Levees Not War

America’s Infrastructure: And Unto Dust We Shall Return?

08/6/07

Our friends at the American Society of Civil Engineers are concerned like everyone else about the catastrophic collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis. ASCE is calling attention to the degraded condition of America’s roads, bridges, and other infrastructure, and proposes an Action Plan for the 110th Congress, including the establishment of a National Infrastructure Commission.

One of the most appealing proposals from our point of view is congressional enactment of the Dam Rehabilitation and Repair Act (H.R. 1098) and the establishment of a national levee safety program, “including a nationwide inventory of levees and mandatory inspection requirements.” ASCE points out that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reported in early 2007 that nearly 150 levees in the United States pose an unacceptable risk of failing in a major flood (how many of these are in Louisiana?), mainly due to poor maintenance. “The nation cannot afford to wait for another flooding catastrophe like the one that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005.” We want the Corps to be all it can be-but they need additional funding from Congress.

See ASCE’s 2005 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure here. Then call or fax House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and Minority Leader John Boehner to urge immediate passage of H.R. 1098, the Dam Rehabilitation and Repair Act. If the U.S. has (or borrows) $12 billion per month for a war in Iraq, ad infinitum, we can surely afford a few billion for the nation’s roads, bridges, and flood control systems. (You’ll find much more Congressional and White House contact information at our “Political Action” page.)