Skip to main content

Deferred Maintenance

Deferred maintenance is always an expensive proposition. Whether you’ve waited too long to replace your brakes, or your state waited too long to replace its dams, the bill will always be far more than if you’d just stayed current with the upkeep.

Deferred maintenance now defines us as a country. As if the Covid crisis weren’t straining all systems to the breaking point, the cans we have kicked down the road keep piling up unattended. Paying for them will be a crucial issue for the next few generations.

Michigan, my adopted state, is a poster child for deferred maintenance.

The same state that brought you the poisoning of Flint’s water. The same state where the current governor was elected with the slogan “Fix the Damn Roads.”

This time it’s our dams making the news. Two weeks ago, the Edenville dam in Midland burst, destroying another dam downriver, wrecking thousands of homes, and stranding thousands of families. In the middle of a pandemic.

The dam was notoriously fragile. Its owners had ignored federal orders to upgrade for years. In 2018, their license was revoked, leaving the state responsible for operation and maintenance. The dam was known to be a lit fuse, and everybody — federal, state, local, private — knew it could go off at any time.

Now, facing billions in lawsuits from displaced homeowners and businesses, Michigan taxpayers could be on the hook for any settlements handed down. Add that to our Covid bill, and I’m guessing our roads won’t be fixed any time soon.

And that’s just one dam in one state. Every state has the same infrastructure issues. Every state has bridges, tunnels, roads, dams, water, and sewage systems in some state of disrepair, just waiting for that perfect moment to fail.

It seems to be in our nature — either as Americans or possibly as human beings — to wait until there’s significant loss of life before we pay attention to these things. But it’s just a matter of time before infrastructure failure becomes an everyday occurrence. Deferred maintenance will come back to haunt us, one way or another.

And infrastructure problems don’t exist in a vacuum. All too often, they intersect with environmental issues. That same dam collapse in Midland sent flood waters through a Superfund area where the soil was already deeply contaminated from decades of dumped chemicals, courtesy of Dow’s Midland headquarters. The cleanup there was already a long and expensive process before the flooding. Now, even if people can somehow rebuild their homes, will the added carcinogens be worth it?

And just as the failure of infrastructure will inevitably ripple through the environment, the reverse is also true: As temperatures and water levels both rise, the strain on infrastructure will get far worse. Miami is already leading the way on that one.

The virus is shining a harsh light on all sorts of vulnerabilities that are fast becoming life-threatening. Our states are still waiting desperately for help from the federal government, even as our cities and counties wait desperately for help from the states. Clearly, we’ll be waiting until at least next year. And then don’t hold your breath.

Because as precarious as our infrastructure has become, the clear and present danger of the virus will assure an even longer delay in addressing it. Deferred maintenance will remain deferred until something ugly happens to remind us. And even then, action won't be guaranteed.


Berkley MI

Tuesday 06/30/20

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rewriting History has a Long and Ugly History

  I n 1937, Nikolai Yezhov was the second most powerful man in the Soviet Union. He was head of Stalin’s secret police, the dreaded NKVD, which was rebranded years later as the KGB. Most important, he was, at least for the moment, in Stalin’s good graces, a precarious place to be. As he well knew. Yezhov was everything Stephen Miller wants to be. He was the guy responsible for carrying out what became known as the Great Terror. His job was the systematic and ruthless elimination, often through summary execution, of anyone Stalin suspected might be an “enemy of the people.” This was a lengthy list, numbering in the many thousands, and from all reports Yezhov made a substantial dent in it. That year, there was an official photo taken of Stalin, Yezhov, and two others  walking along a canal in Moscow.  (One of the others was Vyacheslav Molotov, whose notorious cocktails had not yet been introduced).  A mere three years later, Yezhov was out of the ...
2 comments
Read more

Let’s Just Call It Bozo Diplomacy

  “Peace talks” are usually plural — I can’t remember any war where there was just one, singular peace talk. Until now. One peace talk, one failure. The Vance delegation — is that an oxymoron? — picked up its toys and went home. They came back with nothing. Which is no more than what we deserve. I’m uncomfortable writing “we” in the context of some Trump-caused calamity, so please do not construe it as an endorsement of any word or deed being carried out in my country’s name. Take it to mean merely the “American side” of some international embarrassment. “We” is not me. I have no say in what “we” do. And the people who do have a say are idiots. At least I get to watch. We’ve arrived at the bargaining stage of the stupidest war in the nation’s history. How we got here is disgraceful. Whatever we come away with, however humiliating, serves us right. But whatever happens, it’s clear that we’re negotiating from weakness. We’re weak because we’ve been weakened ...
1 comment
Read more

The Rule of Law Strikes Back

  It’s hard to say what constitutes an emergency these days. We can look in any direction and see one coming. We constantly blink in disbelief that one deranged individual seems bent on bringing down the whole planet, for no discernible reason other than it looks like fun. Yes, for a certain kind of sociopath, blowing shit up does look like fun. The same sort of fun a delinquent middle schooler might have setting off illegal cherry bombs in the boys’ room. Same mentality, a billion times more dangerous. There’s a race against time going on. For reasons that have the whole world baffled, the only chance of stopping this monster is waiting for the midterms and hoping for the best. That’s, um, eight months away. As infuriating as that is to us, imagine what it’s like for people in other countries, none of whom have any control over the cataclysmic disruptions, born of sheer whimsy, that now threaten their lives. Living inside the economic blast radius of this ...
2 comments
Read more