Name me a citizen in the country who doesn’t realize the terrible state of our roads, dams, bridges, water conveyance systems, electric grid, and anything else you can think of that used to make us the envy of the rest of the world…the underpinning of our society that brought us unparalleled prosperity and the promise of even better tomorrows.
You know it. I know it. Scions of Big Business and Big Labor sit down to Chateaubriand and deplore it. Even members of Congress express anger in their fundraiser speeches, yet little happens except for the appearance of more potholes, more water gushers, more power outages, and the creation of more committees to look for solutions.
“Why?” I’ve asked myself and countless others over the years, always ending up at the same place—nowhere.
But then came YouTube to the rescue…well, actually British political satirist, writer, producer, television host, actor, and standup comedian John Oliver in his spot-on HBO show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Infrastructure.
“Infrastructure is important,” he says, “but not sexy.”
Now, I could recount Oliver’s logic, but doing so wouldn’t be half as much fun for you as clicking on the foregoing URL and getting his vision first hand, which I urge you to do. The bottom line is that getting funding for something as boring to the public as fixing old stuff, is nearly impossible until it fails, and even then the fix is likely to be accomplished via the least cost thumb-in-the-dike method available.
A Case in Point
Under the West’s current draught situation, the increasing failure of Los Angeles’ aging water conveyance system takes on truly Godzillan overtones, with as much water disappearing down uncharted rat holes as going to slake the area’s legitimate thirst. According to H. David Nahai, former head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), nearly all of the city’s water pipes will reach the end of their useful lives in the next 15 years, and 20% of the city’s pipes in place for more than 80 years are responsible for nearly half of the water main leaks.
For a chilling snapshot of what the LADWP faces, you need to take a look at the interactive map accompanying the LA Times article from February 16, 2015, L.A.’s aging water pipes; a $1-billion dilemma. You might then want to pass this on to your elected officials to help them recognize their duty acting to maintain the public’s enormous investment in infrastructure—sexy or not.
