Bottled water is often as the answer where the is unsafe.
It is the most expensive way to deliver a litre of water ever .
A household on a low income can spend a tenth of its budget on it.
The plastic then becomes a second problem in the same street.
Fixing the is far cheaper over any period longer than a year.
The difficulty is that the cost arrives first and the benefit arrives later.
A pipe replaced this year is invisible for a decade.
is the part most often ignored.
In some systems, close to half the water never reaches a .
Repairing leaks delivers more water than building a new source.
It also wins no and appears in no photograph.
That, rather than engineering, is why it is .