[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.