The sparkling skyline of the Bayou City gleams. But what's hidden beneath is crumbling.

"If we were to work seven days a week, 24 hours a day, for the next 30 years, we still couldn’t catch up,” said Alvin Wright of the city of Houston’s Public Works and Engineering department.

Infrastructure is what keeps the city together.

Water, sewers, storm drainage, power and roads.

And bottom line; much of it is old. Very old.

Look no further that a neighborhood off Falloon in East Houston, where a sinkhole opened up after the sewer line below ground collapsed.

Or Houston's water system. It loses more than 80 million gallons of water a day, much of it through leaky pipes.

To give you some perspective, that's enough water to fill the Astrodome every day.

But Houston is hardly alone.

The American Society of Civil Engineers has produced a report card for the nation’s infrastructure.

It gives letter grades for each area. The nation’s drinking water, road and wastewater infrastructure all got Ds or D-minus.

Maybe ironically, the nation’s bridges got a C.

The City of Houston spends more than $100 million a year on pipe infrastructure.

What does that money buy? One and a half percent of the water lines and three percent of the wastewater lines in the system each year.

At that pace, it will all be replaced in about 75 years. Likely by then needing to be replaced again.

"We've got programs in place right now that do help extend the life of those pipes,” said Wright.

But it's not just cities.

States have problems too.

Take dams for example.

In Texas, there are six inspectors to examine about 7,500 dams. To inspect them all would take them until the year 2306.

Texas already has 857 "High Hazard" dams where failure could cause loss of life.

The Fix?

The state plans to spend $667 Million dollars for improvements.