Infrastructure in Louisiana needs work and the U.S. as a whole fares even worse, according to a report card released last week by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Louisiana received a C-minus on the report card released by the Louisiana ASCE last year, which is better than the D-plus national collective grade in the recent national ASCE report card.
To call attention to the infrastructure problems the nation faces both currently and in the future, representatives from each ASCE state chapter visited Washington, D.C., to meet with senators and address what can be done about aging infrastructure in the U.S. and possible solutions, said chair of the Government Relations Committee of the Louisiana chapter of ASCE Jeff Duplantis.
Duplantis, along with journal editor for the Louisiana division of ASCE Nedra Davis and another Louisiana ASCE member spoke with the state’s representatives in Washington, D.C., on March 19 and March 20 to urge them to think about the recent grade and to find a sustainable funding source, Duplantis said.
“[Members of Congress] utilize and they have utilized the ASCE national report card in some of their defense and justifications for moving forward with some of these things,” Duplantis said. “So, it’s on the tips of their tongues. We wanted to be up there this past week to reiterate a lot of that and let [Congress] know a new [report card] was out.”
Davis said ASCE is involved in crafting infrastructure bills and is asked to comment on them.
The national report card is released every four years, Duplantis said, and the nation’s 2013 D-plus is actually an improvement from the D it received in 2009.
“[We’re] making strides,” he said. “It’s obvious something happened in a positive direction, but if you’re looking at the score as it is, it’s still way below where we need to be.”
According to Duplantis, neglect of infrastructure is the reason for the low grades on the report card.
“One of the reasons that we’re in the situation we’re in with a lot of the infrastructure is that there hasn’t been any maintenance involved, or minimal maintenance,” he said. “There’s not been a whole bunch of money put back into our infrastructure. The interstate highway system was built back in the ’60s and there hasn’t been a lot of upgrades.”
Plans are on the table to fix some of the problems and update Louisiana’s infrastructure, and progress is slowly being made but the issue is funding, Duplantis said.
“We’re looking to the White House, basically for them to push Congress to fund some of these infrastructure issues,” Davis said.
Duplantis said there are several programs locally to improve infrastructure such as Baton Rouge’s Green Light Plan, which, according to the Green Light website, “is a comprehensive transportation program to improve roadway infrastructure and citizen safety throughout East Baton Rouge Parish.”
Davis said the DOTD and Baton Rouge Department of Public Works are doing a good job of moving projects forward in the state.
“I think that everyone’s struggling in hard economic times right now and looking for funding sources,” she said. “But I think both DOTD on the state level and Baton Rouge DPW, they’ve done a fantastic job in really utilizing local resources and local companies.”
Duplantis noted several other cities, like Shreveport and New Orleans, have infrastructure programs, but taking steps to improve Louisiana’s grade goes beyond individual cities; it is a state issue.
“Baton Rouge is doing a lot to improve some of the infrastructure components, but you have to look at that as a snapshot within the state,” he said. “Things are being done, but is it widespread enough?”
“[We’re] making strides. It’s obvious something happened in a positive direction, but if you’re looking at the score as it is, it’s still way below where we need to be.”
