Country Corner
by Steve Fairchild

Worn out and fading: Our inattention to the nation’s infrastructure will be a regret

As I write this, barge traffic on the upper Mississippi is at a standstill due to repairs on Lock and Dam 25 at Winfield, Mo. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had announced planned priority repair on the lock’s doors. However, more severe problems were noticed, triggering an emergency repair on March 27 that shut down traffic at the site. This particular lock was built this month 1939. And like much of the nation’s transportation and energy infrastructure that hasn’t been updated in a generation, it was in the process of literally coming unhinged.

In this case, the problem was bad gudgeon pins—the big metal pins that swing each leaf gate into position to form what engineers call a miter door.

We shouldn’t be alarmist, really. The entire upper Mississippi system is always one blown lock-and-dam miter door away from being shut down. And, as we saw in 1993, the agency that truly operates any river is Mother Nature. But you should take pause at the fact we’re shoving modern barge tows through such antiquated river infrastructure. How many things built in 1939 are still in use on your farm?

I asked MFA’s transportation manager Bill Dunn if this was a big deal for moving spring fertilizer. He said that given the wet conditions and the priority of labor and material the Corps dedicated to the fix, it would affect logistics but not be a major disruption. Dunn said that it might take a week to cut through all the congestion built up by the closure. But he added that the situation would have been significantly different had this occurred under conditions favorable for spring planting. It could have been much more disruptive for agriculture.

This is representative of transportation infrastructure across the nation that is, well, falling apart.

I drive a stretch of Interstate 70 every day, that four-lane ribbon that bisects Missouri. It’s a mess. We who grew up on gravel understand how to dodge a pothole. It becomes more challenging—and perhaps more deadly—at 70 miles per hour with a tractor trailer at your side. Such highways deteriorate even more quickly when traffic is diverted from the river to the road. Bad roads or broken locks are obvious examples of neglected infrastructure, but think about other ways our neglect is showing.

Associated Electric Cooperative, Incorporated recently abandoned its plans to build a coal-fired baseload power plant at Norborne, Mo. The co-op cited cost increases (figuring the project to total something like $2 billion) but more tellingly, lack of financing from USDA’s Rural Utilities Service, which is a traditional source for credit in such an undertaking. I assume credit on the open market was too expensive or unavailable. Put yourself in the place of lender. If someone wanted to borrow a couple billion dollars to build something that burns coal, would you be confident that U.S. lawmakers wouldn’t have the thing shut down inside of a few years to meet some CO2 cap and trade scheme? With no new baseload generation plants, our national electric grid is another chunk of aging and undersized infrastructure.

I like the way Victor Davis Hanson put it on his blog the other day. He said that $100-per-barrel oil and $1,000 per-ounce-gold have caused a new oil and gold rush and that current farm commodity prices have blossomed into a land boom:

Suddenly the 6-billion-person planet is realizing again that it is not hedge funds, currency trading or even stocks that make the world run, but food, fuel and metals. Suddenly the world needs more wildcatters, farmers and miners and [fewer] investment bankers and stock traders. We can’t live in cyberspace, but apparently need to eat, keep warm and find shelter for a bit longer. A trader and speculator at Bear Stearns won’t keep us fed and fueled, but more likely someone a bit more uncouth and tougher on a tractor or derrick.

That may be good news on the farm or in the oil field. The bad news is that much of any new economic gain needs to be directed toward long-overdue infrastructure improvements. Can we put additional tax on $4 diesel? Is it fair to take earned money from oil companies at congressional gunpoint and call it a windfall tax? Can we hurry up the multi-billion dollar environmental mitigation of lock building on the Mississippi to modernize the river way? The outlook is as jammed as the Mississippi on March 29. Disruption likely.

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