Water Pollution - Permeable Pipes?

[Naomi57 2,985]

Water Pollution - Permeable Pipes?

One thing I've noticed in SimCity 4, is that water pollution affects drinking water.  Which is kinda weird, because the Water Pollution view is about ground water, not piped water.

One of the conclusions I came to, is that the pipes are permeable, letting ground water pollution seep in, even if the Water Pumps are located in the most pristine location in your city tile (which is always recommended!)  Even if the water is imported from a pristine neighbour city, the local ground water pollution levels is one of the biggest causes of vacancy, dilapidation, and urban decay.  The only sector that tolerates high water pollution levels well is Dirty Industry (I-D) ... even if the piped water is imported!

Are the water pipes permeable?  Do the permeable pipes let in the local water pollution so that the imported Evian becomes a cloudy toxic fluid streaming from sim's faucets?

To that end, in some of my old cities, I've avoided laying pipes near landfill.  Kinda like, yuck, seriously, if the pipes really are permeable!   

In some cities, I've even laid two water systems, one for Dirty Industry (I-D), and a separate one for everyone else.  However, I'm not convinced that those measures made a single twig of difference.  Water pollution, and the extreme negative impacts it has on the business and personal lives of my sim populations, seems entirely related to ground water, not the configuration of my pipe systems.

To that end, I've discovered there seems to be just three useful recommendations for managing water pollution:

1. Locate the Water Pumps in the cleanest spots, so that they don't get shut down.
    
2. Locate a Water Treatment Plant between toxic Dirty Industry (I-D) zones, and Agriculture (I-A) areas, and other cleaner zones in the city.
    
3. Mountains might be useful, altering the ground water shape to prevent some of the water pollution escaping the polluted areas.  I haven't tested that to be sure, but that seemed to be a factor in one of my old large city tiles, which only had just 1 distant Water Treatment Plant for the whole large city tile, and a very large nasty Dirty Industry (I-D) valley with massive very healthy R$$ residential towers on the other side of a small mountain spur.  That's an experiment I want to run someday.  

Has anyone done any experiments to determine if pipe layouts, and even multiple (separated) water pipe systems, make any difference at all?

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

I don't think that water pollution affects pipes, only lots, which include pumps. So go ahead and run pipes through polluted areas from clean sources, but be sure to stop the rot from seeping out to nice neighborhoods (even if your house gets clean water from the tap, you'd be unhappy about industrial waste melting the tires off your parked car).