Is America’s Aging Infrastructure a Recipe for Disaster?

[marmar]

from the Infrastructurist:



Is America’s Aging Infrastructure a Recipe for Disaster?




That’s an image from the Wall Street Journal showing the incredibly old offshore infrastructure operating in the Gulf of Mexico. (The redder the dot, the older the structure.) Of more than 3,000 oil and gas production platforms being used off the coast, a third were built in the 1970s or earlier, “long before the development of modern construction standards,” the Journal writes. Some date back to the 1940s. Production platforms are only part of the problem; the Gulf’s fixed wells and undersea pipes are also far past their primes.

Altogether, reports the Journal, the Gulf’s aging offshore infrastructure network pumps out a third of the oil and 10 percent of the natural gas produced in the United States. That’s a recipe ripe for disaster:

Older structures are more prone to accidents, especially fires, and more dangerous for workers. According to a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal accident records, platforms that are 20 years old or more accounted for more than 60% of fires and nearly 60% of serious injuries aboard platforms in 2009. …

Federal regulators investigated 81 accidents at oil-and-gas facilities in the Gulf of Mexico over the past three years in which equipment failure, the most common cause of accidents, was blamed. In more than a quarter of such cases, according to the Journal analysis, investigators found that age or issues that are often age-related, such as corrosion or rust, contributed to the incident.

Considering what it’s endured this decade, the Gulf may feel unjustly beaten. But it need not feel alone. Turns out all sorts of structures and equipment across the United States have been worn to the bone. We recently pointed out the decrepit condition of America’s water infrastructure. Michael Mandel shows that the senescence of the country’s capital stock is much more widespread:



The rising age of the government structures suggests “great underinvestment in public infrastructure,” writes Mandel. But the chart shows that the country’s small-scale structures are aging too. As Mandel points out, residential stock in the United States is older than it’s been anytime in the past 40 years, despite the housing craze of the last decade. Paul Krugman’s response is that America, “once the nation of heroic infrastructure, has become the place that can’t build stuff.” Big or small, land or sea.

Image: Wall Street Journal (top); Innovation and Growth (inset)


http://www.infrastructurist.com/2010/12/17/is-americas-aging-infrastructure-a-recipe-for-disaster/

[unapatriciated]

1. Or a golden opportunity for a come-back...

we need jobs and there is work to be done

[spartan61]

3. I have never been able to understand why

fixing the infrastructure isn't at the top of the to do list. Our country needs jobs to stimuate the economy and our bridges, roads, etc. are crumbling. Yes, it would be expensive, but so are the tax cuts for the wealthy which will not bring jobs. This seems to be a No Brainer.

[Locrian]

4. three words ROI

Return on Investment.

Fixing the infrastructure pays of HUGE in return on investment: for the people.

BUT - there is far more money to be made in the global casino: for the rich.

So THATS were the money goes.

[spartan61]

5. Sad, isn't it?

[NutmegYankee]

6. Very depressing nt

[NutmegYankee]

2. A lot of it is the "I don't want to pay for it" problem.

I chose to live in a town where the property tax is $400 higher than surrounding towns, but in exchange the town actually paves the freaking roads and fixes potholes in a timely manner.

I badly want us to focus on improving the highway system, upgrading the electrical grid to support next generation automobiles, and the construction of High Voltage DC lines (superconducting) to span the continent so we can pull wind and solar energy from the center out to the coasts.

[area51]

7. Why not stop the two wars of choice,

bring the troops home, close unnecessary military bases, and when those troops are brought home, offer them work in repairing our crumbling infrastructure, and training in the medical professions?

[BlueJac]

8. We can't steal resources that way.......

and me might become a nation that cares about its people.