Coast Guard Cutter Eagle, Coast Guard Cutter James and helicopter crews from Air Station Atlantic City rendezvous offshore on the Atlantic Ocean as the James is heading north to her commissioning ceremony in Boston, July 30, 2015. The James is the newest cutter in the fleet, while the Eagle is the oldest. (Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer Matthew S. Masaschi) Image: US Coast Guard
By: FEDweek StaffGAO has called attention to the Coast Guard as an agency on the long list of those with substantial deferred maintenance, saying that of the 26 facilities where more than half of the space is dedicated to medical or dental care, 22 “are beyond their service life and are in various conditions.”
A report says the Coast Guard has 165 medical facilities, including 34 medical clinics, nine satellite medical clinics, 65 ashore sickbays and 57 afloat sickbays, ranging in size from a single room to an entire building. While average expected life of medical facilities is 30 years, it said, four of the 26 are more than 80 years old and all will be past the 30-year mark within six years.
Other facilities also “are in various conditions depending on the overall age and condition of the buildings in which they are located,” it said.
It said that as of the most recent detailed study by the GAO in 2019, the Coast Guard had a maintenance backlog of more than 5,600 projects totaling $900 million and a recapitalization and reconstruction backlog of 125 projects totaling $1.7 billion. “These costs may be understated, given that the Coast Guard had hundreds of projects without cost estimates,” it said.
The agency further uses a variety of methods to assess the condition of facilities and “multiple offices or entities within the Coast Guard make determinations on maintenance and construction priorities across all projects, including those for medical facilities. These maintenance and construction needs are continually changing among competing priorities and tradeoffs.”
The report, ordered by a spending bill asking for an assessment of the Coast Guard’s funding needs, made no recommendations and the agency’s parent department DHS made no comments beyond technical issues.
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