The Repairing of America

By Ed Magnuson

Deteriorating roads, bridges, dams and sewers finally get some attention

When Ronald Reagan returns to Washington this week from his holiday vacation in the West, one of his first acts will be to pick up a pen and sign a bulky document. On the same day, a telecopier machine at the Department of Transportation 16 blocks away will simultaneously dispatch a 6 1/2-page message to the 50 states, telling each how much federal money it can spend from the new 5-c--per-gal. increase in the gasoline tax. With that, the rebuilding of America will symbolically begin.

The bill signed by Reagan will provide $5.5 billion on top of the $11 billion already in next year's budget to check the perilous deterioration of the nation's highways and mass-transit systems. While the dollar total sounds impressive, it actually amounts to little more than a federal finger in the fragile dike holding back a tide of decay that threatens to overwhelm the country's neglected network of roads, bridges, dams, rails, water and sewer pipes. The erosion is so far advanced that Amitai Etzioni, director of the independent Center for Policy Research in Manhattan, warns that the U.S. has become "an underdeveloping country, with its modern economy in reverse gear."

Passed by the lameduck Congress and funded by sharp hikes in fees paid by trucking firms as well as the gas-tax hike (to 9-c- per gal.), the legislation marks an important shift in the way America regards its once matchless physical plant. For decades, politicians at every level of government tried to impress constituents by throwing available funds into dazzling new public facilities: a Faneuil Hall shopping mecca in Boston, a Lincoln Center cultural complex in Manhattan, a Gateway Arch over St. Louis, as well as fresh brick school buildings, downtown malls and late-model firetrucks and police cruisers almost everywhere.

Meanwhile, sewers and water mains rotted below ground, highways cracked under the pounding of 18-wheel semis weighing 40 tons, and steel bridges rusted into dangerous disrepair. Politicians looked the other way. Says Adriana Gianturco, director of California's department of transportation: "Nobody cuts a ribbon over a pothole that's been fixed."

Even now, when the extent of the problem is widely recognized, skeptics doubt that there is a genuine national commitment to spend anywhere near the amount needed for an adequate repair job on the nation's roads and sewers. The immensity of the task inspires a sense of futility akin to that caused by the federal budget deficits. In Iowa, the cost of replacing sewer lines in cities where there are no separate storm drainage systems (and where sewage sometimes backs into the streets after a heavy rain) is so high that, says one small-town public works director, "nobody has even bothered figuring it up. We can't afford it anyway." Indeed, it took the recession's rising unemployment rate to attract bipartisan support for the gas-tax bill, which is supposed to create up to 320,000 jobs.

Nevertheless, the public is coming to realize that any more delays will increase the cost of repair later, and even lead to unnecessary loss of life. Federal officials estimate, for example, that spending an added $4.3 billion on the roads and bridges most in need of repair could save 17,200 lives and prevent 480,000 personal injuries over the next 15 years.

The list of gross deficiencies in the nation's structural underpinnings is long. TIME correspondents who talked to experts across the nation and surveyed their own regions came up with the following scary sampling:

Roads. Even the 41,369-mile federal Interstate Highway System, which has no equal anywhere, is going to potholes. More than 40% of its mileage has already exceeded its planned 20-year safe life. By 1990, three-fourths of the system will have passed that age. At the moment, 10% (more than 4,000 miles) is considered in need of immediate resurfacing. An additional 30% (12,000-plus miles) is rated in only fair condition, meaning that it is "barely adequate" to handle traffic at the 55-m.p.h. maximum speed. The even older 260,000-mile "primary" network of U.S. routes is no better off. According to the Congressional Budget Office, two-thirds of this system is in only poor or fair condition. The CBO places the price of the required annual upkeep at $2.9 billion.

A highway rated poor represents more than a safety hazard. It slows traffic and beats up the vehicles that use it. The Highway Administration has found that operating costs for an average car climb 35% when it uses routes rated poor rather than good.

The interstate highways fell into disrepair because the states eagerly accepted federal money (90% of the cost) to build them without realizing how expensive it was to maintain them. Incredibly, Congress did not vote a penny in federal funds for interstate repairs until 1976, when the system was already 20 years old, and routine maintenance remains a state obligation. Neglect at state and county levels is most obvious on the farm-to-market roads that are vital to agricultural production. As farms have grown larger, huge tractors, combines and cultivators are literally pulverizing these roads, which were built for much lighter loads. The family farmer who commonly hauled 100 bu. of corn to town has given way to corporate operators who use huge tractor-trailers for 1,500-bu. deliveries.

Soaring costs of labor and materials have aggravated the road problems. In Georgia, where the state is able to repair and properly maintain only 10% of its 18,000 miles of highways each year, maintenance costs have risen 42% since 1977. Just to put a 1 1/2-in. layer of new asphalt on 2,000 miles of highway costs $60 million. Minnesota Transportation Commissioner Richard P. Braun contends that at present spending levels, the state will not be able to rebuild its 12,000 miles of trunk highways until the year 2354, at least three centuries too late. One 17-mile stretch of Highway 15 between New Ulm and Winthrop so angered a group of Minnesota motorists that they hired a hearse and jostled over the pitted surface with a sign declaring THIS HIGHWAY is DEAD AND BURIED. A state-commissioned study in Louisiana found the roads so rough that the average driver wastes $97 a year in unnecessary gasoline costs. Illinois motorists pay an average $50 a year in new shock absorbers and front-end alignments necessitated by bumpy roads.

Bridges. A road, of course, is only as safe as its shakiest bridge. The Federal Highway Administration reports that one-third of the nation's nonfederal bridges and 10% of those built with federal funds are "structurally deficient." That means that 23% of the 574,000 bridges in the U.S. are considered safe only for cars and light trucks. Heavier vehicles have to be routed around them. The cost of repairing or replacing all of these marginally safe spans is estimated at $47.6 billion.

Aging bridges are particularly prevalent in Vermont, where a flood in 1927 swept away roughly half of the state's picturesque covered bridges. The steel spans that replaced them are past their expected life of 50 years, meaning that most are already in need of replacement. Meanwhile, loads across them are severely restricted. In the multiriver region of metropolitan Pittsburgh, 1,129 of the 5,000 or so bridges require repairs that would cost more than $1 billion. When loads over the Thompson Run Bridge in suburban Duquesne were reduced to five tons in 1978, the United States Steel Corp. had to detour its trucks for 26 miles, adding $1.2 million a year to its operating costs.

The frailty of New York City's antique structures was dramatized 18 months ago when a badly corroded cable broke loose from the 99-year-old Brooklyn Bridge and killed a Japanese freelance photographer. The city has provided only limited funds to replace the cables, which have merely been encircled with a band of steel so that when the next one pops, it will not mangle cars or pedestrians.

As with rural roads, the problem of obsolete bridges is most acute in areas too impoverished to replace them. More and more frequent is the sight of school buses stopping at creaking wooden bridges to let children walk across, then following behind to pick them up on the other side. In many cases, even this is risky for the driver of an empty bus. "We have a lot of ten-ton buses going across a three-ton bridge," says Clovis Fraser, a Georgia transportation official.

Dams. A bursting dam can be a mass killer. The U.S., by great good luck, has not suffered such a tragedy since Nov. 6, 1977, when an earthen dam in Georgia gave way after a 5-in. rainfall and unleashed a 30-ft.-high wall of water on Toccoa Falls Bible College, killing 39 people. But the danger remains. The Army Corps of Engineers classifies 8,794 of the nation's 65,500 nonfederal dams as unsafe.

When the corps inspected 252 Georgia dams after the Toccoa disaster, it placed 73.4% of them in the unsafe category. More than half of the 809 privately owned dams in five Southern states (Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina) also were declared to be unsafe. The corps is now studying six badly deteriorated dams near Columbia, S.C. If just one of them should fail, state engineers say, hundreds of people could drown.

In Southern California, eight dams in the San Gabriel Mountains were found to be vulnerable to earthquake tremors if their reservoirs were filled. To avoid that danger, water levels are kept low, even after rainstorms, when dam gates are opened. "We lose a lot of water to the ocean," says Jim Easton, an engineer in the district. In the low-lying Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a 1,000-mile system of dikes, made of sand and peat, has been sinking as the peat oxidizes. Six levees have collapsed since 1980, inundating some of the delta islands. The local water districts cannot afford the $1 billion needed to strengthen the system.

After heavy storms two years ago, the Salt River nearly topped Arizona's Stewart Mountain Dam, threatening to flood parts of Phoenix. State officials even feared a total collapse of Stewart. "We felt it was imminent," recalls Reid Teeples , a Salt River project official.

Sewers. The Environmental Protection Agency maintains that the nation must spend $119 billion by the year 2000 to handle safely a sewage problem aggravated by population growth and shifts. Even without providing for an anticipated 23% rise in population, $91.1 billion is needed for sewer repair and construction, as well as for upgrading sewage-treatment facilities. According to the EPA, it will cost $37.2 billion to separate the combined sewer and street-drainage systems that were installed by some 80 cities in the early years of this century.

Communities that fail to do so face the prospect of having human waste flow untreated into rivers or even back up into basements. Robert Silvus, head of the waste-water section of the Texas department of water resources, describes the situation delicately: "There are parts of the year when our water is effluent-dominated."

In some cities wood-bottomed sewer lines built before the Civil War are rotting and breaking. Last August, one of them yielded to a rainstorm in St. Louis, producing a 30-ft.-deep crater that swallowed part of a tavern and blocked a busy intersection for three months. A sewer line in

Des Moines collapsed in December, sending 5 million gallons of raw sewage daily into the Des Moines River. The septic system in tiny Minersville, Utah (pop. 548), is so overloaded that some residents dump waste water from their sinks and showers into their backyards, using the septic lines only for toilets. Many of New York City's sewer pipes are a century old, and Joseph McGough, the city's commissioner of environmental protection, worries about an end to what residents have long taken for granted: "When they push the handle, it flushes away. It's like the sun coming up."

Water Lines. Much of the nation's drinking water is drawn from deep aquifers that are threatened by pollution from the seepage of chemical waste dumps. In 1980 Congress granted the national EPA the authority to clean up the dumps and a "superfund" to pay for such an operation. But the EPA's reluctance to act is needlessly prolonging the danger. Eroded pipes are leaking huge amounts of often scarce water. Boston and Pittsburgh lose 25% of their water to leaks. Philadelphia, St. Louis and Chicago spill about 15%, Kansas City 11%. Declares Pittsburgh Water Department Director Richard Cosentino: "The situation is chaotic and desperate. We need help."

Mass Transit. Urban bus and subway systems are generally fighting a losing battle to hold fares down and attract more riders. Lacking adequate revenues, their preventive maintenance suffers and service declines, driving away more and more passengers. Those with the means resort to private cars or taxis. And that, of course, only adds to the congestion on clogged feeder highways and city streets, speeding the deterioration of those overburdened facilities.

Perhaps no one is afflicted more grievously by these ills than the 475,000 people who commute daily into New York City from Connecticut, Long Island and suburban Westchester and Dutchess counties. Since 1978 the number of commuters forced to stand up throughout their rides on the lines, serving Connecticut and Westchester has soared from 20,000 to 95,000 a month. Reason: on many days, up to a quarter of the 672 cars in the fleet were out of service for repair. After two 250-lb. wheels overheated and flew off moving trains on the New Haven line, the Federal Railroad Administration ordered that trains be stopped twice on the 73-mile run from New Haven to Manhattan so each of the wheels could be inspected. That has added as much as an hour to the 1 hr. 40 min. commute.

The money raised by the higher gas tax is, of course, what Washington Highway Lobbyist Donald Knight calls only "a spit in the ocean" in attacking this immense backlog of long-deferred repair and reconstruction work. It is aimed primarily at interstate and U.S. highway routes and secondarily at mass-transit systems. It will do nothing to prevent the further deterioration of eroding dams, obsolete back roads, leaking water pipes and overflowing sewage systems.

But it is a start. Lester P. Lamm, executive director of the Federal Highway Administration, speaks accurately, although perhaps unrealistically, when he suggests: "If the states, collectively, increased their highway funding to the same degree as the Federal Government, there would be enough money to take care of the highway problem."

In fact, many states will have difficulty raising the 10% matching money required to qualify for the added federal funds. The states, moreover, have long been far more willing to raise gasoline and other user taxes and fees than has the Federal Government. From 1959 until it was finally hiked this week, the federal gas tax had remained at a meager 4-c-, and in 1959 dollars had actually decreased to 1.4-c-. Through all the years of relative prosperity, Presidents and Congress had given federal-highway users virtually a free ride.

The money raised by the nickel gas tax will be distributed according to a complex formula that tries to assess each state's need, population, land area and readiness to use the funds. Since the Department of Transportation works regularly with the states to determine highway priorities, plans for using the money are ready; no new bureaucracy is needed to disburse it.

Just how the first $5.5 billion will be targeted has already been decided. Mass transit will get $1.1 billion, partly on the sound theory that keeping more people off roads and streets helps reduce road-repair costs. States will get $1.7 billion for major resurfacing, repair and improvement of existing interstate highways. An addition al $800 million will be used to build the last 1,575 miles of the interstate system, now scheduled for completion by 1990.

The primary U.S. routes will get $600 million for major repairs. Bridges will be al lotted $700 million for repairs, while the remaining $600 million will be devoted to highway safety programs and miscellaneous road projects.

Some critics argue that the nation's growing preoccupation with what engineers stuffily call its infrastructure is overblown. They point out that road contractors and other construction firms have put a great deal of money behind a lobbying campaign to focus attention on the problem. It is also true that some estimates of the total bill for such repair work seem plucked from the air. Pat Choate, co-author of America in Ruins, for example, puts the cost at $3 trillion.

But hype aside, the need for an enormous rebuilding program is undeniable.

After decades of a "build and forget" policy abetted by irresponsible officials who were only too happy to hand on problems like maintenance and repair to their successors, the nation has no choice but to reorder its priorities and search for long-term funding. As Sociologist Etzioni has declared: "America had a big party that lasted 30 years. We overconsumed and underinvested, and now we have to pay the piper." -- By Ed Magnuson.

Reported Joseph N. Boyce/Atlanta and Jay Branegan/ Washington, with other bureaus

With reporting by Joseph N. Boyce/Atlanta, Jay Branegan/Washington, with other bureaus This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.