SALEM, Ore. — While the Portland International Airport's new terminal opened to rave reviews on Wednesday, other components of Oregon's infrastructure system are not faring so well. A recent "report card" for the state's airports, dams, bridges and other essential public systems gave Oregon an underwhelming C- grade overall.
The 137-page report was conducted by civil engineers, the sort of people qualified to design and evaluate public infrastructure. And throughout Oregon, these engineers found that there's a lot more funding needed to maintain and modernize infrastructure — funding that needs to come from somewhere.
Greg DiLorero is one such civil engineer, and until 2013, he was CEO of the Tualatin Valley Water District. In the past, he's helped write and promote a national report card on infrastructure, and recently, he introduced a version for Oregon.
"I want to emphasize this report is a reflection of the systems we have in place and their current and expected ability to withstand external stressors, such as increases in energy demands, population growth, increasingly severe weather and shifting traffic patterns, which are factors we are seeing impact almost every state in our nation," DiLorero warned.
Oregon's C- grade matches the national average, last measured in 2021, and it's the same grade Oregon received back in 2019. While it's certainly not a good result, that parity suggests that Oregon isn't lagging far behind the rest of the country. That said, the state may have some unique issues putting strain on its infrastructure.
"Oregon's decades of population growth," said Ana Tijerina Esquino, one of the report's authors. "As more people have moved to Oregon due to the high quality of life we have here, some infrastructure systems are now being asked to accommodate surging usage. This means more people are on our roads and our bridges and relying on our water systems than they were initially designed for.
"Oregon's infrastructure is also showing signs of decades of deferred maintenance. This is because we have been kicking the proverbial can down the road about fixing and maintaining our infrastructure. Despite recent efforts to address this, our infrastructure is still under immense strain."
Up in the air
The report was developed by the Oregon section of the American Society of Civil Engineers. They looked at 12 different areas, ranging from aviation to wastewater treatment systems, and found a number of reasons for concern. Individual areas got their own grades, which averaged out to the overall C- grade.
Collectively, for instance, Oregon's public airports scored a C- grade. While PDX is the state's largest airport, Oregon has 97 in all, many of them quite small. In examining runways, civil engineers found that 84% were either in good, satisfactory or fair condition. The other 17% were ones to be concerned about.
Only 36 of Oregon's airports are equipped to store fuel. With wildfires becoming more and more common, the engineers recommended that another 20 airports begin storing fuel for firefighting aircraft.
Meanwhile, 16 public airports are located along the Oregon Coast, 10 of them in tsunami zones. If the "Big One" happens and a tsunami follows, those airports are likely to be put out of commission.
Bridging the gap
Oregon's bridges also received a C-, representing a slide downward from 2019, when they scored a C. That said, about 5% of Oregon's bridges were found to be in poor condition, which is lower than the national average.
"However, the age of our bridges across the state presents a serious problem down the road," said Tijerina Esquino. "Already, more than half the bridges in Oregon are more than 50 years old and are approaching the end of their design life."
Oregon has 8,292 bridges, and roughly 22% of them are in poor or almost-poor condition. Most of those are over that 50-year-old hump.
The Oregon Department of Transportation reports that each year, only three new bridges are built to replace outdated bridges. If that rate is sustained, the civil engineers determined, an Oregon bridge would need to remain in service for 900 years before replacement, when they typically last 75 to 100 years.
With that in mind, the engineers responsible for this report agreed with ODOT that the state needs to, at the very least, link Oregon's gas tax to inflation so that the agency keeps making enough money to keep up on maintenance. ODOT also wants several other funding sources for its struggling budget.
Dammed if we do, damned if we don't
There are 889 dams in Oregon, and the report gave them a D+ grade — a particularly poor showing out of all the areas covered.
The Army Corps of Engineers maintains a national inventory of the 90,000 dams across the U.S. In Oregon, they note 171 with the potential for "high hazard" and loss of life if they fail. Of those, 28 received a poor or unsatisfactory rating.
Another 171 Oregon dams pose a "significant hazard," and 547 are deemed "low hazard" dams.
The good news is that Oregon has slightly improved funding for safety regulations on existing dams and started an emergency action plan for the 76 dams regulated by the state in the "high hazard" category. Most of the large federally regulated or owned dams are in satisfactory or fair condition.
But in the next five years, 70% of Oregon's dams will be older than their expected lifetime of 50 years. And 98 dams are twice that age — more than a century old. The report found that none are prepared for the expected big Cascadia earthquake.
Keeping it clean
One of Oregon's bright spots came in the form of drinking water. The state received a C in that area, which is an improvement from 2019.
"More than 99% of Oregon's drinking water systems meet the Environmental Protection Agency's standards for safe drinking water," said Tijerina Esquino. "Water systems in Oregon generally have stable supplies and are capable of handling future growth. Much of Oregon's drinking water system is relatively new compared to other parts of our country, with most lines installed over the last 50 years. This is really good news for us as water utilities face new rules that will require the removal of lead service lines."
The EPA estimates that only 3,500 water lines in Oregon are made from lead, or less than 1% of all water lines in the state.
Engineers pointed to projects like the Washington Park Reservoir replacement in Portland. The original reservoir was built in 1894, and the new one is replacing it with a 12 million-gallon, seismically reinforced underground reservoir. It's expected to be finished by the spring of 2025, with a total cost of $211 million.
And that's really the secret overall to improving Oregon's grades — money. The engineers issuing the report card said the state needs to contribute much more money toward clean water infrastructure, to the tune of $10 billion.