"What happened here in Jefferson County would turn out to be the perfect metaphor for the peculiar alchemy of modern oligarchical capitalism: A mob of corrupt local officials and morally absent financiers got together to build a giant device that converted human shit into billions of dollars of profit for Wall Street" - "Looting Main Street" Matt Taibbi takes an in-depth look into how finance, deregulation, corruption, synthetic rate swaps, and greed decimated Birmingham, AL. [more inside]
posted by The Whelk on Apr 12, 2010 - 42 comments

Sewer Creatures
posted by MetaMonkey on Jun 30, 2009 - 117 comments

Some amazing photos of the storm sewer system in Tokyo. (Further reading)
posted by dersins on Sep 4, 2007 - 26 comments

London's 'flushers': "If you really thought about where you were going and what you were doing you'd either be shit scared or you wouldn't go there. We're shit shovellers. Some of the jobs I do a high percentage of the country would turn around and say: 'Poke that up yer arse mate as far as you can put it.'" The history of London's sewers. The craptacular sewerhistory.org. More entries in the Night Haunts series.
posted by OmieWise on Jul 13, 2006 - 14 comments

SewerHistory dot org has lots of information about sewers. It's really interesting.
posted by thirteenkiller on Apr 20, 2006 - 17 comments

Manhole Cover Photography. Photos of manhole covers from around the world.
posted by greasy_skillet on May 14, 2005 - 23 comments

The G-Cans Project is a massive project, begun 12 years ago, to build infrastructure for preventing overflow of the major rivers and waterways spidering the city (A serious problem for Tokyo during rainy-season and typhoon season). The underground waterway is the largest in the world and sports five 32m diameter, 65m deep concrete containment silos which are connected by 64 kilometers of tunnel sitting 50 meters beneath the surface. The whole system is powered by 14000 horsepower turbines which can pump 200 tons of water a second into the large outlying edogawa river.
posted by joelf on Dec 4, 2004 - 24 comments

Good news on the pollution front. Town in Northern California finds a way to turn its sewage into non-polluting water and make a wildlife refuge. If you live in Arcata, you can flush your toilet with pride! Quick overview here or the full flush.
posted by keithl on Mar 12, 2002 - 8 comments