...need to be evaluated. This problem is best exemplified in California’s Central Valley, where local agencies have power to promote development that contravenes regional interests.

The Corps of Engineers has begun developing better performance data about installed protective structures like dams, levees, floodwalls, gates and berms to validate that their designed strengths have been achieved and maintained and  that their designs were well conceived in the first place. There now is a need for national inspection and peer-review protocols to be adopted and used.

Funding the application of science to the evaluation of the reliability of protective infrastructure and the analysis of the risk is critical. If that can be communicated to owners, stakeholders and the population in general, constituencies can be built to harness the political will and take on civil works that must be built.

Demand growth on the power grid has outstripped capital investment for decades. Investment in the U.S. electric grid today runs about $18 billion per year. “We need to increase that to up to $27 billion and continue at that pace for 20 years to bring the infrastructure into line with where I think it should be,” says Clark Gellings, vice president of innovation at the Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto, Calif.  And that’s only the near-term solution, he says.

The long-term solution for grid reliability is to build the “smart grid.”  That’s a grid rewired to allow advanced computer controls operating over fiber-optic cables to control both supply and demand of electricity. It would deliver power more efficiently and resiliently, smoothing out demand peaks that force the construction of thousands of megawatts of “peak-shaving” capacity that usually sits idle. But “smart grid technology is not complete,” adds Gellings. With 152 communication protocols now in use, the devices and equipment can't talk to each other. “We need more functionality and smart appliances,” he says.

Gellings sees bright spots but not “universal movement.” The $9 billion needed amounts to the cost of a pizza dinner per customer each year. But state regulators are resisting  because electricity rates are so politically sensitive.

Infrastructure that keeps our drinking water safe, like much of the infrastructure in the U.S., is aging and in need of repair. In its most recent Drinking Water Infrastructure Needs Survey and Assessment, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that the nation’s public water systems need to invest $276.8 billion over the next 20 years to ensure that drinking water would remain safe for consumers.

While systems are in need of repair, few would say that they are at the breaking point. American Water Works Association spokesman Greg Kail says, “We’re not in crisis today, but we’re encouraging utilities to make [an] investment today so that today’s concern does not become a crisis in the years ahead.” 

 Bill Hillman, CEO of the National Utility Contractors Association, adds, “The problem, to a large measure, stems from just perpetual underinvestment. The needs [for investment] are huge, and they’re documented.”

But funding tends to be scarce. The state revolving funds for clean and drinking water are perpetually underfunded, many industry sources say. The Water Infrastructure Network has called for the establishment of a dedicated trust fund for clean and drinking water infrastructure similar to the National Highway Trust Fund.

Clearly, a fund dedicated specifically for improving and replacing aging infrastructure, and providing more funding in general, could help assuage worries of a potential public health disaster down the road.

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