The other ledger for Kentucky: 35 rural hospitals screening as financially at risk — more than any other state — a 206,207-home supply gap in every county, food insecurity at 18.8% (second in the nation), and about $14 billion of water and wastewater need in a state still rebuilding flood-damaged Appalachian systems. And roads and bridges that genuinely improved in ASCE's 2026 grades, reported exactly as measured. Every figure is sourced, dated, and labeled — counted, modeled, or assessed.
How to read this page: the class chip on every measure is the honesty label. Counted = an inspection or enumeration record. Modeled = a study's projection or risk score — printed with the modeler's name. Assessed = a structured survey of required investment — needs as documented, not measurements of decay. Figures keep the form their source gave them; years are printed on every measure.
Click any category to expand it — every measure with its figure, what it means in plain language, and its source.
Hospitals — a warning, not a body count. Kentucky's 35 at-risk hospitals (Sheps Center financial-distress screen, 2025) are printed beside the hard count of four closures/conversions since 2005. The at-risk count was publicly contested in 2026; its methodology (Medicaid share and/or three years of negative margins) is on the record so readers can judge it.
Food. The figures are USDA household food-security survey rates (2022–2024 average, via Kentucky Policy Institute analysis) — the current-need measure. No current Kentucky-wide USDA Atlas low-income/low-access resident count was published in the sources retrieved, so no food-desert resident count is printed; the category note says so.
Water. Drinking-water need ($7.84B) is from ASCE Kentucky's October 2026 report card; wastewater ($6.5B) is the ASCE 2025 fact-sheet figure, consistent with the 2026 card's 'more than $6B'. Vintages are labeled on both records — the 2022 eastern Kentucky flood damage is context for why small-system need is concentrated, not a separate figure.
Power — a contested forecast, printed both ways. LG&E/KU's 1,470 MW load-growth expectation is paired with the PSC's own condition (do not build if the load does not materialise) and the PSC reviewers' criticism of the IRP's speculative data-centre modelling. The disagreement is the information, as on the Georgia page.
Broadband vintages. Two different counts appear in public discussion — over 258,000 unserved locations on the 2023 FCC map (the allocation basis) and 86,400 remaining locations in the NTIA-approved 2026 final proposal. This page uses the 2026 remainder as its headline measure and names the 2023 figure in the notes, so neither is mistaken for the other.
Dams. The 79 poor-condition count is KDOW data via ASCE Kentucky's 2019 report — the last detailed condition count retrieved — and carries its year. The 268 high-hazard total is ASCE's 2025 fact sheet; the 2019 report's 275 total is disclosed on the record, not reconciled.
Traffic. TRIP/TTI hours are metro figures (Louisville, Northern Kentucky); no honest statewide congestion total is published for Kentucky, and none is printed.