Based on the sheer volume of federal legislation, we should be experiencing a golden era in U.S. infrastructure. Between November 2021 and August 2022, Congress passed the massive Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act. Together those laws authorize about $1.7 trillion in spending and constitute the largest federal action on infrastructure since the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956. The three acts were touted as landmarks that would strengthen the country’s infrastructure and address endemic problems such as protracted underfunding and a backlog of deferred maintenance.

And yet the United States remains bedeviled by chronic infrastructure problems. Aside from their poor condition, many aging bridges, such as the Key Bridge in Baltimore  are ill prepared for collisions with increasingly large container ships. As the 2022 water treatment crisis in Jackson, Miss., revealed, many drinking water and wa