Forget about \u201cinfrastructure week\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s infrastructure summer. <\/p>\n
Or that seems to be the ambition of President Joe Biden as he barnstorms the country in hopes of selling the US$579 billion bipartisan infrastructure deal he signed on to. He\u2019s making it clear, though, that he\u2019s committed to his original plan to spend trillions more \u2013 including on what he called human infrastructure. <\/p>\n
In Wisconsin, he called the deal the largest federal infrastructure effort since the interstate highway system was created in 1956. Unlike his more ambitious original $4 trillion plan, the bipartisan deal would focus on physical infrastructure, like roads, pipes and the power grid. <\/p>\n
Experts writing for The Conversation have been highlighting areas of America\u2019s infrastructure that are in urgent need of attention \u2013 as well as the reasons human infrastructure deserves to be treated in the same manner as the traditional kind.<\/p>\n
1. Lead pipes: A \u2018silent killer\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n The bipartisan deal includes $55 billion for water infrastructure, including the elimination of lead service lines and pipes. <\/p>\n That\u2019s good news, says Gabriel Filippelli, a geochemist and environmental health researcher at IUPUI who has studied the heartbreaking impacts of lead poisoning in children for decades. He calls lead in pipes a \u201csilent killer\u201d that disproportionately affects poor communities of color.<\/p>\n \u201cChildren with lead poisoning have lower IQs, poor memory recall, high rates of attention deficit disorder and low impulse control,\u201d he writes. \u201cThey tend to perform poorly at school, which reduces their earning potential as adults. They also face increased risk of kidney disease, stroke and hypertension as they age.\u201d<\/p>\n 2. Why the US needs a macrogrid<\/strong><\/p>\n Another part of America\u2019s core infrastructure that would get new investment from the deal is the U.S. electrical grid, including improvements that would make it easier to move power from one part of the country to another. <\/p>\n Today that\u2019s not possible because the U.S. has multiple grids that don\u2019t interact well, explains James D. McCalley, an electrical engineer at Iowa State University. Connecting those into a macrogrid not only would reduce the cost of power for customers and encourage more clean energy production, it would pay for itself in a few decades. <\/p>\n \u201cWe calculated that if the U.S. spent $50 billion to develop a macrogrid, the total long-term cost of developing and operating the nation\u2019s electric power system and achieving 50% renewable electricity in 2038 would decrease by more than $50 billion,\u201d he writes. <\/p>\n 3. Human infrastructure is infrastructure<\/strong><\/p>\n Biden\u2019s original plan called for $425 billion for child and home care, areas that aren\u2019t traditionally thought of as infrastructure. The bipartisan plan wouldn\u2019t devote any money to what Biden has called \u201chuman infrastructure,\u201d but Biden promised Democrats would try to include this in a separate bill they hope to pass on their own. <\/p>\n Mignon Duffy, a sociologist at University of Massachusetts Lowell, explains why child and home care \u2013 and the workers doing those jobs \u2013 are just as critical to the nation as roads and bridges. <\/p>\n \u201cThe pandemic forced many child care centers across the country to shut down, while many home-based nannies and personal care aides were let go because of COVID-19 concerns and precautions,\u201d she writes. \u201cThe media was full of stories about the crushing burdens faced by working parents \u2013 mostly mothers \u2013 trying to simultaneously manage caring for children at home. And older adults isolated at home suffered from lack of access to formal home care support as families struggled to meet their needs.\u201d<\/p>\n Editor\u2019s note: This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https:\/\/theconversation.com\/fixing-americas-crumbling-physical-and-human-infrastructure-3-essential-reads-163615.<\/em><\/p>\n Bryan Keogh (The Conversation)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Forget about \u201cinfrastructure week\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s infrastructure summer. Or that seems to be the ambition…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":322001,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[320],"class_list":["post-347976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}