In some cases it might not even be possible (if, say, the walls are too thin to lay pipes).
Plans to lay pipes in the central part of the state, including through the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, were withdrawn.
So far, it has paid $33,000 to drill the well and is applying for matching funds to install a pump and lay pipes.
These include large side booms to lay pipes, machines to drill under rivers and roads for crossing, machines to bend large pipes in the field, and X rays to detect welding flaws.
The expected population boom could strengthen the position of conservation groups intent on halting construction of an industrial plant that will lay pipes across the lake's surface to extract soda ash from its watery shallows.
In 1999, the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC) proposed a vast expansion of the city's water supply, raising real hope that a British or French company would lay pipes to the sprawling Ajegunle slum.
Humans cannot work under a mile of water, so installing such equipment calls for specialized ships that can lay pipes and direct robotic submarines that install and maintain the gear.
Now the villagers have access to drinking water and the town hall is getting support for its request for $1.9m in European funding to lay pipes in the village.
New York City is building a treatment plant in the Bronx for the Croton water, but United Water determined that it would cost too much to lay pipes and pump that treated water back north to its customers.
Across the former socialist world, huge city-scale heating systems were designed along with national programmes of industrialisation: power-generating facilities and manufacturing plants were sited near the people who worked in them and could consume the energy produced, making it easier to lay pipes to channel waste heat from factories into residential neighbourhoods.
He said he had identified holes and road surface cracks mainly where service companies had dug up roads to fix or lay pipes and cabling.
