Covering Up What They Already Told Us

The Associated Press is running a story about how the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has been accused of covering up reconnaissance study findings related to the 9/11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina. I don't have much insight on this, though I do respect Dr. Ray Seed -- a professor cited as one of the "whistle blowers." Obviously, there is no point to doing reconnaissance if you do not take every opportunity to reveal and learn from failures.

That said, the ASCE has been putting out a report card on the US's infrastructure since 1988. And let me tell you, they don't pull any punches in that report card. If you click the above link, you'll see our infrastructure's overall "GPA" is a depressing (scary?), big fat "D." (There is no grade above a C; though the ASCE did not look at infrastructure like fiber optics and cellular networks, which I assume would rank higher.) They estimate that the US needs to invest $1.6 Trillion dollars in the next five years to get our infrastructure up to snuff.

So perhaps the ASCE did cover up small (?) details in their reconn reports. But excuse me if I'm not that upset with them. They have been trying to tell us something much bigger for 20 years: the condition of our nation's infrastructure is severely increasing our risk of disaster.