The UK is not alone in it's negligence of city's sewage systems.

The first paragraph of any USA infrastructure bill needs to make sewage pipes the top priority before all requested monies are to be released to the city. A grant can be provided without question to address the sewage systems, but, all other monies are contingent upon completion of a clear sewage system. This is not about rust or any other sign that pipes need to be replaced, it is about clogged pipes and the need for moving stagnant water in the year 2017. I can't see infrastructure improvements when they are compromised from the beginning by clogged sewage systems facilitating flooding waters.

September 12, 2017
By Mindy Weisberger

Writer Neil Gaiman's (click here) 1997 urban fantasy novel "Neverwhere" imagined sewers underneath large cities as magical shadow worlds, each a home to a host of peculiar individuals and monstrous beasts. However, the reality of what lies below cities in their waste networks is much more disgusting, as a team of Thames Water engineers in the United Kingdom recently found out.

In a sewer region located about 11 feet (4 meters) under the Whitechapel neighborhood in London, workers are just beginning to dismantle an inanimate but uniquely revolting inhabitant — a vast and rock-solid plug of oily waste charmingly known as a "fatberg."

Composed of stinking garbage and grease and weighing in at 143 tons (130,000 kilograms), the Whitechapel fatberg sprawls for 820 feet (250 m) — about the length of two English football fields. This means the blob is more than twice as long as the nefarious iceberg responsible for sinking the Titanic, which was estimated to measure a mere 200 to 400 feet (61 to 122 m) long....