America is falling apart — literally. In 2013, the American Society of Civil Engineers rated the country’s infrastructure a D+ and estimated that 3.6 trillion dollars need to be invested by 2020 to fix everything — all the pipelines, airports, bridges, roads and other transit infrastructure. For decades, what we have built has been left in a state of disarray as federal and state governments refuse to fund infrastructure repair. Now, engineers at Betchel Group construction company have predicted crises in the form of bridge collapses, levee failure, road closures and other emergencies. 

The unfolding tragedy in Flint, Michigan is the most recent example. The horrific chain of events began April 25, 2014 when the city changed its water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River in order to save millions of dollars, as reported by a Jan. 26 Washington Post article. The decision proved deadly. The switch to less-expensive, untreated water caused a corrosive reaction in Flint’s old pipelines that released toxic amounts of lead into the water supply. 

Here is a synopsis presented by the American Chemical Society of what went wrong: First, high concentrations of chloride ions in the Flint River leached metals such as iron and lead from old pipes into the water supply. Then, the problem was exacerbated when city officials introduced more corrosive chloride ions with the addition of Ferric chloride. This coagulant compound was needed to remove organic matter in the water supply, the product of yet another harmful reaction induced to disinfect the water after E. coli was detected in it. This combination released lead anywhere from 25 to 1000 parts per billion into residents’ tap water. To put this in perspective, the Environmental Protection Agency allows only 15 parts per billion.

As a result, as many as eight thousand children have tested positive for lead poisoning, Legionnaire’s disease or other neurological disorders, according to a Jan. 30 New York Times article. At least 10 people have died. For more than 18 months, Flint’s city council refused to acknowledge the issue. Despite evidence of spiked lead levels presented by a research team at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University as well as the EPA, these officials denied the claims vigorously until the Michigan government stepped in, according to an Oct. 8, 2015 New York Times article. The continuous inaction by Flint city officials is nothing short of despicable.

Today, Flint remains in a state of emergency. Although proper redress has been underway since Jan. 5 — when Michigan Governor Rick Snyder first declared the state of emergency — many Flint residents are reeling. As documented by a Jan. 16 Washington Post article, though the city has seen millions in emergency aid, mostly to purchase bottled water, many problems remain.

Some families, thinking they could install water filters to access clean water, have found filters to be ineffective, according to a Jan. 29 Detroit Free Press article. Others who have given up and want to move out of Flint are stuck. Home values have plummeted since the crisis, according to a Feb. 4 New York Times article. 

Even access to bottled water has seen complications due to a discriminatory policy requiring Flint residents to show identification. According to a Feb. 4 Detroit Free Press article, until Jan. 22, many people were denied water simply because they did not have a valid ID card, and the State Department of Health and Human Services later confirmed this. 

In a Jan. 9 article, CNN quoted Lorna Hunter, who has lived in Flint for more than 60 years and thus weathered the city’s ups and downs, saying, “You feel like sitting ducks here.” This level of  desperation is not common to Americans. So how did this happen?

Put simply, America does not spend enough on infrastructure. Major construction projects are funded federally through the gas tax, which has not been raised since 1993, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Because the tax was not tied to inflation, it remains at 18 cents per gallon and has become an issue beyond the scope of our polemically divided Congress. Subsequently, according to the CBO, America spent only $416 billion on infrastructure in 2014 when ideally infrastructure requires trillions for upkeep. 

Furthermore, because many roads and bridges were built during the 1950s under President Roosevelt’s New Deal program, all infrastructure is becoming out of date simultaneously. Although it is widely agreed by members of Congress, labor unions and other vested interests that the infrastructure needs fixing, most have not put forth a feasible plan to go about doing so. Andy Herrman, former president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, relayed in a 2016 “60 Minutes” interview that, simply, “Politicians in Washington don’t have the political courage to say, ‘This is what we have to do.’” In Flint, the water pipelines were well over 50 years old, according to an Aug. 19, 2015 Triple Pundit article, but no one thought to fix the old pipes — or if they did, they didn’t dare suggest raising taxes to do so. 

This is strange considering the multitude of benefits infrastructure projects bring with them. According to a 2012 study by Sylvian Leduc and Daniel Wilson of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, for every one dollar spent on infrastructure, two dollars are returned to the state economy. Similar findings have been documented by University of California, San Diego economics professor Valerie Ramey and a 2014 budget report by the Economic Policy Institute. 

Not only are infrastructure projects good for the economy, they also provide thousands of jobs to construction workers, engineers and small businesses. Most claims by officials that infrastructure projects are not good investments tend to overlook this long-term outcome, instead looking to short-term cost as a way to sway public opinion against such ideas.

Due to this budgeting issue, the federal government has been lackluster in its attempts to repair key infrastructures. The paralysis has had drastic effects. Over 60,000 bridges have been deemed “structurally deficient” in the United States, according to a 2015 report by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association. And they are not located one region, either. Ray LaHood, former U.S. Secretary of Transportation, said during a 2016 interview with “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Croft, “You could go to any major city in America and see roads, and bridges, and infrastructure that need to be fixed today. This problem is one that threatens every American.”  

Such a threat has been a real danger for many. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina infamously caused levee failures that ended up flooding the city of New Orleans.  In another 2007 incident, the I-35 Mississippi River bridge in Minneapolis collapsed, killing 13 people and injuring 145 others.  The bridge had been deemed “structurally deficient” for years before the collapse according to an Aug. 1, 2007 accident report filed by the National Transportation Safety Board. More recently, in 2010, a natural gas pipeline explosion killed eight San Bruno, Calif. residents and destroyed over 40 homes. The pipeline was built in 1956 with defective welds, a problem for which the pipeline owners, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., had not tested, according to a May 23, 2015 SFGate article. Examples like these are becoming more and more common as our infrastructures ages without repair. In Pennsylvania, for instance, three hundred bridges become structurally deficient each year. If such dilapidation continues, lawmakers will not even be able to repair our infrastructure fast enough.

During the same interview for “60 Minutes,” Ray LaHood lamented, “Our infrastructure is on life support right now. That’s where we’re at.” If this problem is not given its due attention, more tragedies like that in Flint may haunt Americans in the not-so-distant future.