"The ranking -- which grades the condition of 15 infrastructure entities such as roads, bridges and dams -- is the same as the the last time such a report was issued, in 2005. In 2001, the grade was D+, slightly better but still poor.
Roads got a D-, with Americans spending more than 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic. "Poor conditions cost motorists $67 billion a year in repairs and operating costs. One-third of America's major roads are in poor or mediocre condition and 45 percent of major urban highways are congested," the engineers' report said.
Drinking water, D-. "America's drinking water systems face an annual shortfall of at least $11 billion to replace aging facilities," the report said. "Leaking pipes lose an estimated seven billion gallons of clean drinking water a day."
Once long ago, The United States was praised for its marvelous infrastructure and glorious roads. Today we live in a different world, a world where our infrastructure declines increasingly as the years go by. It is true, American infrastructure is worn and torn. In fact it is so bad, that the government doesn't have to funds to fix the roads, only patch them( that can only last for so long). The problem comes from the fact that when the problem should have been fixed, it was not. Now, there is too many to repair. Also pipe problems, wastes billions of water a day. A very bad problem indeed, however, how will we address it? U.S. debt is currently passed a trillion dollars, the future generations will pay dearly.
http://articles.cnn.com/2009-01-28/us/infrastructure.report.card_1_drinking-water-infrastructure-aging?_s=PM:US (November 16,2010)
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