This is happening a lot. Nothing put back into the infrastructure to prevent future problems until its to late. Like this scenario.
Look at the city of Los Angeles. 75-100 year old water mains breaking. They patch them until it breaks some where else.
That's everywhere, not just LA. People have been screaming about the infrastructure in this country for decades. It's not all on the fed .gov though as many times the utilities are independent and city/county owned and they don't have usage rates in place sufficient enough for maintenance of these aging systems, much less future expansion. They don't have the rates they need to maintain these systems because they're elected officials (mayors/county judges) and won't raise them because they won't get elected in the next cycle. So these municipalities depend on state and fed. grants to be able to afford things. As a tax payer, it ticks me off. But on the other hand, if the billing rates went up 10x, that'd tick people off too.