October 2014

IN FOCUS: LEGAL BRIEFING
The Infrastructure Agenda

NSPE digs into a top legislative priority: improving the physical assets and facilities that keep the US moving.

BY MATTHEW McLAUGHLIN

F

or the most part, weaknesses in American infrastructure are silent problems, creeping slowly to the fore of public consciousness at a pace that belies the need for changes in policy and investment, but in July the public consciousness was shaken in a rare moment of extreme infrastructure failure. It was a dramatic scene, with a 40-foot geyser shattering Los Angeles’s fabled Sunset Boulevard and flooding parts of the University of California, Los Angeles campus with 20 million gallons of water from a broken water main.

No injuries were reported, but the Los Angeles Fire Department had to rescue five people from the flood waters and the scope of the incident was shocking. Water filled parking structures and UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, which recently underwent a $132 million renovation, while Sunset Boulevard was left with a gaping 25-by-30-foot, seven-foot-deep sinkhole, according to the Los Angeles Times.

To make matters even worse, the spilling of millions of gallons of water from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power system occurred during a severe drought.

According to LADWP, the rupture, which took place at a “Y” connection of a nearly 100-year-old pipe, was caused by corrosion and structural problems. “With a little effort, we could almost scrape the corrosion away and kind of rub a hole through the pipe,” a top Los Angeles Department of Water and Power executive told the Los Angeles Times after the incident.

As dramatic as the burst pipe was, Los Angeles has a leak/break rate about half the national average, according to LADWP, and the speed of pipe replacement needs to be balanced with customers’ ability to pay higher rates. Last year, the city replaced more than 22 miles of main lines. At that rate, it would take 315 years to replace all the pipes in the 7,200-mile system. The department currently has funding to speed up the replacement rate to 250 years.

“The condition of our drinking water, wastewater, and inland waterways was rated ‘D’ or lower in the recent [American Society of Civil Engineers] report card,” says NSPE Past President Christopher Stone, P.E., F.NSPE. Some drinking water pipes date back to the Civil War and are often not examined until there is a problem or water main break, which has led to an estimated 240,000 water main breaks per year in the US, according to the 2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.

The failure of the water main under Sunset Boulevard in July was a rare moment where the need for changes in infrastructure policy and investment exploded with enough force to attract the public’s attention. Even so, such moments of realization are fleeting and quickly swallowed up by the sobering reality of the cost to modernize and revitalize the nation’s infrastructure. Hence, the obvious need for NSPE’s advocacy efforts, which this year helped contribute to significant legislative gains in improving infrastructure, especially in the area of water resources.

Water Resources
In June, President Obama signed into law the Water Resources Reform and Development Act, the first such legislation the nation has seen in seven years. The act overhauls and improves the process for federal water resources development and will impact all of the nation’s water infrastructure: dams, levees, drinking water, wastewater, ports, and inland waterways. It identifies more than $12 billion worth of new water infrastructure projects and authorizes funding for them.

“WRRDA was not just a drinking water and wastewater piece of legislation,” Stone says, “but also includes a funding mechanism to strengthen our waterways transportation network, keeping us competitive in the global marketplace, and provides much needed improvements to our ports, locks, dams, and other water resources infrastructure.”

NSPE not only endorsed the legislation, but also supported the passage of WRRDA through meetings with congressional members and leadership. Members like Stone highlighted the merits of WRRDA and provided explanations of the more technical aspects of the legislation.

Much of the new law concerns federal projects and the Army Corps of Engineers. “WRRDA cuts red tape, reforms the bureaucracy, and accelerates the delivery of water resources infrastructure projects, but it does much more than that,” says House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pennsylvania). “This new law will help ensure the country has a modern, efficient transportation network.”

WRRDA sets hard deadlines on the time and cost of federal studies, consolidates or eliminates duplicative or unnecessary studies, and streamlines environmental reviews. The bill also expands the ability of nonfederal interests to contribute funds to expedite the evaluation and processing of permits, strengthens dam and levee safety, improves Army Corps of Engineers responses to extreme weather events, and supports and invests in ports and inland waterways.

“I believe all the infrastructure items included in WRRDA are equally important, but in the role of protecting the health, safety, and welfare of the public, probably the sections dealing with flood mitigation have the biggest impact on the American public,” Stone says. “Of the 100,000 miles of levees across the country, almost 85% of these are locally owned and maintained, leaving the public at risk if a levee fails. WRRDA supports the National Levee Safety Initiative that promotes consistent safety standards and effectively communicates to the public the risks of living behind a levee. Also our nation’s dams are aging, and WRRDA supports the National Dam Safety Program. Of the 84,000 dams in America, the average dam is 52 years old, and 14,000 are considered high-hazard, and any failure could cause significant loss of life and damage. WRRDA provides guidelines and a funding mechanism to help support this critical portion of our infrastructure.”

Additionally, WRRDA establishes the Water Infrastructure Finance Innovations Authority to provide credit assistance for drinking water, wastewater, and water resources infrastructure projects. A five-year pilot program, the authority will leverage federal funds to attract private and other nonfederal investments to increase development of critical water infrastructure and the construction speed of local projects.

Down the Road
Another important piece of legislation, to which NSPE contributed, was a bill extending the life of the Highway Trust Fund.

On the brink of insolvency, the Highway Trust Fund was nearing the end over the summer, but through an action alert campaign and meetings on Capitol Hill, NSPE was able to express the importance of the Highway Trust Fund to 225 members of Congress, who later passed a bill to keep the fund going.

The bill, however, is only a short-term solution. “Without a long-term funding solution, America’s highway infrastructure will continue to struggle to serve the American public,” Stone says. “The recent legislation did nothing to create any new, ongoing revenue for the Highway Trust Fund from users.”

“The only way you can put infrastructure in the ground or solve infrastructure problems is by spending money,” adds NSPE Political Action Committee Chair Jeffrey Elliott, P.E., F.NSPE. “We definitely need, as a country, to commit to fixing our infrastructure because every day that goes by the system we have is a day older.”

Infrastructure remains a legislative priority for NSPE, and in light of the need for a long-term solution to transportation funding, NSPE-PAC will undoubtedly continue meeting with members of Congress.

“The whole legislative arm of NSPE is constantly out there promoting professional engineers as well as protecting the health, safety, and welfare of the public,” Elliot says, but he encourages all members to be involved, increasing the range and volume of NSPE’s voice. He also encourages members to make contributions to the political action committee. “It’s a way for us to make sure that we have legislators out there who are carrying the torch for professional engineers, and the stronger our PAC is, the more powerful message we have.”

CREWS PREPARE FOR REPAVING SUNSET BOULEVARD NEAR THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES, WHERE AN UNDERGROUND WATER MAIN BREAK ON JULY 29 FLOODED PARTS OF THE CAMPUS.
COPYRIGHT, 2014, LOS ANGELES TIMES. REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION