America’s Farmers, Reeling from Floods, Face a New Problem: No Water
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/
We have been under-funding maintenance for decades and problems, such as this example, will be on the rise given the additional stressors due to climate change.
It is a problem of political will. To quote Vonnegut, "Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance."
Note that the article says "The tunnels and canals, though old, were maintained regularly".
Maintaining a structure doesn't prevent the concrete from spalling (as the chemical bonds that bind the concrete age and degrade), nor does it necessarily pick up on failing earthen tunnels in hard to inspect areas.
Many bridges across the country are going on 100 years old, and have a ~50 year design life. Structurally they are deficient, often undersized for the modes of traffic using them, and structural failure (which is very possible) would likely kill people. US infrastructure needs heavy investment, rather than the neglect it has seen for decades.
Per capita, there are some countries higher like Canada. but it's pretty clear that US bridges are unusually bad compared to most other developed countries.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures#2000%E...
But we're not building either! Where are the US's fancy new high speed trains?
I realize that's not quite the same thing, but this isn't a case of existing infrastructure being neglected in favor of shiny new projects. We're just not putting basically any money into public infrastructure.
That ... seems like a mild consequence, all things considered.
It's like saying "I guess my 2008 laptop will have to keep working for a few more years, there is no budget in the foreseeable future to upgrade"
I grew up on a farm, you're presuming a lot. Guess what goes into a new heavy duty pickup truck purchase?
Well lets look at the new fuel efficiency, project out 10+ years to figure out how much fuel that will save, figure out how much gas will cost in the next 10 years (fudge it mostly).
And the work that these things do tends to be hard on everything. There is a need for new pickup trucks, and its not because you want it, its because it will save money. Repairing' isn't cheaper when you have heavy use.
Our trucks lasted maybe 200 000 miles of wear and tear. At the end, they were getting to pretty expensive options, like replace the engine entirely or rebuild, both about the same cost. Oh and the frame was starting to rust, or crack etc...
Your day to day car usage in the city does not give you much insight into how heavy duty pickup trucks get used on farms and ranches.
This is pretty close to the poor problem of having to buy $20 dollar boots every year because you can't affort a $100 dollar pair that will last 10 years. If you get behind on replacing things, you end up paying more.
Googleing the headline works! Here is a short url: shorturl.at/CLOQW, or you can google it if you don't trust me :P.
Thanks!