Hawaii’s infrastructure upkeep ranks last in a financial website’s assessment

Shoddy and unsafe conditions plaguing the state’s roads, bridges and dams helped earn Hawaii the dubious distinction of having the worst infrastructure in the country, according to a new report.

In its ranking of “States That Are Falling Apart,” 24/7 Wall St., a Delaware-based financial news and commentary website, evaluated the 50 states on four criteria: the condition of roadways, the structural fitness of bridges, the safety of dams and how much is spent on highways versus overall public spending.

“An economic powerhouse as massive and diversified as the United States depends on a network of highways, bridges, airports, and dams to thrive,” the report’s author wrote. “And while the economy has grown every year since the recession officially ended in 2009, our nation’s infrastructure is not faring as well.”

Hawaii ranked worst overall, followed by Rhode Island, West Virginia, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. On the opposite end of the scale, Florida was rated as having the best infrastructure, followed by Kansas, Minnesota, Montana and Georgia.

University of Hawaii civil engineering professor Panos Prevedouros said that while Hawaii’s aging infrastructure tends to fare poorly in national rankings, he was surprised the state landed in the bottom spot. He said Hawaii typically earns a D+ or D- grade on the American Society of Engineers’ infrastructure report card, which comes out every four years and evaluates such areas as roads, bridges, dams, airports, harbors and public transportation.

“We’ve been doing poorly, but what is very surprising is that we came in dead last. Obviously, it’s not encouraging — we have hit rock bottom,” said Prevedouros, chairman of the Civil Engineering Department at UH-Manoa.

Within the categories of the “Falling Apart” report, Hawaii had the highest percentage of dams in the country with “high-hazard potential” ratings, at 93 percent. According to the National Inventory of Dams maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 124 of the state’s 133 dams have been assigned the hazardous classification, indicating that failure or mis-operation is likely to cause loss of human life and economic and environmental losses.

Close to 70 percent of the dams in Hawaii are on privately owned land. A spokesman for the Department of Land and Natural Resources, which runs the state’s dam safety program, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“That’s almost a given when you have earthen dams,” Prevedouros said of the high-hazard risk ratings. “It’s very difficult to know how the structures are performing without careful inspection.” He said most of the islands’ dams are old and in need of more maintenance and upkeep to ensure public health and safety. He cited Nuuanu Reservoir as a particularly risky dam given its close proximity to residential areas.

In the roads category, 29 percent of Hawaii’s roadways were rated as being in poor condition, the fifth- highest percentage in the nation. That information was based on 2015 statistics from the Federal Highway Administration, which reported on such indicators as pavement roughness and serviceability, congestion and safety.

Hawaii, meanwhile, ranked 10th lowest for highway spending as a percentage of total government spending, at 4.5 percent. Of Hawaii’s more than $12.3 billion in total expenditures in 2015, some $549.8 million was spent on highways, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s survey of state government finances that year. By comparison, $3.2 billion was spent on education and $538.7 million on health.

“It’s pretty clear that the state and the city do not pay much attention to the condition and the operation of the roads,” Prevedouros said. “They’re both in poor quality and operating poorly with a lot of congestion. Clearly, now the numbers show we are in a lose-lose situation, where we are spending the money on the wrong projects, and the big categories that affect the well-being of the population are being neglected.”

In the bridges category, 5.7 percent of the state’s more than 1,000 bridges were deemed structurally deficient — the 13th-lowest ranking among the 50 states. According to the Federal Highway Administration, that amounts to 65 of the state’s 1,142 bridges, 19 of which are more than 100 years old, being structurally unsound.

A spokesman for the state Department of Transportation, which oversees the state’s highways, harbors and airports, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

State Sen. Lorraine Ino­uye, chairwoman of the Transportation Committee, said she was disappointed with the report’s ranking but not surprised.

She said she’s seen infrastructure projects stall for a variety of reasons, including a shift in priorities when administrations change hands, hang-ups with the procurement code and lack of required matching funds. She’s considering possible legislation that would impose timelines on publicly funded projects.

“I believe that something needs to occur in creating a mechanism to speed up projects,” Inouye (D, Kaupulehu- Waimea-North Hilo) said.