American Society of Civil Engineers’ Report Card for America’s Infrastructure
Mary-Anna Holden is a former New Jersey Commissioner. Butch Howard is a former South Carolina Commissioner.
Just as the end-of-school-year grades may be anxiously anticipated, not many look forward to the arrival of the American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) quadrennial Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.
ASCE’s overall “C” grade rating is for more sectors than utilities, including highways, streets, dams, mass transit, and airports, to name a few. We recognize that for the first time since 1998, at least no sector received a D-.
For our purposes we’ll discuss water and wastewater with some references to stormwater utilities, a relatively new category and although related to wastewater, it is generally not among the utilities that Public Service Commissioners regulate. Drinking Water scored the best at C-; Wastewater a D+; and Stormwater a D.
While seemingly less-than-stellar assessments, four years after Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the current report shows improvement, although there is a substantial shortfall in funding.
The Information and Jobs Act sunsets in 2026. ASCE estimates that if all federal infrastructure sectors’ funding reverts to pre-2021 levels, that each American household could have to pay seven hundred dollars more annually over the next twenty years just to maintain the status quo.