Healthy investment | Taking care of roads and bridges protects our safety in a number of ways
On April 29, the Maine Legislature’s Committee on Utilities and Energy held a public hearing on a bill that would provide a sustainable funding source for Maine’s water and wastewater systems. In total, the systems are faced with an annual $35-$50 million funding shortfall even after bond and federal dollars are calculated in. This shortfall reflects the difference between available money and the amount needed to properly maintain the systems.
The shortfall is so acute that despite the best efforts of the men and women who maintain the systems, they frequently fail. We have become accustomed to the inconvenience of traffic detours related to water and sewer main breaks, which are a near daily occurrence in Maine. Sometimes these failures mean users are told to boil their water. One recently replaced section of water main in Dover-Foxcroft was laid in 1887 and served an area high school, a nursing home and a hospital — not exactly the types of facilities that should have to boil water in order to make it safe for human consumption.
Irony abounds at the State House and April 29 was no different. A half-hour before the utilities committee met to address the issue of water and wastewater funding, Gov. John Baldacci and Dora Anne Mills, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, held a press conference in the governor’s office to confirm the first three cases of H1N1 influenza in Maine. In the course of their presentation, Baldacci and Mills stressed that a wider outbreak was possible and implored Maine people to do their part by engaging in improved hygiene practices and hand washing. Baldacci and Mills’ remedy presupposes the availability of fresh, clean water every time we turn on the tap. Ask the residents of Pittsfield, Ellsworth or Freeport if fresh, clean water is always available.
One of our greatest assets in the fight against pandemic influenza is simple hand washing, and yet even that task is at risk from severely deteriorated water and wastewater infrastructure systems. Our well-being is also threatened by another part of our deteriorated infrastructure: roads and bridges.
We may equate under-investment in infrastructure with bumpy roads and flooded streets, but in reality infrastructure failures are a threat to life and limb. Maine Department of Transportation officials have said that if additional monies aren’t added to the state’s highway fund, we will be faced with a 26% cut to capital expenditures over the next two years. Highway reconstruction would decrease by 60% and pavement preservation programs would decrease by 38%.
Staying on the front burner
A bipartisan group on the Legislature’s Committee on Transportation has been working to ensure that the state’s critical infrastructure does not fall into further disrepair. They have proposed an increase in the state’s motor fuel tax that will, at this writing, increase the tax a total of 11 cents per gallon in four steps over the next four years. The proposed increase repeals indexing and equalizes the tax on diesel fuel and gasoline, and is expected to generate an additional $56.7 million over the next two years. But even this increase pales in comparison to the unmet $200 million per-year shortfall in transportation funding.
Nobody wants to pay more taxes, and this is certainly a difficult time politically to increase taxes, but the highway fund is in crisis. Like our water and wastewater systems, maintaining thousands of miles of roads and 2,200 bridges requires consistent funding year in and year out. Nationally, the problems are even worse. Some states have drained their highway funds dry, resulting in unpaid bills to contractors and vendors. The federal government has already advised states that its highway trust fund will likely run out of money before the start of the next federal fiscal year on Oct. 1, 2009. All of these funding challenges suggest that many policymakers have lost sight of the importance of maintaining our infrastructure. The levy failures during Hurricane Katrina and the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Minneapolis, as well as our localized infrastructure failures, remind us that the health of our families is dependent on these important community assets.
We should salute the leaders at the Legislature who have kept infrastructure funding on the front burner. It is never easy to ask for more money to maintain public assets, but the cost of neglecting them is higher than we should be willing to bear.
John O’Dea is executive director of Associated General Contractors of Maine. He can be reached at editorial@mainebiz.biz. You can also read John’s column online at www.mainebiz.biz.
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