He warned that at current rates of investment it would take 1, 500 years to renovate Britain's underground pipes.

BBC: NEWS | Programmes | File on 4 | Neglected sewers threaten floods

Planting native shrubs in clear-cut areas, which need to remain treeless to avoid root damage to underground pipes and to give maintenance crews access, would be better than just grass, the Nature Conservancy noted.

WSJ: Northeast drilling boom threatens forest wildlife

On loan from a Mexican museum, the work is nearly eight feet high by more than six feet wide, and depicts Depression-racked New York in four tiers: skyscrapers, a homeless shelter, underground pipes, and a bank vault.

NEWYORKER: The Painting on the Wall

It could be used to install objects in hard-to-reach places such as underground water pipes, he suggested.

BBC: TED 2013: 4D printed objects 'make themselves'

Officials believe leaking underground water pipes eroded sand under the pavement and contributed to the street giving way.

WSJ: Bottom Falls Out of Debt-Ridden City

Macri said Wednesday that the only solution is for the constantly warring governments to work together on expensive and long-term public works projects, creating huge underground drainage pipes to carry increasingly common torrential rains out to the Rio de la Plata.

NPR: Argentina: Flooding From Torrential Rains Kill 52

Some of it is not as visible as bridges, some of it is water systems, pipes underground that essentially were built back in the 1930s -- in some cases even older than that.

WHITEHOUSE: Creating New Jobs by Investing in High-Speed Rail

When rain lands on concrete or asphalt, it runs downgrade into a stormdrain, disappears underground, channelling through systems of pipes as it combines with rain from thousands of other stormdrains into an underfoot river, ever rushing toward lower ground.

WHITEHOUSE: Champions of Change Blog