Rigid pipe has been used in various forms since 4000 BCE. Mohenjo-Daro, a town of 35,000 in southern Pakistan, is considered by many historians to be the birthplace of sewers. Beginning around 3500 BCE, drains made of cut stone or man-made masonry units were developed and became the prototype of many surface drains used throughout the ancient world – the forerunners of pipe. Six hundred years before the Christian era, the Romans built the Cloaca Maxima, one of the ancient world's best known sewage systems constructed to drain local marshes and channel Rome’s sewage to the River Tiber. A few portions of Rome’s ancient rigid sewers still function today - well over two millennium later. At least 66 generations have benefited from rigid sewers in Rome.
The concrete pipe industry has never claimed that its products would last 1,000 years, yet the evidence is in place suggesting that rigid sewers last for generations, and we have said so. We know without question that concrete sewers will perform for the design life of a project, when designed for the environment of the sewer. This is not speculation of service life of products, or linear regression analysis. This is a fact.