Jan 24 2012
The President will be speaking before a Joint session of Congress and the American people tonight to discuss the State of the Union. The first State of the Union was delivered by President George Washington in January 1790 and since then has become a vehicle for a sitting President to outline his legislative agenda for [...]
Jan 19 2012
UPDATED: 01/20/12 at 5:30pm As the second session of the 112th Congress commences several ASCE priority issues remain unresolved. Thus far the 112th Congress has seen little legislative action on issues related to the civil engineering profession, however House and Senate leaders have indicated that infrastructure legislation could be a top priority in 2012. [...]
Aug 27 2010
Today is the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. During that terrible ordeal thousands of lives were lost, destroyed, or significantly altered. We must never forget that poor and unresilient infrastructure, inadequately maintained and mixed with Mother Nature can have devastating results. For the most part, we do realize that. Unfortunately, disasters like Katrina do have [...]
Jul 27 2010
The failure this weekend of an 88 year old dam in Iowa has once again brought the nation’s attention to the poor state of our nation’s aging infrastructure and shown us the devastation that can be caused when that infrastructure fails. There are more than 85,000 dams in the United States, and the average age [...]
Nov 06 2009
The news this morning wasn’t good: unemployment in October climbed to a twenty-five year high of 10.2 percent and is expected to grow. More troubling for those of us in the infrastructure field, last month the economy also lost about 62,000 construction jobs. While the Obama administration estimates on recovery.gov that as of October 30, [...]