The scandal of the Alabama poor cut off from water (BBC)

[dkf]

4. Sounds like the original project was botched.

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-18/jefferson-county-sewer-receiver-fights-for-control-of-star-crossed-system.html

Saying that New York bankers enabled too much debt and risky financing, he said corruption among some former politicians and incompetence were the real culprits. Taking advantage of a federal order to repair the crumbling system, county officials went on a spending spree with their friends and with no budget or plan, Young said.

Five former commissioners were convicted of or pleaded guilty to corruption charges in connection with the project.

Young showed slides of a $52 million treatment plant sited so poorly that it filled with groundwater and needed $36 million to repair, and a “tunnel to nowhere” that stops halfway under the Cahaba River.

“They had a tendency to just make projects up,” he said.