Why infrastructure matters
Residents of the City of San Bruno thought that either an earthquake had occurred or a plane had crashed at nearby San Francisco Airport when their world was shaken by a natural gas explosion last week. At least seven people are dead and others still missing.
One of the great frustrations for me during my eight years in public office in Redondo Beach was the inability to get anyone interested in the decaying infrastructure which was affecting our daily lives, and will affect it more so in the future.
That’s because infrastructure is not sexy. Elected officials would rather get their names on plaques for buildings a community may or may not need than spend political capital on preventing sewer spills or explosions like the one that devastated San Bruno.
Just look at all the volatile infrastructure we have around us. Refineries, power stations, airports, shipping facilities, sewage treatment, etc. all make for a potential lethal mix when the pipes that are carrying the stuff they produce or need to operate ages and fails. It is a time bomb.
However, rare is the government entity that has in place a reasonable program for upgrading or replacing this infrastructure. It takes a lot of money. It takes people. Government would rather spend what it has on things that are visible, not things that might happen.
That’s why the average age of a sewer pipe in the City of Los Angeles is over 50 years. It’s about the same in Redondo Beach. Yet, neither city has a program for a complete upgrade of the system to prevent spills and failures. In fact, their “program” is to respond to spills and failures, when the cost of fixing is at its highest.
(This is an exact corollary to the health care debate where the most cost effective health care is preventive, but the system is set up to treat the problem after it develops.)
Throw into the mix that privately held public utilities have shareholders to report earnings to. Delay puts money down to the bottom line. People are dead because of this policy. The pipes underneath our cities can blow at any time.
Yes, there will be incidents that are purely accidental. San Bruno’s, it seems, was not. It was caused by a lack of interest in managing risk.
Leadership in the public arena is about getting people to understand why something important, that they don’t know or care about, needs to be done. It is also about convincing others to get it done. Clearly, that leadership is as non-existent as the plans to keep us safe. ER
