This infrastructure has really gone down the drain.
The quality of New York City’s sewer system was up to local politicians up until about half a century ago, and their decisions contributed to parts of the city flooding worse during rainstorms, according to city officials.
Borough presidents were in charge of regulating how much water their sewers could handle until the mid-1970s, when the city began standardizing the underground infrastructure, said leaders of the Department of Environmental Protection, which manages the vast pipe network.