The Crumbling of America(Source globalresearch.ca)

The American society of Civil Engineers produced a comprehensive evaluation report on America’s entire infrastructure, which gave all but one item category a “D” grade, meaning unsatisfactory, inadequate, and in danger of failing. The list included drinking water, wastewater treatment and handling, the electric power grid, airports and aviation facilities, rail facilities and transportation, inland waterway transportation, roads and highways, bridges, dams, hazardous waste, schools and transit. Each category received a D. More than 4,000 dams in America were classified as unsafe and dangerous by the American Society of Civil Engineers, who noted that failures were increasing at a disturbing rate with about 40% of all US dam failures since 1875 having occurred in only the last ten years. In one year, 2004, in only one county in New Jersey, 30 different dams failed or were severely damaged due to heavy rainfall. In only one 5-year period ending in 2006, 130 major dams failed and the US experienced 1,000 of what the engineers called “dam incidents” which revealed deficiencies so serious as to threaten the integrity of the dam. In one major case, the US saved a dam only by opening the flood gates and releasing all the water. Engineers claim the number of unsafe dams is increasing much faster than those being repaired.

Before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, engineers wanted to rebuild the levees to prevent their collapse, but the $1 billion cost was unaffordable. After Katrina, the federal government had to spend $17 billion on a poor-quality repair, leaving many of the original problems unresolved.

The US has more than 300,000 Kms (186,411.358 miles) of highways, most of which were built in the 1940s and 1950s and which have seldom received adequate maintenance. In Washington, the nation’s capital, 65% of all roads and highways today require either substantial and expensive overhaul or total replacement. Many US states today are tearing out their hard-surfaced highways, and reverting to gravel and dirt-surfaced roads that were common in the 1950s, since the highways, like the bridges, are nearing the end of their useful lives but no money is available for the expensive repairs.