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Comment by userbinator | Hacker News Reader

More than 20% of Japan's water pipes have passed their legal service life of 40 years, according to local media

That is rather low. The US still has some wooden(!) water pipes in use, as well as other plumbing installed in the late 19th/early 20th century.

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This is the reason that installing a 2-mile bus lane on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco took several years. They took advantage of the opportunity to replace the hollowed out logs that had served as one of the city’s most critical water mains since the 1906 quake.

And people will still say 'Just painting a bus lane for a few miles cost $20MM!!! Uggah duggah' :-/

going straight from mycotoxins to microplastics without going through lead speedrun

You owe me a coffee, cheers for the fountain of liquid out my nose. How much for a water feature?

Urban trees in Montreal (and presumably other cities) only survive through the summer because of the water they get from leaky pipes.

> Maple trees drink about 50 litres of water every day, and it seems some of their hydration is coming from Montreal’s crumbling infrastructure.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/article/montreals-leaky-pipe...

I just realised I've never actually thought about how urban trees get water. I never see them get watered and I assume that would be an incredibly inefficient way to do it.

In Austin we saw water trucks roll up and water em with hoses out the back. It was weird to see after having lived in a wet climate my whole life.

For some relevancy, this issue is still on Japanese minds because last year, corroded pipes led to one of the largest sinkholes the country has ever seen, swallowing a truck and drowning the driver in a pit of shit and piss. It took months to recover his body.

Many plumbing companies have since spoken up about how they’ve been requested to fix this infrastructural issue but without the appropriate funds because “how expensive can replacing some pipes be?” And “who cares about leaky pipes under the streets? The water just goes back into the ground.”

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/02/20/japan/pipe-corr...

Meanwhile, in Europe: https://romanempiretimes.com/aqua-virgo-a-2000-year-roman-aq...

^ AI slop illustrations warning

wood is better than lead

When the sections are stored above ground, they can make for some really gnarly skate parks. You've heard of the half-pipe, now see the attempts at full-pipe!

Is that why the American tourists in Europe always ask if tap water is drinkable?

I got a nasty stomach bug from drinking the tap water in Sicily.

And then I told the rest of America to watch out for the water in Europe. So it’s me; I’m the reason.

Your messaging must have incredible reach!

I've had my fair share of stomach discomforts while travelling, but I'm very unlikely to associate it with tap water unless I do a controlled self-study.

More often its clearly from food prepared in unhygienic conditions, because that's the only variable during my travels and tap water is the norm for me.

I'm American and noticed a trend in a subset of Americans that believe only their drinking water is potable. In some cases this applies even when they travel to other portions of the US.

No, its cause a lot of American tap water isn't drinkable lol

No, it's because a lot of the places Americans travel to like Mexico and the Caribbean have tap water that makes you sick.

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