The North Carolina Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) released the 2026 Report Card for North Carolina’s Infrastructure, assigning a cumulative grade of ‘C-’. North Carolina’s civil engineers studied seven infrastructure categories. While North Carolina’s grade is one step below the national infrastructure grade of ‘C’ in the 2025 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, four out of seven categories in North Carolina’s report card scored better than the national report card. 

The 2026 grades are:

North Carolina’s ‘C-’is a mediocre rating which indicates a need for improvement over areas such as funding, operations and maintenance and capacity. The good news is there are solutions to all these challenges by: 

• Increasing infrastructure investment to meet growing demands driven by population growth and more intense storm events;
• Accelerating efforts to improve the resilience of infrastructure in order to ensure that critical systems can withstand climate-related threats and other hazards;
• Ensuring safety as a fundamental priority across all infrastructure systems;
• Improving capacity for aging infrastructure systems, particularly wastewater and stormwater systems that are past their design life cycle; and
• Investing in technologies such as green infrastructure and artificial intelligence (AI) to address challenges of increasing funding and improving infrastructure

We need your help to keep infrastructure investment at the top of elected officials’ priorities. Let’s ensure the 2026 Report Card for North Carolina’s Infrastructure drives action for you and your community by contacting your state and federal elected officials today!