"And we'd have shovels in the ground digging those pipes up".
"The 20th-century solution is to dig up pipes, repair them, and put them back in the ground.
Currently, the only options to clear these blockages, according to Chae, are to dig up pipes or replace the filtration membranes, both of which are expensive and inconvenient.
Large scale diamond mining involves digging up kimberlite pipes for processing, however in this instance the 706-carat diamond had been weathered from a pipe long ago and washed down stream for the lucky discoverer.
The work was grueling, casting bricks by hand, digging and laying pipes for about 200 homes.
Cairo Jukes is an ex-boxer reduced to "tatting" – zero-hour contract labour digging up copper pipes from the Black Country's lost industrial heyday.
Some 6,000 workers are now installing steel nets to protect it against tornadoes and digging ditches for pipes to carry water from a swamp into its cooling towers.
Our ground, rooting us to every stalk of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands as worn as my father's cutting sugarcane so my brother and I could have books and shoes.
In some areas survivors have resorted to digging up water pipes and extracting fuel from reservoirs at petrol stations.
Another year, no matter what else those college degrees qualified him to do, Nelson earned his spending money by digging up sewer pipes, and right beside him was another guy with a Ph.D., and a third guy who sometimes did Hollywood stunt work.
