[Spooky23]

Many of these stories are ginned up a bit, as they are PR for civil engineer societies.

My wife worked for a water utility in an old city. Outside her bosses office was a lined wooden pipe that had been in place since 1680 or so, and was removed during a construction project.

Unless the pipes are riveted, they have a surprisingly long service life, and techniques exist to spot at risk pipes and even make some repairs without digging.

[twobyfour]

Tell that to the kids in Flint, Michigan who got sick because the city's water pipes were too old (and the city wasn't willing to pay for appropriate water treatment to account for that). Or the ones in NYC who have been drinking from lead-laced school fountains.

And those 500 year old wood pipes may still work, but they probably leak like sieves. NYC, for instance, loses billions of gallons a year to leaks in the pair of hundred year old water tunnels it can't afford to shut down for repair, and more from leaks in iron water mains all over the city.

The US northeast arguably can afford to waste that much water. Many parts of the world can't.

[Spooky23]

Flint had nothing to do with old pipes. It was about bad management and bad engineers whose incompetence resulted in poisoned water.

Those individuals were held criminally responsible. Unfortunately, society and the citizens of Flint bear the cost and consequence of their misbehavior.

[twobyfour]

Actually, the old pipes were a major factor. You see, without the correct chemical treatments, the old pipes were releasing scale that had built up over the years.

You see, old lead pipes are safe once they build up a patina; but untreated, acidic water erodes that patina (and also leaches lead from the pipes more readily) and allows the lead to enter tap water.

Even with proper treatment, when lead pipes are disrupted by construction, the patina/scale can be disturbed and the pipes can become dangerous again.

So yes, the failure to treat the water is the immediate (and I agree, criminally negligent) cause of the crisis. But the root cause is old lead pipes; resuming treatment doesn't fully eliminate the danger (which will continue to be elevated for as long as it takes for the patina to build back up); and one of the solutions under discussion has been replacing them.

http://m.startribune.com/flint-water-crisis-reveals-vulnerab...

[Spooky23]

Of course they are a factor. So is not having billions lying around to rip up every street and building connection to water. Especially in impoverished cities that can barely afford street lighting.

Without the crisis created by criminal negligence, you had a much more sustainable situation that could have been addressed while controlling impact to consumers of water.

Note that I'm not agitating for old pipes. Far from it -- but in a world of limited resources, advocating for magically conjuring up money to do wholesale replacements of water supply (and sewer, as disrupting old pipes will disrupt old sewers) is a fantasy that distracts from solutions to these engineering problems.