John Hennessy III,
P.E.
Conversations with infrastructure experts and stakeholders from around the U.S.
Karen Horting, CAE, is the executive director and CEO for the Society of Women Engineers, a position she has held since Dec. 31, 2013. With more than 20 years of experience in sales, marketing, and fund development, Horting was most recently the SWE deputy executive director. In this capacity, she was responsible for all fund-development […]
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“…The activity that goes around seaports accounts for over a quarter of our U.S. economy, the GDP, so it’s an absolutely vital, critical piece of our economy. It accounts for over 23 million jobs and also, importantly, in these kind of tight fiscal times, that activity generates over $320 billion a year in local, state and federal tax revenue that hopefully then can also be utilized to strengthen and rebuild and modernize that infrastructure that allows for that activity.”
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“I think as engineers sometimes things just seem very logical—this would seem very logical to take care of this infrastructure that there was such a large investment in to begin with—but there are a lot of emotional and political reasons why that doesn’t happen, and they tend to get discounted. I think the people who are interested in improving infrastructure need to understand that, and try to respond to that rather than dismiss it as illogical or something along those lines.”
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“I think it’s the first time in recent history that we’ve seen two presidential candidates talk about the infrastructure needs and willingness to address the infrastructure funding deficit…So we really feel like the public is starting to get more engaged, starting to understand that we do have infrastructure needs around the country and are willing to come to the table to have serious discussions to figure out how to solve these problems.”
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“We’re at a point now where, with more than $44 billion last year, aggregate investment in the U.S. in renewable energy is over $370 billion…In a lot of the developed world, renewables are the biggest single infrastructure investment that’s going on. You’re actually seeing more spent on renewables than on traditional infrastructure like roads and bridges, which is a pretty big surprise.”
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…I think that the public and government officials feel as though infrastructure isn’t as critical as it used to be back 20, 25 years ago…They’ll put up with defects in the pavement, they’ll put up with bridge deterioration, where before, and in other countries, transportation is expected to be in very good condition…And here I think we have a new normal. The expectation has really decreased, and there’s a new normal that the expectations are lower.
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“When you look throughout history, when there is a combination of climate change, resource depletion, and enormous income inequality, civilizations fall apart, and we see collapse. And when there’s a lot of social cohesion, then civilizations are able to overcome some of the stresses they’re facing. And so these issues are all interrelated, and as much as we need behavior changes and energy-systems changes, and a lot of technological and certainly infrastructure changes to deal with climate change, at the root we also need to create a more equitable social system to accomplish them.”
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“The idea of green infrastructure in parks is beautifully suited to the whole notion of community engagement and empowerment…Citizens often feel they don’t have a voice in how their government works and the projects that they commit to and how money is spent, but in the notion of putting green infrastructure stormwater management in parks, it opens up a whole new realm of how and what citizens can do to influence the outcomes of how stormwater is managed.”
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“Fossil fuels, which provide 85% of our current energy, suffer from two fatal drawbacks. One of which is the fact that they produce greenhouse gasses that are undermining the viability of our climate and therefore our future of industrial society…The other drawback of fossil fuels is that fact that these are depleting, non-renewable resources…So one way or another we will be moving away from fossil fuels as time goes on, it’s just a question of whether we do it in a planned and organized way, or just wait until we can no longer afford to extract the stuff that’s left.”
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In 2014, DeFazio was elected to the powerful position of Ranking Member on the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Coast Guard, highways and transit, water resources, railroads, aviation, and economic development.
“[Citizens] need to speak up, speak out. They need to contact their members of congress, their senators. They need to particularly weigh in in an election year and, go to a debate, or ask them a question as publicly as you can, ‘what are you going to do to fix Americas infrastructure?'”
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