Grandma's grandma was but a wee lass, and the quickest way to get from here to there had four legs when many of Harrisburg's water and sewer pipes were put in.

It should be no great surprise they're giving up the ghost.

Mayor Linda Thompson said the Cameron Street water main that broke Tuesday night dated back to the late 1800s.

1884 to be exact.

The leak that's believed to have started the massive Fourth Street sinkhole that opened its maw on New Years day appeared to have come from an old clay pipe.

For years, we've taken our aging infrastructure for granted - replacing bits here and there when they failed, but generally avoiding the political backlash that comes with the higher bills required to replace wholesale the increasingly frail systems.

And the older the pipes get, the more often they crack a joint.

According to the EPA, one large water utility in the Midwest went from 250 water main breaks per year to 2,200 per year in just under two decades as the system outgrew its useful life.

There will be more breaks and more sinkholes in Harrisburg.

Harrisburg's city leaders have acknowledged their current strategy will be fix it as it fails, and replace the worst when we can.

For Harrisburg, it's a matter of having no money. The city is as close to bankruptcy as one can get without actually filing. It has more than $300 million in incinerator debt it cannot pay, is in the Act 47 process and under the control of a state-appointed receiver.

But Harrisburg is not alone.

Cities across the nation are facing similar problems.

The EPA says there are more than 650 water main breaks every day across the country, with some functioning pipes dating back to the 1870s.

The problem with fixing aging systems as they fail is the taxpayers end up spending more money on a series of short term fixes than it would cost to simply replace the whole system, but the big fix requires big bucks, and that's difficult even for cities that don't have a receiver.

"No matter who you are as Mayor, you want an operational, first-class system - and that's precisely what I'm calling for," said Mayor Linda Thompson Thursday afternoon.

Thompson said she's working with The Harrisburg Authority to develop a plan to address the city's infrastructure needs.

The first step, she said, is to get the system assessed to determine the needs for improvement.

Some lines were put in only a few years ago; others - if they could talk - could tell you about President Chester Alan Arthur.

Most of the water and sewer pipes in the city are more than 100 years old, said Shannon Williams, executive director of The Harrisburg Authority.

"Because of the investment made by our predecessors in the late 1800 and early 1900s, we have been able to take for granted that clean, safe water will flow from our taps and go back down the drain for treatment whenever we want it to," said Williams. "Unfortunately, those investments made do not have an indefinite life."

Williams said, "We have been fortunate that many of the pipes are still operating as designed, but we should prepare ourselves for the need to reinvest in clean water infrastructure for the 21st century."

But that plan has to be about more than just pipe replacement, said Thompson.

The system's capacity has to be expanded, she said, and it has to be able to withstand seismic events and "super storms."

The World War II era DeHart dam at the city's reservoir needs to be upgraded, as do the treatment plants - both water and sewer.

"This didn't happen overnight, and we're not going to repair it overnight," said Thompson, and she acknowledged it's going to require "a great deal of investment."

"Without that," she said, "we're going to continue to have these types of challenges that cause us to be reactionary."

Former Mayor Stephen R. Reed spent more than $8.3 million of Authority funds that could have been used for infrastructure on Wild West artifacts. While Thompson acknowledged that and noted she opposed it while on City Council, she said she wanted to focus on moving forward.

Despite the scope of the challenge, Thompson said she sees it as "a great opportunity."

"Our city's going to be booming in the next several years, and we need the infrastructure to meet that growth."

Even discounting any election-year boosterism that might underly her statement, Thompson is right that infrastructure is key to economic development and job growth.

It's a point upon which the Mayor and Gov. Tom Corbett agree.

"I think we are poised in Pennsylvania to take off (economically)," Corbett said during an editorial board meeting at the Patriot-News on Wednesday.

Corbett, whose governor's mansion has several proto-sinkholes nearby, said the issue of aging infrastructure is "a big problem for the entire Northeast."

He said Pittsburgh is facing a mandated replacement of its sewer system that will cost billions.

A recent national study of water systems alone estimated more than $2 trillion will be needed to upgrade and expand water systems across the country.

Sewage systems are another matter entirely, and in Pennsylvania, cities are under increasing pressure from the EPA to decouple storm water management from sewage systems and treat the two separately.

The projected costs are staggering.

In Pennsylvania, the Department of Environmental Protection estimates $12 billion is needed to fix water systems alone.

The need far outstrips the resources of the state's first-stop low-interest lender.

The Pennsylvania Infrastructure and Investment Authority usually lends only about $340 million a year to municipalities for infrastructure upgrades, said PennVest executive director Paul Marchetti.

Corbett - in a rare burst of big-government candor - said, "If the federal government wanted to help the Northeast, that would be one way: create low interest bonds or something" to help cities pay for the work.

"That would create a lot of jobs," he said.

Again, he and Mayor Thompson agree.

Thompson said she recently returned from a meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors in Washington, D.C., where her colleagues agreed funding for infrastructure needs is their number one priority.

She said a federal sequestration would only set back the work that needs to be done.

Thompson said congress needs to make provision for non-tax, low-interest bonds to fund municipal infrastructure upgrades.

If it doesn't, life in Harrisburg and many other cities will become an increasingly expensive venture of patch, pave and cross the fingers.