[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 13 (Tuesday, January 24, 2017)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E87-E88]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                MAKING OUR INFRASTRUCTURE SECOND TO NONE

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. SUZAN K. DelBENE

                             of washington

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, January 24, 2017

  Ms. DelBENE. Mr. Speaker, I am honored to represent some of our 
nation's leading innovators in Congress, who are pioneering 
unprecedented improvements in manufacturing and infrastructure from 
Washington's First Congressional District. The exciting work being 
conducted by forward-thinking companies like Modumetal, a woman-owned 
business in Washington state, has the potential to lower the long-term 
costs of rehabilitating our roads and bridges while also making them 
safer and longer-lasting.
  Christina Lomasney, co-founder of Modumetal, published an open letter 
to President Trump on January 6, 2017, highlighting the importance of 
performance-based standards as he begins to work with Congress on 
investments in our infrastructure. I am pleased to share her letter 
with my colleagues, as we look to develop infrastructure solutions that 
will allow us to get the best return on our investments.

       President-elect Trump, on election night, you promised 
     cheering supporters, ``We're going to rebuild our 
     infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to 
     none.''
       As we move from the script of campaigning to the act of 
     execution, you may find a more challenging landscape than 
     your statement belies. That's not because you won't endeavor 
     to achieve nor that Congress won't collaborate with you to 
     fund. But the challenge of bringing the United States back to 
     a ``top 10'' infrastructure position in the world, much less 
     number one, is one that many have tried and failed and that 
     could, in present reality, undermine the solvency of our 
     Nation.
       In the span of the decade that precedes your 
     Administration, we have fallen from 1st

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     place in Global Competitiveness, according to the World 
     Economic Forum, to between 3rd and 7th place. This has been 
     attributed in great part to the decades-long decline in the 
     viability and competitiveness of our national infrastructure. 
     (We've not even been in the top 10 of transportation 
     infrastructures for several years).
       More to the point, to keep up with expected infrastructure 
     decline, the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates 
     we'll need to spend $3.6 trillion just in the next five 
     years. This estimate doesn't get us to 1st place, this just 
     keeps us from failing further!
       Why has this issue of infrastructure become such a burden 
     to competitiveness and our deficit? For one thing, if we 
     continue rehabilitating our infrastructure as we have, our 
     Nation will be stuck installing and repairing infrastructure 
     using outdated technology from the 1930s.
       Today, through the Departments of Transportation at state 
     and federal levels, the regulatory frameworks for materials 
     of construction define requirements that, in most cases, were 
     set several decades to almost a century ago. For a case in 
     point, hot-dipped galvanizing, one of the most commonly used 
     corrosion resistant coatings technologies in the world, was 
     specified in 1928. This specification (ASTM A123) is still 
     actively required by most state and federal DOTs around the 
     country. Epoxy-coated rebar, considered a ``new'' and now 
     widely specified technology, was finally specified for use in 
     the 1970s, and that only after over 20 years of field trials 
     and testing.
       As these regulations are defined as a snapshot in time--
     focusing on how the materials are manufactured instead of how 
     they should perform--new technologies that offer better 
     performance and cost advantages can't currently qualify for 
     major infrastructure programs. And, since it takes about 17 
     years to take a new technology through the regulatory 
     specification cycle, most innovative technologies fail to 
     ever reach beyond the test phase, much less to ever achieve 
     full scale deployment.
       Using these last-century manufacturing techniques means we 
     have to use more metal and spend more, when more durable and 
     safer innovation would work. It means that now and for the 
     foreseeable future, infrastructure requires more frequent 
     replacement or the possibility of major failure when 
     degradation and corrosion set in.
       Why is it so important we employ the best-available metals 
     technology? Because corrosion is a quiet infrastructure 
     killer. Corrosion degrades--sometimes catastrophically. When 
     you read about bridge collapses and unsafe structures, think 
     corrosion. Corrosion is a budget-buster--using lower quality 
     metals which corrode quickly creates a ruinous cycle of more 
     maintenance and faster required replacement of our 
     infrastructure. The National Association of Corrosion 
     Engineers pegs the direct cost of corrosion in the U.S. at 
     over 4 percent of the Gross Domestic Product of our Nation.
       Innovative companies across our Nation have answered the 
     call to improve America's infrastructure by reinventing the 
     metals industry. As an example, our nanolaminated metals--
     using a different manufacturing technique than traditional 
     metals--corrode significantly less, are stronger and lighter, 
     and can require less energy and materials to produce. At 
     Modumetal, we have demonstrated structures that resist 
     corrosion thirty times longer for the same basic cost as the 
     currently-specified materials. This means our bridges could 
     last hundreds of years instead of decades. The net result: 
     safer, longer-lasting infrastructure for less money.
       Mr. President-Elect, you have the opportunity now to work 
     with Congress to approve legislation that incentives 
     industries to use innovative materials of construction, based 
     on safer performance-based specifications. Such legislation 
     could provide an incentive tax credit for technologies that 
     extend the life and performance of our infrastructure, thus 
     encouraging competition and adoption of best-performing, 
     lowest-cost, state-of-the-art corrosion mitigation 
     technologies for our Nation's infrastructure and industrial 
     applications.
       You don't have to accept the status quo, and I hope that 
     our Government will work together to seek and take on the 
     challenge of innovating, to achieve a national infrastructure 
     that is second to none, at a price that will be sustainable 
     for generations.

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