Quote (JohnnyMcCoy @ Oct 12 2021 02:39pm)
exactly the opposite
it was way harder building hundreds of miles of aquaducts 2000 years ago with what they had than it is to build what we have with modern tech
any chemistry student after a few semesters can do the necessary tests and there are plenty of them
Except it isn't about getting a chemistry student to do the tests. It's about coordinating the dozens of chemists to maintain water quality, and develop improved tests for water quality as regulation changes, and maintaining supplies of the chemicals to do the tests with, and reporting and monitoring where they fail or have increasing concentrations of poor chemicals, etc. etc.
I actually know a fair bit about all the ins and outs of water quality testing since the water lab for the town was one of the biggest parties hiring from my university. I got LOTS of presentations about water testing, and maintaining this infrastructure is far more difficult than building aquaducts.