We tend not to think about our nation's aging infrastructure. Not until a bridge spanning the Mississippi River collapses. Not until a steam pipe ruptures in New York City. Not until the levees breached in New Orleans.

Our leaders call these events "wake-up calls." OK, we're awake. The real question is, what are our leaders going to do about it?

Alan Pisarski, author of "Commuting In America," says the national infrastructure is in a "death spiral," according to a recent Washington Post report. As the cost of repairing or replacing problem bridges, dams, levees and highways increases 20 percent a year in some areas, revenues have remained stagnant. Take the federal fuel tax. It's been 18.4 cents a gallon since 1993.

So what happens? The federal government, states and local governments do what they can with existing resources. Some bond for certain projects. Even then, what politician campaigns on the platform of shoring up our water pipes or reinforcing a bridge? Until the unthinkable happens, these matters aren't front-burner issues.

But unthinkable has happened. What has the nation done to alter its priorities? Not a lot.

But we need to. A report by the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates it will cost $1.6 trillion over the next five years to bring the nation's infrastructure to "good" condition.

If we don't do something, our prosperity will drive our infrastructure to ruin. We want a lot of consumer goods. We like to drive our cars. We stress roads and bridges with use that designers and builders didn't contemplate. Although Congress appropriates hundreds of billions for highway and mass transit projects each year, building new is a lot sexier than bolstering the old. Never mind that the construction money — whatever it is used for — doesn't go nearly as far as it did in the past.

Thusly, there's little political will to embark on massive effort to refurbish America's bridges, dams and highways. There's certainly no political will to raise the federal motor-fuel tax as gas hovers near $3 a gallon. But what do those policy makers say when a bridge in their hometown deemed "structurally deficient" collapses or a dam with known concerns gives way?

One of the seminal events of my childhood was the Big Thompson flood on July 31, 1976. It occurred just 27 days after our nation had celebrated its bicentennial. The flood happened one day before Colorado, the Centennial State, would celebrate 100 years of statehood. It wasn't much of a party after Coloradans learned that 144 of their fellows — including two police officers — had perished in the flood.

This was no dam failure. It was a freak storm that dumped so much rain — 7.5 inches an hour — that the river channel returned to its primordial state.