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American Infrastructure Essay

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American Infrastructure-Now or Never

Because of the poor state of the economy the care American infrastructure has been ignored, which poses a danger to everyone that come in contact with it. Recent disasters have reminded many how important the care of American infrastructure is. America’s infrastructure gets a grade of “D” from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), which recommends that we spend $2.2 trillion on repairs and maintenance. “Much of America is held together by Scotch tape, bailing wire and prayers,” says director of the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania. But with the country no longer swimming but drowning in debt the upkeep of things such as roads and bridges, which we use every …show more content…

ASCE gave U.S drinking water, inland waterways, levees, roads and wastewater infrastructures. The report they generated estimated that leaking pipes lose seven billion gallons of clean drinking water a day “Infrastructure is the four-syllable jawbreaker that governments use to describe the concrete, stone, steel, wires and wood that Americans rely on every day but barely notice until something goes awry (Kelderman).” Due to the state of the economy many lawmakers put the money need to keep infrastructure properly taken care of into things like defense. The federal Clean Water State Revolving Fund, which makes low interest loans to clean up or protect water supplies, has shrunk from more than $3 billion in 1990 to roughly $1 billion in 2007 (Kelderman). The report also suggests that there is an $11 billion dollar shortfall annually needed to bring facilities up to current federal water regulations. As stated in the article “ The State of the Union-Crumbling’, the nation is spending less than 40 percent of the $225 billion needed annually for the next 50 years to maintain the current system of roads, rails and bridges and build enough transportation capacity for a growing population.
In the past ten years there have been many infrastructure failures that make you wonder when the government will get serious about the issue at hand. Not paying attention to the condition of infrastructure has proven to

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