"It's like having a sewer that's really overflowing and putting a cap on it and saying 'It's fixed,' " Ms. Shebar said.
On the night of Febru-ary 2, 2002, a witness told me, a Hausa youth saw a Yoruba youth squatting over a gutter on the street and demanded, "Why are you shitting there?" In a city where only 0.4 per cent of the inhabitants have a toilet connected to a sewer system, it was more of a provocation than a serious question.
The approach is already being used in some other cities that, like New York, have a combined sewer system where storm water and sewage are carried through a single pipe.
Gurgaon, located about 15 miles south of the national capital, New Delhi, would seem to have everything, except consider what it does not have: a functioning citywide sewer or drainage system; reliable electricity or water; and public sidewalks, adequate parking, decent roads or any citywide system of public transportation.
The suburb of Gurgaon looks completely First World, equal parts office towers, shopping centres, luxury gated residental enclaves, and golf courses, but as the New York Times recently reported, it does not have "a functioning citywide sewer or drainage system; reliable electricity or water; and public sidewalks, adequate parking, decent roads or any citywide system of public transportation".
There was horror, there was outrage – and just a little scepticism – when a flesh-eating piranha was said to have blocked a sewer in Telford.
Like many older cities, New York has a combined sewer system where storm water and sewage are carried through the same pipes.
Like most older cities, Chicago has a combined sewer system that carries both storm runoff and sanitary sewage during wet weather but only sanitary sewage during dry weather.
I simply asked them to be grateful that they had a metropolitan sewer district -- people locally accountable for a thankless but essential responsibility.
