Since the elections have been rather disappointing this year, to put it mildly, I'm going to try and focus on something else. Though, I have to paraphrase Donald Trump when I say we need to make America truly great. As much as I love America, we do need some massive improvements. What improvements we make will be obvious. Other improvements will vary greatly from person to person.
I'll start by working category by category. I'll help keep my thoughts a bit clearer, I hope. Since infrastructure includes a wide variety of issues, I doubt I'll be able to cover them all. I'll cover what I can, though.
Infrastructure:
A key component to any plans should be infrastructure. No nation succeeds without a solid infrastructure. Strong, sturdy bridges. Good roads. Reliable power grid. Safe drinking water. Proper disposal of sewage and trash. You get the idea. Without stuff like this, a lot of stuff I plan on mentioning will be irrelevant.
Safe drinking water will be key. Anyone with basic knowledge knows what happens if you lack safe drinking water, so I'll save everyone the speech.
In many communities, many water facilities are outdated. Many water lines need serious updating, as well. I can only imagine how much it would cost to get most communities updated on larger, improved treatment facilities or water pipes. Flint, Michigan gained a lot of attention in the not so recent past over inadequate drinking water.
If we're going to be honest with ourselves, we have to acknowledge that this is a bigger problem then we realized.
On a related note is our sewage treatment facilities. Considering how much junk gets dumped into our sewage systems, such as old prescriptions and God knows what else. Many systems have trouble filtering out stuff as caffeine and various medications that get dumped down toilets. Honestly, there's probably more junk going into our sewer systems then we realize.
Good roads are certain a necessity. For this discussion, I'll include highways, interstates, as well as city streets. Depending on where you live, many roads are in serious disrepair. Part of the problem is that many local governments have limited funds. Some have been cash strapped since the economy went down the crapper in late 2007 (roughly). Many state governments played hell with their budgets for years because of the economy.
Roads have suffered as a result of this. I know most of the roads where I live aren't in too bad of shape, largely because most local governments were a bit smarter with their money. Some of them could be better, but I won't complain too hard on this.
It should be a no brainer why we need to keep our roads safe. Between transporting goods, daily activities (school, work, shopping, etc), and other reasons I'm probably neglecting, there should be no excuse to let our roads deteriorate.
Speaking of deteriorating, our bridges need to be a high point. If you need an example of this, just think back to August 2007 with the I-35W bridge collapse. Thirteen people died as a result of it's collapse. It happened with evening rush hour traffic taking place. A Wikipedia article says that undersized gusset plates were considered the primary cause of the collapse.
I seem to recall governments some time later admitting that many bridges weren't inspected as often as they needed to be. Many bridges, at the time, need major repair and/or replacing. As of recent years, I don't know how much work as actually been done to correct the problem. I don't want this to be an issue again. We shouldn't take any chances with this happening again.
Putting the money into something like this would be a strong boost to the economy. Not only would it require construction crews, but we would need steel companies to put out a massive amount of steel. If we're serious about building up our economy, we'd need American steel companies to produce the steel needed. American made products in all aspects of the work would be needed if we truly care about strengthening the American economy and industry. With people gaining good paying jobs, tax benefits could be huge (I would think).
Since recycling of old steel (appliances, cars, etc.) is usually the cheaper and quicker then mining for it, scrap yards throughout the country would be able to make some serious money as a side benefit. Scrappers would make more money, as well, since the scrap yards would likely pay better money for more material. This could have some long term benefits if we got started on projects like this.
A major source of concern is the electric grid. It's generally agreed upon by experts, including those anti-terrorist, that our electric grid is highly vulnerable. If one thing goes wrong, through terrorism, electromagnetic pulse (EMP), or anything else, we could see chaos pretty quickly.
Back in 2003, a blackout occurred in parts of the American Northeast and Ontario. In this case, a software bug in a control room was to blame. Didn't help that operators were unaware of the problem due to a lack of alarm. This likely would've been more localized if everything was in place, to begin with.
This leads me to ask what would happen if a power substation were to have problems. What happens if a lack of maintenance, or improper maintenance, caused a substation to go out? Could other substations take over the workload until it's fixed or replaced? What if a substation, for any number of reasons, needed to be replaced. I can't fathom how long it would take, let alone how much money it would take.
Heck. All that needs to happen is a natural disaster to create problems. Depending on where you live, it could be an earthquake that causes widespread issues. Other parts of the country could get a hurricane. Many areas frequently have issues with tornados.
How old are parts of the power grid, anyway? Can parts of the grid handle the current capacities?
Hopefully, the rest of you can see why I want this to be a high priority. We simply can't take chances of the power grid going down for any length of time.
This is as far as I go, for now. I'll pick this up at a later time (I hope).
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