The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' commander general says the nation is falling behind on maintaining its aging levees, dams, ports and harbors.
Lieutenant General Thomas Bostick spoke on Thursday during the Society of American Military Engineers conference in Kansas City, Missouri.
He says finishing all the projects that have been authorized would cost about $23.5 billion dollars, but the corps' annual budget for the work usually hovers around $1.5 billion. And that doesn't include addressing their maintenance backlog.
The corps says 16 percent of the dams it operates are categorized as extremely or very high-risk. Since 2009, delays and interruptions have more than doubled on the nation's inland waterways' locks and dams.
Bostick says the corps is looking at alternative financing methods, including public-private partnerships.
