Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
2
Infrastructure: Pipes, Wires, Roads, Bridges,
Railroads, Dams, Airports, and Levees
There are no Republican bridges. There are no Democratic drinking water puri-
fi cation facilities. We all use these systems.
—Casey Dinges, American Society of Civil Engineers
If you knew the condition of what's under the city, you probably wouldn't walk
on the sidewalk.
—Fred Graf, senior research engineer for PECO, Philadelphia's electric and
natural gas utility
Infrastructure
refers to the basic constructed features that undergird
our civilization: water and sewer mains, gas and liquid transmission
lines, electrical grid, highways, bridges, railroads, dams, airports, and
levees. Collectively they are called
public works,
although they may
be developed and operated by either the private sector or government.
When proposed by the federal government, they often are referred to
as “pork barrel” projects or “earmarks”—projects proposed by members
of Congress to enhance their state's industry, attractiveness, or culture
and improve the legislator's chances of being reelected. Although the
benefi ciaries of these projects are mostly or entirely the legislator's
constituency, they are paid for by all the nation's taxpayers.
One of the more recent and infamous pork barrel projects was the Big
Dig in Boston, Massachusetts, a project to take a preexisting 3.5-mile ele-
vated highway and relocate it underground, which cost the nation's tax-
payers $14.6 billion, an astonishing $4.2 billion per mile. Other interesting
expenditures in 2007 were appropriations of $7.4 billion for the National
First Ladies' Library in Canton, Ohio, and fi nancing for a project to
improve “rural domestic preparedness” in Kentucky. In 2009, $3.8
billion was appropriated for the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy in Mich-
igan and $1.9 billion for the Pleasure Beach water taxi service project in
Connecticut. One proposed project in recent years that failed to be
