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Crumbling bridges, neglected campgrounds and broken water mains are a problem for states across the country — and governments are increasingly seeking private help to fix them.

Hawaii is one of many states turning to the private sector for assistance in shoring up public parks and harbors.

A new state law, creating the Public Land Development Corporation, transfers state lands to a development arm of the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources. The corporation is endowed with broad powers to form financial partnerships with private companies.

The law is part of a larger, public-private strategy supported by Gov. Neil Abercrombie in his to renovate public facilities and generate state revenue.

And it’s in-line with a broader trend among states contending with decaying infrastructure and limited budgets, according to Richard Norment, executive director of The National Council for Public-Private Partnerships, a nonprofit educational organization that consults with governments.

“There’s been a huge increase in interest and use [of public-private partnerships] over the past couple of decades,” said Norment. “But it has really accelerated in the past year or year and a half. In part, because of the budget situation at the federal, state and local levels.”

He said that there was no agency that collects national statistics on the number of such partnerships, but that anecdotally he was seeing significant increases and that in the past year, about 10 states had passed legislation facilitating such partnerships.

Cash-strapped governments have been deferring maintenance of public projects leading to potentially dangerous consequences, according to Norment. For instance, hundreds of bridges throughout the states of Missouri, Pennsylvania and New York were seriously deficient, leading to concerns in some areas of bridges collapsing.

In Hawaii, the situation appears no different.

“The state has vast land resources which currently represent a drain on the state’s coffers due to heavy maintenance costs,” said Richard Lim, director of the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism during a recent speech. “We cannot afford to pay for adequate upkeep so facilities are in disrepair, and consequently, become underutilized.”

Hawaii’s new Public Land Development Corporation also aims to shore up the land department’s budget. DLNR’s capital improvement budget has been cut 55 percent during the past nine years.

State agencies have not been able to fulfill federal mandates governing such things as historic preservation due to lack of resources, according to Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz, who sponsored the legislation.

“If we really want to protect the environment than you need money, you need revenues to help protect the environment and clean it up,” said Dela Cruz.

While the law has raised concerns about private investment in public lands and a possible loss of control on the state level, Norment said that a distinction needed to be made between the “privatization” of state lands and “public-private partnerships.”

He said that he hadn’t seen Hawaii’s specific legislation, but that in public-private partnerships, land ownership is generally retained by the state. Under privatization, he said that the amount of public control was substantially less.