DES MOINES – The Iowa Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) released the inaugural 2015 Report Card for Iowa’s Infrastructure during a press conference in Des Moines this week. The state earned an overall GPA of C-.
The report card contains grades for 11 infrastructure categories. By assessing eight categories, the civil engineers who developed the report card awarded one B, seven Cs, and three Ds. Solid waste earned the highest marks, a B+, while inland waterways, dams, and bridges were all scored with Ds.
Iowa’s report card highlights several challenges facing the state’s aging infrastructure:
• One in five of Iowa’s bridges is rated structurally deficient or posted with weight restrictions – ranking third highest in the nation
• Only 10 percent of Iowa’s 4,000 dams are inspected regularly and just 23 percent have emergency action plans in place (national average is 70 percent)
• Just one of the 13 locks and dams on the Mississippi River is able to handle modern tows in a single lockage and 12 locks are over 80 years old
• There’s an annual $215 million shortfall to meeting critical needs for Iowa’s roadways, most of which were built 50 to 60 years ago
• Only 61 percent of the state’s 108 airports meet all service level requirements
• Just 57 levees in Iowa are minimally acceptable and 18 are unacceptable with no resources for follow-up on existing levees after initial construction
“As civil engineers, we work with infrastructure on a daily basis — much of it hidden from sight. Yet we understand just how essential it is to the function of our daily lives, to our economy, and to Iowa’s competitiveness,” said Joe Spradling, professional engineer and president of the Iowa Section of ASCE. “With our training, experience, and unique perspective, we provided the objective, critical analysis of infrastructure the Report Card contains.”
The Iowa Section asks Iowans to consider whether the grades in the report card are acceptable to them.
“We want Iowans to be aware of the issues with our infrastructure. We want elected officials to have a resource to use in decision-making and spending prioritization. And we look forward to an ongoing discussion of the necessity of maintaining and modernizing our infrastructure to meet not only the needs we have today but those of the future for generations of Iowans to come,” Spradling said.
Grades were awarded in 11 infrastructure categories in the report card: aviation (C-), rail (C), roads (C-), bridges (D+), inland waterways (D), levees (C-), dams (D), electrical energy (C), drinking water (C+), wastewater (C-), and solid waste (B+).
Not simply an analysis and critique, the report card also contains recommendations for improving infrastructure grades.
The Iowa report card was created as a public service to citizens and elected leaders of the state to inform them of infrastructure condition.
By using school report card letter grades, civil engineers use their expertise to condense complicated data into east-to-understand analysis. The Iowa report card is modeled after the national 2013 report card for America’s Infrastructure, which gave America’s infrastructure a grade of D+.
To view the full report, visit www.iowaasce.org.