21 Facts About America’s Decaying Infrastructure That Will Blow Your Mind

21 Facts About America’s Decaying Infrastructure That Will Blow Your Mind (Economic Collapse, Sep 20, 2012):

You can tell a lot about a nation by the condition of the infrastructure.  So what does our infrastructure say about us?  It says that we are in a very advanced state of decay.  At this point, much of America is being held together with spit, duct tape and prayers.  Our roads are crumbling and thousands of our bridges look like they could collapse at any moment.  Our power grid is ancient and over a trillion gallons of untreated sewage is leaking from our aging sewer systems each year.  Our airports and our seaports are clogged with far more traffic than they were ever designed to carry.  Approximately a third of all of the dam failures that have taken place in the United States since 1874 have happened during the past decade.  Our national parks and recreation areas have been terribly neglected and our railroads are a bad joke.  Hurricane Katrina showed how vulnerable our levees are, and drinking water systems all over the country are badly outdated.  Sadly, at a time when we could use significant new investment in infrastructure, our spending on infrastructure is actually way down.  Back during the 50s and the 60s, the U.S. was spending between 3 and 4 percent of GDP on infrastructure.  Today, that figure is down to about 2.4 percent.  But of course we don’t have any extra money to spend on infrastructure because of our reckless spending and because of the massive amount of debt that we have accumulated.  While the Obama administration is spending more than half a million dollars to figure out why chimpanzees throw poop, our national infrastructure is literally falling apart all around us.  Once upon a time nobody else on the planet could match our infrastructure, and now we are in the process of becoming a joke to the rest of the world.

The following are 21 facts about America’s failing infrastructure that will blow your mind….

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US infrastructure is falling apart

The basic infrastructure all of us depend on every day – including aviation, highway, public transit and rail – is falling apart and needs a proper flushing, if we could find a public water system that worked properly.

That pretty much sums up a depressing report issued today by the congressional watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office today on the state of the US infrastructure. Not only are the problems large, but some of the solutions, such as increased taxes, vehicle usage fees, airline passenger levies as well as adding tolls on highways are as controversial and they would be painful.

And then there are the problems. “For example, demand has outpaced the capacity of our nation’s surface transportation and aviation systems, resulting in decreased performance and reliability. Furthermore, as we recently reported, federal surface transportation programs are not effectively addressing key challenges, such as congestion, because the federal goals and roles are unclear, many programs lack links to performance or needs, and the programs often do not employ the best tools and approaches. In addition, water utilities are facing pressure to upgrade the nation’s aging and deteriorating water infrastructure to improve security, serve growing demands, and meet new regulatory requirements.

Given these types of challenges and the federal government’s fiscal outlook, it is clear that the federal government cannot continue with business as usual, ” the GAO said.

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U.S. spy agency seeks data on power grid

WASHINGTON, March 28 (UPI) — The agency that manages data from U.S. spy satellites is exploring ways to map the nation’s entire electric grid as part of efforts to protect infrastructure.

(It’s all about controlling the infrastructure in the coming events, nothing else. – The Infinite Unknown)

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