[viraptor]

It lacks context, but the idea itself is not ridiculous. That's pretty much how original Australians dealt with fuel buildup. Move and burn often. Given specific ecosystem, in a very literal sense, 1000 fires are better than 10 in the same area over the same time period.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I lived in Africa. The parks used to run controlled burns, every year or two, of the savanna grass.

They tended to do this during the [very] wet season.

But PG&E is still on the hook for taking better care of their infrastructure.

It all comes down to dollars and [non]sense. Some actuary has determined that an occasional lawsuit and rotten press run is cheaper than maintaining the wires.

Here in New York, many of the buried water mains that transfer water to the city from upstate are well over a century old. Many are made of cast iron, and even wood.

There’s no plan to dig them up and replace them with more robust materials. They just wait for them to fail, then replace the small part that failed.

They do give city water some real taste, though. It’s probably actually nutritious.

[jsymolon]

> water mains that transfer water to the city from upstate are well over a century old. ... They just wait for them to fail, then replace the small part that failed.

At some point, all the older parts will get so old that it fails frequently and at a greater rate, that the fix cost will greatly exceed the budgeted amount.

Being a quite cynical person, I would say that up to that point management will have collected fat bonuses, then cry poverty and push for ruinous rate increases.

Along the same lines, CT just had an issue with a rate increase that doubled most bills.

The point being spreading out the cost over years and limiting "downtime" is a lot better than 1 huge event that leaves customers without. (re: Detroit and bottled water)

https://www.fox61.com/article/news/local/eversource-and-ui-a...

[krallja]

> There’s no plan to dig them up and replace them

Yes, but that’s disingenuous. The largest civil engineering project in America right now is the new water tunnel for NYC. It’s been in progress for fifty years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Water_Tunnel_No....

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Thanks for that. I’d completely forgotten about it. Hopefully, it wasn’t planned by the same folks that planned East Side Access. I have three friends that have retired, while working on it, and it’s many, many years behind schedule. Each of them had planned to be still working for the MTA, when it was done.

[andyv]

We went with that plan at my HOA for some of our water lines.

They replaced a corroded and failed section of pipe, repressurized the line and POP! went the next section... Two or three times as I recall.