Arizona's infrastructure report card is in, and the news is...average. The American Society of Civil Engineers has - for the first time - graded the state's dams, bridges, railways, airports, roadways and water systems.
Brent Borchers, president of the Society's Arizona section, says the Grand Canyon state is pulling a "C" grade point average. "We can do better," Borchers says. "Lots of our infrastructure is 40, 50, 60 years old and we depend on it daily. We plan on doubling the size of the population of the state over the next 20 years, and our infrastructure will continue to need to be improved to handle all those growing things."
Engineers say the number one thing keeping Arizona off the infrastructure honor roll is a lack of public funding through taxation. Mark Lamer is a professor of civil engineering at Northern Arizona University.
"A lot of these taxes definitely haven't increased in quite a while," Lamer says, "the federal gasoline tax hasn't increased in 20 years. And so when we don't have that money, it's hard for municipalities, city governments, counties, to keep step with the maintenance of taking care of the roads, bridges, we have culverts, we have utilities that get adjusted because of them, and definitely a lack of funding affects the overall quality of our infrastructure."
Lamer says engineers have an ethical responsibility to inform the public about the condition of systems like water and transportation. And, while there's certainly room for Arizona to improve, it still has a better infrastructure GPA than the nation, which came home with a "D+"...and probably won't be going out this weekend.
