2019 Hawaii Infrastructure Report Card

2019 Report Card GPA: D+

Often overlooked, infrastructure is vital to our daily lives. Whether we’re flying from one island to another, swimming at the beach, or drinking water from the tap, infrastructure plays an important role in not only providing ground and air transportation but also in keeping our waters clean and preserving Hawaii’s natural environment.

In an effort to help Hawaii’s residents and policy makers understand the needs of its infrastructure, the ASCE Hawaii Chapter developed this inaugural 2019 Infrastructure Report Card. This report provides an evaluation of some of Hawaii’s key areas of infrastructure, including aviation, bridges, coastal areas, dams, energy, roads, schools, solid waste, stormwater, wastewater, and drinking water. Common challenges facing Hawaii’s infrastructure across the board include aging infrastructure, lack of funding, and sea level rise.

The majority of Hawaii’s infrastructure has been operating beyond its useful life, and some components of systems are over 100 years old. Due to a lack of funding, it has been difficult to effectively maintain and improve the existing infrastructure systems to keep up with increasing usage and rapidly changing lifestyles. As population, economic growth, and development increase, the strain on Hawaii’s infrastructure will continue to escalate with many of its infrastructure systems struggling to stay in operable condition. Water main breaks, flood water damage, loss of property from coastal erosion, and beach and park closures from brown water advisories are all results of deteriorating infrastructure. The slow but steady sea level increases in the coming years will also present new challenges that will threaten not only our infrastructure, but also our iconic beaches and coastlines.

As we continue to face these challenges, Hawaii must decide how important infrastructure is to our daily lives and what we want to prioritize moving forward. We hope this report will provide some insight into Hawaii’s infrastructure.

Click here for the Hawaii 2019 Infrastructure Report Card executive summary.