21st Century Infrastructure Commission presents recommendations

MARQUETTE — After half a year of work, Michigan’s 21st Century Infrastructure Commission has released a roadmap outlining goals for the next 30 to 50 years.

Members of the commission were on hand to help present an overview of the more than one hundred recommendations at Northern Michigan University this morning. A wide range of plans relating to water, transportation, energy, and communications infrastructure were presented. According to Governor Rick Snyder’s office, Michigan is the first state in the nation to develop such a list of recommendations.

“There’s a lot of hard work that went into that by a lot of really talented folks from across the State of Michigan,” said Bill Moritz, Deputy Director of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. “That report is really a distillation of how to move forward in a smart way for the future.”

“We put out a great plan today. There’s going to be an infrastructure Council that’s going to be developed that’s going to have to do some of the implementation – talk about the financing and the funding. You guys have to hold us accountable to come in and make sure this isn’t a report that gets put on a shelf,” said David Behen, Director of the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget. “You know, really, we’re going to be changing the infrastructure, but we’re going to be changing the infrastructure in the whole country as well.”

Among the highlights of the commission’s report are plans to develop an asset management system and use the data to keep policymakers abreast of what needs funding. The group also emphasized the need for the state to embrace emerging technologies – such as the ‘Internet of Things’ – as those technologies become available.

Click here to view the 21st Century Infrastructure Commission’s full report.