelines. During Sandy, leaking gas fueled hundreds of fires.

2. Stop AT&T and Verizon from shutting down the old copper-wire telephone system, the only telecommunications that work when the electric grid goes down and cellphone-tower batteries run out of juice.

3. Demand that electric utilities replace power poles as they wear out and maintain equipment, especially changing oils in large transformers before they congeal and stick, to reduce long-term costs.

4. Increase tree trimming to prevent downed electrical lines during storms and move more lines underground to make the electric grid more reliable.

5. Promote smaller grids instead of the vast multistate grids now being developed that can throw millions of people into darkness because of one mistake or even one fallen limb.

6. Develop a 10-year plan to tear down, rebuild or strengthen every dam rated risky by the civil-engineering society.

7. Replace within a decade every large water and sewer main past its predicted life, with an emphasis on the largest pipes.

8. Place big warning signs on every highway bridge, advising motorists of when the structure should have been rebuilt or replaced and when, if ever, work is scheduled to begin.

9. Invest in riprap seawalls that extend perpendicular from the shoreline into the sea. These structures capture drifting sand and build up and maintain sand dunes and the vegetation that holds them in place.

10. Replace rail lines running through marshlands with elevated structures. This would limit commuter service disruptions after future storms.

11. Rebuild marshes and other natural barriers, like oyster reefs, that absorb the shock of storms.

12. Require detailed emergency plans by natural-gas, electric, water and telecommunications utilities as a condition of keeping their licenses.

Prevention is cost-effective and the wisest course. But the chances our short-term-thinking leaders will take such a course are slim.