THE SCUBA REPORT

SEWAGE AND LANDFILL DIVING
A really “CRAPPY” job. Or is it???? By: Scott Fraser


Mary Jordan (Washington Post)
Mexico City -- Carlos Barrios Orta squeezed himself into his rubber diving suit, pulled on an 18-pound helmet that made him look like an astronaut, then lowered himself into the sewer. He disappeared into the filthy water, which looked like some cauldron of rancid beef stew, until the only sign of him was air bubbles breaking the surface.
In the darkness of the sewer, Barrios could see nothing. He doesn't bother to carry a light, because it would be of no use in the thick waters. He inched forward in his bright red suit, an airtight model that sealed away the disease all around him, feeling his way with his rubber gloves, listening in the darkness"I've got it!" Barrios said as he pushed away bottles, plastic bags and other junk he could not identify by touch. At least there were no human bodies today, like the two he found floating by recently.
He'd been underwater 10 minutes, and Barrios said his body had adjusted to the cold about 24 feet deep in the 60-degree water. "I'm comfortable. It's great. I feel the adrenaline."
Barrios was pumped up. No office, no pencils, no spreadsheets, no routine. He did that for 24 years. He said he's had more fun as a "wastewater diver" than he did in a quarter century of totaling up stacks of numbers. And he's proud that he's providing a service for his city, which has few resources for a more modern sewage system and must rely on divers to keep the aging equipment humming.



When thirty-six-year-old Tim Nelson got a call from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this spring, he already knew it was serious. It's always serious. As a hazmat (hazardous materials)-trained scuba diver, Nelson makes a living plunging into heavily polluted rivers, where he has, for example, swum through raw sewage and pulp-mill effluent to check on leaking pipes.(Christian DiBanetto)

Nothing in the diving industry: (commercial, scuba) has disrupted my curiosity more than landfill and sewage diving. You need a commercial diving education to even begin to attempt this dangerous and odd form of diving. There are commercial diving schools up and down the eastern seaboard from New Jersey to Florida. They offer courses in HAZMAT diving, underwater welding and a host of other extremely dangerous careers including nuclear waste diving. Yep I said it, Nuclear waste diving. Here is an excerpt from Stroud commercial diving academy: Nuclear power facilities all over the world have items in the water, which must receive maintenance. Some items may require a simple dive of a few hours duration or the project may span over several months or more. Divers receive RADWORKER Training at levels I & II as well as General Employee Training and Access Training prior to admission to these types of projects. Our school offers elective training in Nuclear Diving. We have training aids and mock-up devices that present the nuclear environment scenario and all dives and topside training is done to those standards. www.mescodive.com
Check out the website. The money made by commercial divers is pretty good. Its piece work so you are basically working as a sub contracted diver. The physical affects on your body can be very extreme. If you are a saturation diver( a diver who is saturated with gas so he can stay at great depths for extended periods of time including weeks. The decompression from these dives can take a month and destroy your brain. A saturation diver can only work for around 3 years until they have to stop or sustain serious brain damage.
I recently came in contact with a guy who works in solid waste management for the state of Florida. We got to talking and he informed me of a group of commercial divers known as METHANE DIVERS. He described them as land fill divers. I was like HMMMMMMMMM. What in the hell are you talking about. He explained this to me: When it rains all of the water seeps through the land fills putrid and disgusting mountains of toxic waste. The water is collected in a pool under the land fill and piped out to different water treatment plants. When debris gets caught in one of the passage ways (pipes) it can cause the waste water to back up and possibly flood the sewer system. This means organic chemical toxic waste flooding our streets. MMMMMMMMM…yummy. To keep this from happening the (landfill diver) is lowered into the disease, chemical, fecal waste, putrid waters of the land fill free debris from pipes to ensure proper flow. Land fill divers describe the experience as being put into a dry suit and dumped in a hot tub. The visibility is obviously zero. You have to go on feel alone. Hope to God a hypodermic needle doesn’t stick you, or a dead body doesn’t hit you in the face.(BELOW), Diver ready to enter a 100-ft. leachate shaft to clean out debris . This is where you take a step back and realize that the things you don’t think about are being done everyday. I’ll bet you never thought that a job existed for landfill divers. It does. The salary is around $3,500-4,000 a month. Not bad. I’d do it but I can’t afford the commercial diving training of $10,000. I Hope your eyes are opened and you realize that diving doesn’t just mean beautiful reefs in the Florida keys. Some times a dive can be down right nasty.