Times are proving difficult for 21st Century America's municipal infrastructure. Those with eyes to see have decried this steady decline at least since the '80s, when Republican economic management and Cold War politics kept military and deficit-based spending high on the list of national priorities, and maintenance of bridges and other critical civil infrastructure as almost as low on that list as mental health services -- which Reagan all but eviscerated, sending thousands of vulnerable, afflicted people directly onto the streets.
In one particularly telling instance, planners and city engineers in Atlanta before the 1992 Olympics were more than a little concerned that the aging concrete bridges and overpasses that Atlanta commuters rely on every day wouldn't be able to accommodate the increase in Olympics-related traffic. Luckily, nothing happened then, but as MInnesota showed us last week (not to mention Katrina 2 years ago), spectacular failures of infrastructure can strike suddenly and catastrophically.
Bridges don't directly involve geopolitics, control of Middle Eastern oil, or illegal projections of American power. As such, the Prez and his cronies spare little time on such things. Never to pass up a good photo op, though, Bush repaired to the remains and posed as a caring President ministering to a stricken people. The collapsed bridge wasn't nearly so compelling an image as Jackson Square or the barge in the Lower 9th Ward after Katrina, but a disaster is a disaster, and as such, it drew our Bush.
Back in DC, he'll likely direct the Secretary of the Interior to empanel a commission composed of transportation industry lobbyists, who in turn will create a task force of DOT bureaucrats and engineers to: a) research and find problems in critical infrastructure, b) produce a tepid report that vaguely lays fault with some agency or business, and c) have that report completely ignored by the powers-that-be and by the news media, who, frightened by weighty topics but mostly bored, will have moved on to cover extensively the liposuction of some emaciated waif of repute or other, or the "mysterious" drug-related death of some hapless "rising star."Beyond roads and bridges, though, there are other infrastructures upon which our society depends, infrastructures composed of social services provided by the state to the least of its members. Things like mental health or substance abuse services, or therapies for the disabled. Things that can also fail, with catastrophic results. The massacre at Virginia Tech this past spring could possibly have been prevented had mental health services been better able to catch members of society whose illness makes them a threat to self or others. Underfunded and constantly under the Damoclean sword of mean-spirited American politicians, mental health services are a tattered line of defense of the minimal standards of human dignity. They are a bastion of civilization at the crossroads of madness, and at their root they are in place to preserve basic human dignity.
But back to New Orleans. Our bridges may be shabby and in need of repair, and much of our public works are not up to par. But right now, we are experiencing another kind of catastrophe in municipal infrastructure, a disaster that has no focal point, like a bridge -- although it can involve bridges.
Homeless men, women, and children, down on their luck or suffering mental or physical illness or substance abuse, sometimes sleep under bridges in New Orleans, especially the I-10 overpass above Claiborne and Canal Street. Dozens of people sleep there or in parks or abandoned buildings throughout town, a clear indication that critical human services are either inaccessible or non-existent.
Aside from mental health and substance abuse issues, New Orleans has a unique homeless problem related to the rebuilding after Katrina. Homeowners have had to deal with monumental obstacles from insurance companies, from FEMA, and from the Road Home program. Families even today sleep in their cars, or huddle in squatted houses, and even those fortunate enough to have access to FEMA trailers have to tolerate exposure to toxic formaldehyde fumes. Choices between the insecurity of sleeping out-of-doors or breathing poisonous fumes from outgassing plastics are pretty crappy choices, and in a city full of people recovering from disaster, well, let's just say folks might be excused for their anger at such a "choice."
Anger built of frustration and loss, of mental anguish and physical discomfort. Anger that one day might collapse upon the city like a failing bridge. Anger that can strike anywhere, from school playgrounds to college classrooms, from office buildings to restaurants. Such is the result of the failure of an infrastructure we can't see, and that doesn't affect most of us from day to day.
Rest assured, though, we will all feel its collapse when it happens.
