But I knew if I didn't get the drainage right in the garden, many of the plants I wanted to grow would wither and die.
Mohammed Abdul Ali, the school's headmaster, said he had approached local factory owners, as well as Savar officials, trying to get the drainage pipe moved.
Mr. Ward spent weeks in the hospital, Mr. Hubbell wrote, and wore an expression whose meaning was clear: "If I had done my man-of-the-house duty and gotten the drainage system fixed, he wouldn't be in a back brace".
Mr. Restler's strongholds are the gentrifying pockets of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, where he has built a reputation for taking care of constituents' needs: getting the drainage fixed in a dog park, attracting two farmers' markets, saving subway and bus stops.
"Why would you want a bomb like that sitting north of your city when south of your city you have the biggest petrochemical facilities in the world?" Houston, he said, needs to hurry up and get the drainage system cleaned.
You may need to remove a small plastic covering from beneath the radiator to get to the drainage valve.
"But if you spend $500 to fix the plumbing, nobody comes in and says, 'Hey, the toilets flush great' or 'you've got great drainage".' Although some small painting-type projects have been done, Mr. Suozzi said, the work he and his administration have put into economic development in these last two years is almost all about plumbing.
Maybe it's because I've got good drainage.
"There is a huge amount of land, the soils run deep, they are easy to work, easy to clear, they've got good drainage; it's land that lends itself very well to agriculture," said Randall Schnepf, senior economist at the United States Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service.
They get so clogged with cement that city workers have to go into the drainage system with pickaxes.
