Ethics on America Infrastructure

Manhattan

 

What is Ethics?  Ethics is natural for most humans.  It is the good or bad feeling a person gets when they do some thing.  Most likely the bad feeling is when a person does something wrong and probably unethical.  Not all people are like this and have the gut feeling of when something is wrong or they are doing something wrong.  For an example cereal killers don't have the feeling saying that what they are doing is wrong.  All people has different places where they place the line they wouldn't cross and know by crossing this line it is unethical.

The government came up with laws and regulations to follow about ethics.  The laws clearly state what isn't ethical or at least clear it up so there are less gray area.  Most professions have there own code of ethics.  That code of ethics is designed to fit that specific profession or career. 

The issue that I'm going to be talking about is the US infrastructure, and how it needs to be up dated.  The United States of America infrastructure is all of the following: Aviation, bridges, dams, drinking water, energy, hazardous waste, rivers, ports, recreation areas, railways, roads, school builds, solid waste, transit, and more.  The infrastructure of the US is out dated because the US is constantly growing, and not updating everything that they should be updating.  One example of the infrastructure that needs to be un dated is the drinking water.  All of the drinking water in the US has too many contaminates in it to drink straight out of the well or the river.  Since the water is being contaminated more and more the public utilities need to update and improve their filtration systems. 

The current grade point average for the United State's infrastructure is a poor D+.  The parts of the infrastructure that needs to be updated the most are the levees and the inland waterways.  They scored a bad D-.  One example of the bad levees is the levees that broke and flooded New Orleans when hurricane Katrina went through.  That put the Public's lives at risk and people even died because of it.  The part of the infrastructure that the US scored best in was the solid waste it is a B-, well we have one thing going for the US it is recycling!

To successfully update the US's infrastructure the US needs to invest 3.6 trillion dollars between 2010 and 2020.  That means putting 454 billion dollar a year toward the infrastructure being repaired.  The government currently puts 253 billion dollars a year to help update the infrastructure, but they are falling behind by 201 billion dollars a year and at that rate the repairs will never catch up to everything that is needing it.  It is worth it to spend the extra 201 billion dollars on the infrastructure to keep the public safe.

I think that it is unethical of the government not to invest the full amount that is needed to repair the infrastructure.  Everyday that they government delays is another day that a disaster could happen and endanger the publics safety.  For Civil engineers it is unethical because they put the health, safety , and welfare of the public first.  Ethics / Ethical is there to help things be fair and for everything that is designed to be safe to the public.  Consider the I-35w bridge collapse, the bridge wasn't being kept up to standards, and it was also out of date.  I mean look at all the people that were injured and killed because of it.  Hurricane Katrina is another example the levee weren't being repaired, and kept up as  they should have been so they failed.

References:
 http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/

Picture:
http://a2zcivilengineering.blogspot.com/2012/09/business-buildings_23.html