Rebuilding Infrastructure is the Road Forward

This script was read by Eric Hays as part of our Who are the Democrats in St. Clair County? project.

My name is Eric Hays and I live in Marine City. American success has always been built on a strong system of infrastructure. Roads, bridges, electricity lines, sewage systems and networks for clean water have allowed businesses to thrive and families to have good quality lives.

The Army Corps of Engineers has been grading much of America’s infrastructure poorly for years, and ignoring these warnings runs the risk of allowing large-scale blackouts, bridges and dams to become dangerous, and water to become too toxic to use, as was demonstrated recently in Flint.

The poor quality of Michigan’s roads is costing every motorist in the state an average of $845 per year in car repair costs, and things have gotten so bad that police have had to order certain stretches of heavily trafficked roads closed due to the number of accidents these terrible road conditions are causing.

Edward Middleton / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

I believe that America’s infrastructure is the path to progress, prosperity, and strength. Investing money in the maintenance of things like roads, bridges, and powerlines creates valuable jobs that provide more of our citizens with the means to make a good living. Infrastructure investments would also mean safer communities, as people wouldn’t have to worry about the quality of their drinking water, unexpected car repairs due to poor roads, or their electricity being knocked out for long stretches of time.

Michal Maňas / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)

If we want our state and our nation to be prosperous and strong we must invest in repairing and maintaining our broken infrastructure, and we have to do it now.