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"  This Wednesday, Americans worried about the alarming state of infrastructure  in the United States will have a new reference point for the crisis--at 10 am Eastern, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) will release a study it calls a report card, grading categories such as dams, bridges, roads and schools. The previous report card, issued in 2005, gave the country a final grade of D, and issued a startling (and frequently quoted) estimate for the funds needed to overhaul the nation&amp;#039;s infrastructure: $1.6 trillion over a five-year span. This year, according to the ASCE, the report card will show a lack of crucial funding, and little improvement in the grades. The ASCE&amp;#039;s full analysis of the state of U.S. infrastructure will have to wait until March, when the organization releases its complete report card, including detailed breakdowns of the problems and challenges within each category. The decision to release the grades two months ahead of schedule has to do with the rare convergence of national attention on infrastructure and, Congress willing, federal funding. A large portion of the Obama Administration&amp;#039;s proposed economic stimulus package is supposed to be slated for revitalizing infrastructure. The exact figures have yet to be nailed down, but the final allotment is likely to be far more than the $50 billion for transportation infrastructure that candidate Barack Obama proposed during the presidential campaign. &amp;quot;Usually, until there&amp;#039;s a disaster, you don&amp;#039;t see this kind of political will, this push to make something happen,&amp;quot; says Ramzi Mahmood, chair of the civil engineering department at California State University in Sacramento. Even then, the impact can be short-lived--in 2005, the failed levees in New Orleans led to widespread outrage, but today many of the nation&amp;#039;s levees have still never been counted and indexed, let alone inspected. After the I-35W bridge collapsed in Minneapolis in 2007, mainstream journalists quickly discovered the 2005 ASCE study and decried the state of U.S. bridges, but there was no attempt to increase the rate of repair or replacement for the thousands of other structurally deficient bridges around the country. This year, though, a new kind of disaster seems to be compelling infrastructure reform--the implosion of the U.S. economy. &amp;quot;The timing really is perfect. Any expenditure into infrastructure is an investment in and of itself,&amp;quot; says Mahmood. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s an investment in our quality of life. And at the same time, it creates a lot of opportunities and jobs that are needed, to really prime this economy.&amp;quot; Not everyone agrees that the new spending will provide a massive, short-term employment boost, though economic growth depends on reliable and efficient infrastructure. But the report card may just do what its predecessor has not--help stop or reverse the slide towards the kind of systemic collapses that engineers and academics have warned about for years. Since 2005, the ASCE&amp;#039;s sobering, non-partisan document has increased awareness of the scope and scale of the problem. But as the 2009 update seems ready to confirm, anxiety doesn&amp;#039;t repair bridge decks or shore up vulnerable drinking water supplies. For politicians hoping to jumpstart a restoration of American infrastructure, the new report card could fuel righteous indignation with an infusion of well-informed analysis. And if lawmakers need another reminder of the price of inaction, the new report card has an additional category: levees. We won&amp;#039;t know until Wednesday how the nation&amp;#039;s flood protection measures rates with the ASCE, but Popular Mechanics&amp;#039;s own reporting has revealed deep and pervasive problems across the country. With the Army Corps of Engineers still repairing damage in New Orleans, and thousands more levees throughout the country yet to be evaluated, no one&amp;#039;s expecting any gold stars. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a3938/4301459/>