John Scully offers lessons from Flint in NAE's The Bridge

Each issue of the National Academy of Engineering publication The Bridge features articles by leading engineers and scholars on a chosen topic. The most recent issue addresses challenges at the interface of technology and policy. Among them is a timely article by John Scully discussing the critically aging US infrastructure, entitled "The Corrosion Crisis in Flint, Michigan: A Call for Improvements in Technology Stewardship."

One of the main lessons from the Flint calamity is that past lessons were not learned.

Scully explains that casual reliance on rote standards will likely not prevent the next crisis from escalating to calamity any more than finger pointing or passing knee-jerk legislation, but rather