"State of Repair," -Dam Repair Costs
Thursday, June 21, 2007SUSIE GHARIB: If there's anything that marked the 20th Century, it was the building of what we now call the nation's infrastructure. But as those roads, bridges and other structures age and need replacing, who pays? As we wrap up our series "State of Repair," Jeff Yastine looks at some ways to continue building and rebuilding our country's infrastructure.
JEFF YASTINE NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: It is the largest man-made body of water east of the Mississippi River: Kentucky's Lake Cumberland. The structure that holds all that water back is the Wolf Creek dam. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently put the dam on its list of structures at high risk of failure. That's because water from the lake seeps through the porous bedrock underneath the dam's concrete foundation and is slowly weakening it. Crews are working to stop the seepage. The project will cost more than $300 million and take seven years to complete. Barney Davis of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says the dam is nearly 60 years old and that plays a role in making repairs.
BARNEY DAVIS, CHIEF OF ENGINEERING-CONSTRUCTION, USACE-NASHVILLE: The engineering and construction standards that we had back in the '30s when these were designed, in the '40s when they were constructed, they thought it was perfectly adequate for the time. But now we're finding that for (INAUDIBLE) situations like this, that you can have problems over time that they didn't anticipate then.
YASTINE: Of the 79,000 dams in the United States, more than 10,000 are considered by the American Society of Civil Engineers to have a high-hazard risk of failure. Most of the dams in that group are privately owned and not operated by Federal agencies. But Larry Roth of the engineers group, says funding for dam maintenance is always a problem, regardless of ownership.
LARRY ROTH, DEPUTY EXEC. DIR., AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CIVIL ENGINEERS: Like many of our infrastructure systems, money that is required just to keep systems maintained is often diverted for other things. So for example, just in the last four or five years, maintenance money has been diverted to pay for improved security and this has been true at a lot of our nation's Federal dam sites. So if we're in fact diverting funds that should be used for maintenance, then our infrastructure systems, including hydroelectric dams, are going to suffer.
YASTINE: The patchwork approach to funding that characterizes much of the nation's infrastructure has led to calls for a national infrastructure czar or commission. It would set policy and recommend to Congress which projects are most vital to the national interest. Some people like Norbert Whitlock, vice chairman of the Inland Waterway Users Board, say that approach would balance transportation needs among roads, rails and rivers.
NORBERT WHITLOCK, VICE-CHAIRMAN, INLAND WATERWAYS USERS BOARD: It would play in comparison to the interstate highway system, that is in need of revitalization and added capacity being provided in many of the high- density corridors. Rail we hear about being congested and on the waterway, we have ample capacity to expand with a very relatively small capital investment.
YASTINE: Calls for privatization are also increasing, with a handful of roads and turnpikes already in private hands. Wastewater treatment agencies in some parts of the country are also being bought up by private investors. Transportation analysts like Robert Poole of the Reason Foundation, say other infrastructure assets could eventually be privatized as well.
ROBERT POOLE, DIR. TRANSPORTATION STUDIES, REASON FOUNDATION: Nobody's really worked out a mechanism for it, but that in principle, you could privatize the physical infrastructure of a major river for example, the locks dams and have -- but then the users would have to agree to user charges that would fully pay the cost of operating and maintaining all that.
YASTINE: It goes to the heart of the debate -- taxes or tolls. Project by project, that question is being answered as the nation fixes its current "State of Repair." Jeff Yastine, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Jamestown, Kentucky.
