By now you have heard about the horrible tragedy in Minneapolis. As of now, eight have been confirmed dead and twenty to thirty are listed as missing.The search for what went wrong is, as it should be, already taking place. In that vein, I noticed two things that, taken together, are disturbing. First, the Gov. of the state said this:

Governor Pawlenty said the bridge had an unusual design and was inspected in 2005 and 2006. No structural deficiencies were detected, he said.

However, the Star Tribune reported that the Federal government had, possibly, a different notion of the quality of the bridge:

The highway bridge that collapsed into the Mississippi River on Wednesday was rated as “structurally deficient” two years ago and possibly in need of replacement.

That rating was contained in the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Bridge Inventory database.

Jeanne Aamodt, a spokeswoman for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, said the department was aware of the 2005 assessment of the bridge. “We’ve seen it, and we are very familiar with it,” she said.

Now, those two quotes look bad, but they may not actually contradict one another. From the same link as above:

The inventory data also summarize the bridge’s status as “structurally deficient.” Bridge components are ranked on a scale of 0 to 9, with 0 being “failed” and 9 being “excellent.”

In 2005, the bridge’s superstructure — meaning the physical conditions of all structural members — was rated at 4, records show. The bridge’s deck was rated 5, and the substructure, comprised of the piers, abutments, footings and other components, was rated 6.

Governor Pawlenty may be technically correct: it is not clear from the Star Tribune article whether or not a rating of 4 meant that there were actual structural defects or that the bridge was likely to develop defects considering the use and then condition. But whether or not “what is the meaning of is” parsing gets Pawlenty out of a technical lie, his statement does imply that the bridge was fine. That, at least, is not entirely true:

The deficiency rating is derived from a complex formula that evaluates many factors and condenses them into an overall score. A score of 80 percent or less indicates some rehabilitation may be needed; a 50 percent score or less indicates replacement may be in order.

The I-35W bridge was rated at 50 percent. The rating data was provided to the Star Tribune by the National Institute of Computer Assisted Reporting.

So, at a minimum, the bridge was marked structurally deficient and the state government knew this. So why would Pawlenty give out a statement that would state otherwise?

First, he may just not have been aware. He may not have know that there was a potential problem, which means his Administration is not being run competently. He may have been trying to short-circuit speculation until he could get real answers from his department heads. The state government refused to say what, if anything, was being down to correct the deficiencies the Federal government found:

Aamodt declined to say what the agency was going to do to address the deficiencies found in 2005 and referred further questions to Dan Dorgan, state bridge engineer and director of the bridge office. Dorgan wasn’t available for comment.

There may be a good reason for the work not having been done by now. But then Pawlenty should have just said some variation of that. Pawlenty may also be afraid that this decision could be coming back to haunt him:

If it were to become law, the bill would infuse $7.3 billion into road construction and mass transit operation over the next decade through a combination of revenue sources that includes the gas tax. If it’s shot down, it would leave legislators little time to come up with an alternative before they adjourn May 23.

. Pawlenty did, in fact, veto the bill. And if necessary bridge work was pushed back or ignored because there were budget issues, that speaks poorly to both the ability of the Pawlenty administration to set priorities and of its willingness to properly fund the state’s infrastructure.

The physical infrastructure in this country is in desperate need of repair:

One study estimates that by the year 2005, traffic delays caused by inadequate roads will cost U.S. citizens $50 billion annually in lost wages and wasted fuel. Another study demonstrates how our spending priorities are counterproductive, noting that U.S. motorists spend four times as much money fixing damage to their cars caused by crumbling roads than states spend on repairing the highways. Similarly, it has been estimated that $112 billion will be required to bring the nation’s schools to an overall good condition.

Recent well-documented reports on the condition of our infrastructure are alarming. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) recently produced a Report Card for America’s Infrastructure that evaluated the current status of our nation’s roads, bridges, water systems, school buildings, and other elements of the infrastructure. Each category was evaluated on the basis of condition and performance, capacity versus need, and funding versus need by a consensus panel of ASCE experts. The conclusions are sobering. The report assigned letter grades to 10 categories of public works, culminating in an overall grade-point average of “D.”

ASCE estimates that an investment of nearly $1.3 trillion over the next five years is required to bring the infrastructure up to acceptable conditions and functional performance levels. ASCE also noted the great economic costs of failing to adequately address our infrastructure deterioration that exacerbates problems resulting from contaminated drinking water, crumbling schools, obsolete and deficient roads, and airport gridlock.

Decades of “taxes and government are evil” rhetoric has lead to a situation where not enough money is invested to maintain our struggling infrastructure. As Elana Levin has noted, we see the signs of this all around us:

I should probably explain this blog post’s title. When chasms in the earth open up near Grand Central the media tends to report it. Even Fox. But what you won’t see in the media by and large is a discussion of why it is that these accidents take place. Sure they’ll explain how the explosion was caused by water hitting an antediluvian steam pipe but they just won’t make the connection between the lack of investment in our country’s infrastructure and things going kablooie. You see it takes money to keep any locality running. And localities get that money through our taxes.

Infrastructure is quite literally crumbling beneath our feat and to paraphrase Rick Perlstein “it’s not the terrorists, it’s the tax cuts“. You see you can’t have modern society without infrastructure, like emergency services, a working sewage system and a power grid. And if your only goal as a society is to cut taxes eventually you are left with asbestos covered steam pipes from 1924 that explode and kill people - and yes, damage business interests.

If Pawlenty’s decision to not give extra funds to transportation infrastructure did contribute to this disaster, it would just be the most horrific example fo a basic pattern of infrastrucutre neglect in this country that must be corrected.