Lesson Learned?

The first thing I want to talk about today is the incident that happened here in Boston over the weekend. 

In case there happens to be anyone reading this from other parts of the world, here’s a link to catch you up:

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/23337764/detail.html

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

 

 

Back now? Good.

Anyway, I honestly didn’t mind the inconvenience of not being able to brush my teeth with tap water.  I also didn’t much mind not being able to get coffee from Dunks in the morning.  What bothers me is a very simple question no one has been able to answer for me.

If you look at this map showing the whole MWRA system, you should see that big black line that indicates the pipe taking water from the treatment plant into the Boston area. 

The ONE pipe.

Why is there only one pipe?

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m not a plumber, nor am I an urban planner or an engineer.  It just seems to me that if you can have one giant pipe carrying 8 million gallons of water an hour, you can probably have two slightly less giant pipes carrying 4 million gallons each.  Yes, it would probably cost more, and it would be twice the work to maintain, but in the event of a catastrophic failure of one of the pipes, you won’t have 2 million people without water for almost three days. 

Moral of the story: sometimes, redundancy is your friend. 

Really.