Waterfail

In our America we take it for granted until you turn on the faucet and nothing comes out:

The heat wave of the past few weeks has burst hundreds of crucial pipes in California, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Indiana, Kentucky and New York, temporarily shutting off water to countless consumers just when they needed it most. [...]

High temperatures can dry soil so that it shrinks away from buried pipes. Increased water usage raises pressure inside the water lines. Both factors add strain to pipeline walls, making older pipes more susceptible to bursting. [...]

It underscores the fact that much of the nation's underground water lines are 80 to 100 years old -- and approaching the end of their lives. [...]

Experts call it America's "Replacement Era," when hundreds of water utilities nationwide will be forced to replace their aging infrastructure -- or suffer the consequences. [...]

Who will probably have to pay for those hundreds of thousands of miles of new pipelines? Utility customers, industry experts say.

Or, you know, the federal government could hire a whole bunch of unemployed construction workers and just start pre-emptively replacing the aging pipelines -- before they burst. Of course, water, like electricity isn't really a public utility anymore, is it? Lot of cities have privatized their delivery systems because the free market is more efficient. Or so they said when they turned over critical infrastructure to the invisible hand.

Also, too. Al Gore is fat and lives in a big house.