Julie Keown-Bomar: Infrastructure plan critical for Wisconsin’s economy | Column
President Joe Biden speaks about infrastructure spending Tuesday at the La Crosse Municipal Transit Authority in La Crosse, Wis.
Our recently vaccinated family hit the highways and waterways in a major way this last month. Thanks to public investment, we have highways and interstates that cross the entire country, and I can zip off to visit family in Wyoming or Michigan relatively easily. I can make my way down the Mississippi River facilitated by an important lock and dam system that also allows commerce to flow. American investment in infrastructure is often taken for granted, but having lived and traveled in lesser developed nations with poor roads, airports, and sometimes completely dysfunctional food systems, I can say we have it good.
Public investment in domestic infrastructure allowed the U.S. economy to become one of the best in the world, and it keeps people safe and healthy.
It’s in trouble though. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has compiled regular “report cards” on U.S. infrastructure for decades. In the 2017 report, the nation’s infrastructure averaged a D-plus, meaning conditions were “mostly below standard,” exhibiting “significant deterioration” with a “strong risk of failure.” Without significant investment, infrastructure gaps will cause major losses to a nation’s GDP.
Rural areas see the gaps in affordable and accessible broadband, failing hospitals and unsafe highways, bridges and dams. It’s bad in urban areas too. In a recent Farmer-Labor Podcast conversation with Angela Lang, executive director of Black Leaders Organizing for Communities, she described the cascade of individual and community problems caused by lead pipes in Milwaukee. Lead from water lines leaches into tap water and can have unhealthy effects on those who drink it, especially developing children.
