{"id":47800,"date":"2019-05-13T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-13T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/live-meeting-covers-state-of-alaskas-infrastructure\/"},"modified":"2019-05-14T09:52:28","modified_gmt":"2019-05-14T17:52:28","slug":"live-meeting-covers-state-of-alaskas-infrastructure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/live-meeting-covers-state-of-alaskas-infrastructure\/","title":{"rendered":"Live: Meeting covers state of Alaska’s infrastructure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alaska has many areas of need where infrastructure is concerned, but still receives grades slightly better than the rest of the nation, according to a 2017 infrastructure report card.<\/p>\n

Many of the infrastructure challenges facing the state are compounded by the remote locations of some of Alaska’s communities.<\/p>\n

While about 75 percent of the population resides in three metro areas, 5 percent resides in villages that are typically in worse shape where power, waste, wastewater and water infrastructure are concerned.<\/p>\n

“There’s almost two separate communities between rural bush and Alaska,” Uchytil said.<\/p>\n

12:55 p.m.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Carl Uchytil, Port Director for City and Borough of Juneau Docks and Harbors, said the reason Juneau’s ports and harbors received a D grade primarily has to do with aging infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Multiple speakers at this point have acknowledged either infrastructure or some facet of infrastructure are “not sexy” or an aspect of modern living that flies under the radar.<\/p>\n

12:40 p.m.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Roads, bridges and the ferry system could be improve with increased funding, according to recommendations made in the American Society of Civil Engineers.<\/p>\n

Alaskans are eight times more likely to travel by air, and there are six times as many pilots in the state compared to the national average, according to the report.<\/p>\n

12:35 p.m.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A couple more interesting statistics: 72 percent of the state’s population lives in three metro areas. Half of the states roughly 1,500 bridges are part of the road system.<\/p>\n

12:25 p.m.<\/strong><\/p>\n

About half of the seven people in attendance are members of American Society of Civil Engineers<\/a>, which releases national and state infrastructure report cards every four years, most recently in 2017.<\/p>\n

Back then, Alaska graded out at a C-, which is a half letter better than the national average of a D+.<\/p>\n

The reports consider things such as aviation, bridges, dams, water and wastewater, energy, marine highways, ports and harbors, roads and solid waste.<\/p>\n

Bridges graded out the best at B-. Water and Wastewater, marine highways and ports and harbors all received Ds, and were a three-way tie for the state’s worst categories.<\/p>\n

12:20 p.m.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fun fact from the early going of this presentation: Alaska has fewer miles of paved road than Rhode Island.<\/p>\n

12:10 p.m.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today’s meeting at City Hall is the kickoff for Infrastructure Week in Juneau. Infrastructure Week is a national effort to raise awareness of infrastructure many take for granted in their daily lives.<\/p>\n

The Infrastructure Week kickoff presentation hit some technical difficulty delays, but is now underway with a clip from “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.”<\/p>\n

\n

\u2022 Contact reporter Ben Hohenstatt at (907)523-2243 or bhohenstatt@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @BenHohenstatt.<\/b><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Live updates from a meeting at City Hall. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":474,"featured_media":47801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[174,75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-47800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-alaska","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/474"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47800"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=47800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}