Children in the town of Argyle, Texas are now experience a high increase of asthma attacks and other ailments. Some are attributing this epidemic to the natural gas exploration taking place around the schools in that district.

I received an e-mail from change.org, a non-profit LIKE other post-industrial areas in the city, New York’s Gowanus neighbourhood is getting stylish. But those who venture there after a heavy rainstorm might rethink their plans to buy that loft. When the city’s aging sewerage system is overwhelmed, untreated storm-water and sewage flood into local waterways, including the Gowanus Canal. The resulting whiff is sure to keep property prices at a level starving Brooklyn artists can afford.

New York has a serious sewer problem. The city spills more than 27 billion gallons (102 billion litres) of untreated overflow into its harbor each year, according to Riverkeeper, a local advocacy group. And New York is not alone. Nearly 800 American cities rely on decrepit systems that collect storm-water run-off, industrial waste and human sewage in the same pipes. Usually these pipes take waste water to treatment plants. But any overflow is released into rivers and streams.

Time, erosion and increasingly erratic weather have made this a national issue. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the federal body in charge of monitoring water standards, says the country needs to invest $300 billion over the next 20 years to update or replace existing sewer infrastructure. But except for the money for improvements set aside in the 2009 stimulus bill-a not-ungenerous $6 billion-the federal government has left states to their own devices. Some cash-strapped cities have decided to get creative.