(Mark Your Calendars: RealShare REAL ESTATE 2012, March 22nd in Los Angeles).
SACRAMENTO-Water and urban runoff top the list of infrastructure sectors that need the most immediate attention in the state, Yaz Emrani, executive committee co-chair for the American Society of Civil Engineers’ California Infrastructure Report Card and co-chair of the infrastructure policy committee for ASCE Region 9, tells GlobeSt.com. The finding came from the California Infrastructure Report Card 2012, which ASCE’s Region 9 just released, giving California’s infrastructure an overall grade of “C.”
Moreover, the report—the second one issued since 2006—found an additional annual investment of $65 billion is needed to improve the total infrastructure to an adequate level. This amount includes what Emrani reveals to GlobeSt.com is roughly $4.6 billion per year for the next decade to fix the state’s water infrastructure, which was the only grade to decrease from the 2006 report card—down from a C+ to a C. Ensuring adequate supply is a main concern for the current system, he adds.
“We’ve outlived our use of the existing infrastructure,” Emrani explains. “It’s pretty old, and there’s a huge argument for renewing the infrastructure so it can meet existing and future demands. We want to bring it up to a grade of B, which is the minimum acceptable grade in California.”
Also in need of upgrading is the state’s urban runoff infrastructure, which held its D+ grade since the 2006 report card, Emrani tells GlobeSt.com. Bringing the grade to a B would require $6.7 billion per year for the next 10 years, he continues, a difficult amount to acquire since financing stormwater runoff comes from a general fund and is not part of residents’ wastewater bill. “The only way to keep up with the demand on this is to assess an additional tax or fee on geographical areas or some type of sales tax measure to take care of these needs,” Emrani concludes. “I would call catching up with urban-runoff infrastructure-investment needs like someone running after a bullet train.”
Other infrastructure areas graded by the report card include levees and flood control (grade “D”), aviation (“C+”), ports (“B-”), solid waste (“B”) transportation (“C-“) and wastewater (“C+”). While California’s overall “C” average may seem disappointing, ASCE’s Report Card on American’s Infrastructure gave the nation a “D” average, rating the state better than the country as a whole.
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Carrie Rossenfeld
Carrie Rossenfeld is a reporter for the San Diego and Orange County markets on GlobeSt.com and a contributor to Real Estate Forum. She was a trade-magazine and newsletter editor in New York City before moving to Southern California to become a freelance writer and editor for magazines, books and websites. Rossenfeld has written extensively on topics including commercial real estate, running a medical practice, intellectual-property licensing and giftware. She has edited books about profiting from real estate and has ghostwritten a book about starting a home-based business.
