The American Society of Civil Engineers, or ASCE, is America’s oldest national engineering society. The Wisconsin Section has been a part of it since 1923.
Part of ASCE’s work is releasing report cards for state infrastructure. This year, Wisconsin's infrastructure report card received an overall score of a C+. While this is a slight improvement from the state's 2020 score, nine categories scored are in mediocre condition and three are in poor condition.
Zoey Meyers, one of the co-chairs of the ASCE Report Card, explains the score is made up of eight key criteria including: capacity, condition, funding, future need, operation and maintenance, public safety, resilience and innovation. Those eight criteria each have individual scoring procedures that make up an overall grade for the area.
This year, ASCE members in Wisconsin delivered grades for telecommunications service, public parks and rail for the first time. "Infrastructure is the backbone of society," notes Meyers, "and as society is changing and growing, we need new measures for how things are functioning."
Despite the improvement from 2020's grade, Wisconsin still has room to improve, particularly in areas like the state parks and wastewater. Challenges with finding adequate funding is a big factor in both of these areas.
In order to help improve things, Meyers suggests being aware of the state's infrastructure condition and reaching out to local lawmakers.
"Just push our legislators and our government to try to allocate more funding towards our infrastructure... specifically these public parks here [so] they will be able to know what we want and budget more accordingly to what we want as Wisconsin residents," she says.
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