[rayiner]

Of course the NYT would find a way to make a disaster caused by bad public governance all about evil “deep-pocketed” companies. The American Society of Civil Engineers rates our water infrastructure a “D.” That’s due to chronic underfunding, which in turn is caused by municipal governments setting water and sewer rates far too low to maintain and improve the existing infrastructure. Water infrastructure is a case study in how poor political discipline can result in disastrous utility regulation, with disasterous results.

[Shivetya]

Politicians prefer to cut ribbons than reinvest in existing infrastructure. Ribbon cutting gets face time and worse they prefer the bigger and more glitzy type of projects which in themselves tend to incur even further maintenance debts. So next time your local politicians want new office complexes, heavy rail solutions, or such, push them to reveal how current infrastructure maintenance is being done and what the outstanding costs are.

With regards to water pipes. I don't care how my water is delivered. What I care about is that it is proven safe, durable, and the least expensive solution meeting those requirements is used. There is no reason that the Federal Government or a coalition of states and cities cannot formulate a set or rules governing the use of each type.

While there are concerns about poisons leaking into some types of pipes more attention needs to be focused on getting those poisons out of the ground or routing around them. So perhaps using plastic where its known safe to keep costs down and resorting to more expensive solutions when clean up options fail or are exorbitant in costs

[rgbrenner]

Can't both these things be true?

Do you really believe the government is going to spend $300b, and no company is going to fight over the allocation of funds?

[nate_meurer]

I think you're injecting a false dichotomy here. The article doesn't address whether government or private enterprise is responsible for the problem, nor which one is better suited to fix it.

To your point though, have you seen any evidence that private companies are better or more cost effective at providing or maintaining water and sewage infrastructure?