Agriculture This Week: Aging infrastructure a rural municipality concern too

If you live in an urban community you are likely aware that there is an increasingly serious infrastructure deficit happening.

You need only drive the streets of almost any community you come too and you will find many of them pock-marked with holes in the asphalt.

The bouncing of your vehicle down an urban street where asphalt may have been laid literally decades ago, and showing it’s age by deterioration is only the most obvious issue of infrastructure still in place long after its reasonable expectation of life.

It’s the same with deteriorating sidewalks, and more concerning underground services such as water and sewer lines.

And the problem of old infrastructure extends to rural municipalities too with decade old bridges past due for replacement across the Prairies.

The bridge issue is a big one for rural areas. If one goes out of service it can add miles to simply getting from the farm to town for all the things you go to town to get. That situation is annoying if it’s a grocery run, but could be deadly if it adds miles in a health emergency situation.

The situation is more concerning because farmers now haul grain in much larger and thus heavier units than when bridges were built and put into service, and as they age the bigger weights have to be concerning to the continued life of old bridges.

So while we can all appreciate the value of infrastructure, whether urban or rural, it has largely been ignored for decades in terms of replacement.