Feature -- by Mark Sproxton

A camera at the end of the coil provides telling information to the video service cameramen.

They are, perhaps, the most prolific film crew in Calgary. Shooting thousands of feet of video each week, their work, thankfully, won't be seen any time soon at local theatres or film festivals. If a demand for footage of household sewer lines, full of roots, water, river pickles and other items comes to be, then the City of Calgary's sewer department will likely earn a few Oscars.

Frank and Wayne are video service camera operators with the city's sewer department and are but two of hundreds dealing with wastewater once the toilet is flushed, or a rain storm has dampened the city.

On a basic level, Calgary's wastewater system is divided into these two parts. Household or commercial waste travels through pipes and may or may not pass through a lift (pumping) station before reaching a treatment facility and eventually the Sheppard sewage lagoons. Storm water runs through a series of pipes tying in from catch basins on the street, possibly through a lift station, to an out-flow system that winds up at the river.

The physical infrastructure required for such a system is immense. For instance, there are 41,200 sanitary and 37,700 storm manholes in Calgary, along with 3,444 kilometres of sanitary and 2,964 km of storm pipeline mains. The number of jobs required to look after such a large system is also impressive.

On the most visible side of the wastewater jobs are those who deal directly with the public dealing with odor problems, cleaning pipelines and replacing broken lines. But behind the scenes there are also operators of wastewater treatment plants, engineers who design and monitor the system, assessors to ensure new wastewater construction meets standards and chemists and lab workers who ensure wastewater won't contaminate the environment. This article looks at a three positions within the wastewater system.

Video Service Camera Operators

Parked out front of a south-Calgary home, Frank and Wayne don't know what this stop will bring. All they know for know is the home owner has had the drain back up on several occasions recently and wants to figure out what's causing the problem.

Armed with a video camera attached to the end of a 160 foot coiled video line resembling a long extension cord, and a description of the property's sewage service connection, the operators move quickly to begin filming. After getting a bit of information about the problem from the home owner, Frank and Wayne haul their equipment downstairs and let the camera roll.

A few feet down the line, as indicated by an electronic counter, or somewhere under the front lawn, the problem becomes apparent on the video monitor. The pipe to the house has sunk causing a large pool of water to form underground, making it hard for the line to clear properly. "All I can say," Frank jokes, "is thank God it's not in color."

In this case, it is unfortunate news for the home owners. The video shows the problem is on their property and repairs will cost thousands of dollars. That kind of bad news places the operators in a tough position. "We deal with that steady," Wayne explained. "The property owners like to say it's on city property. But what you seen in the camera, you write it down. Everything's on tape. You just try to make people happy by giving them recommendations."

This house was easy to diagnose. Some, however, take far longer than 45 minutes. If roots have infiltrated the pipeline, the camera operators also carry a snake-like auger to run down the line and clear the way for outgoing liquid wastes. Sometimes one stop can take four to six hours and that day's scheduled appointments will have to be re-booked.

While Frank and Wayne also spend time training new operators, usually those who have started with the city as a seasonal laborer or in the maintenance department, they still enjoy helping people wade through their water problems.

"The home owner starts in some sort of distress," Frank said. "We go in and video it and explain things to them and nine times out of 10 it's fixable by auger. When you show them, you've accomplished something that gives the home owner satisfaction."

Wastewater Engineer

"Imagine the mess we'd have around our houses if we didn't have this system," asks Terry Prince, engineering manager with the city of Calgary's wastewater and drainage division. "People take a lot of things for granted once they flush the toilet or flush the dishwater."

That water has to have somewhere to go, and people have to be there to design and assess existing sewer and storm systems, monitor flows in each and calculate the affects of flow quantity and quality. Prince spends his time overseeing the other engineers on staff who ensure these responsibilities are met. He works in an office Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and like any manager, has to keep an eye on spending.

Engineers in the department will have a minimum of a bachelor degree and certification from the provincial licensing body, and in addition, specialized training in computer applications of hydrology and hydrologic simulation models. Working in teams, and with computers, the engineering group ensures the wastewater and drainage system works efficiently without harming the natural world around us.

"It's an interesting job because you get to have an impact on the environment," Prince said. "The best part of the work is the people, and the worst part is that I need to rest once in a while. It is pretty demanding. You can get pretty wound up in it."

While wastewater, with its potentially harmful ingredients needs careful monitoring and handling, the drainage system also needs special attention. "All the use of technology has a lot of wastes and a lot of them you don't see," Prince said. "All those bits that fall onto our urban landscape go into the river. We're working on improving the storm system in the catch basins to treat that water."

Wastewater Chemist

If there's something rotten in the state of Calgary's wastewater, its chemical detectives spring into action. In addition to analysing samples at the city's two wastewater treatment plans, a wastewater chemist also helps monitor industrial discharges, urban run-off and other local waters.

"A high energy level and eagerness to face new challenges is an asset to anyone considering employment in this field," explained Barry Kobryn, plant chemist at the Bonnybrook Wastewater Treatment Plant laboratory. "Personally, I've found the work in the City of Calgary's wastewater lab to be extremely rewarding as a chemist. Facilities and equipment are excellent, and the role in protecting the local aquatic environment is something a person can be proud of."

While regular monitoring must be done daily in the lab, the work never becomes repetitive, he added. "The routine is constantly broken as technical challenges continue to evolve in response to the public's concerns about water pollution, changing environmental regulations, and as Calgary's continued growth generates big city problems."

Constant technological changes means Kobryn and other lab workers are regularly learning new testing and sampling techniques and how to use new equipment. Some of the analytical methodologies used in a modern wastewater lab included traditional, often automated, wet chemistry, to state-of-art techniques such as GC-MS and ICP-MS, to microbiological tests and examinations. Kobryn said the laboratory is very similar to private sector environmental laboratories in this regard.

Mechanical equipment also needs careful monitoring in a wastewater treatment plant.

The wastewater chemist works Monday to Friday often in a team environment, but because of his specialization, will also have many individual tasks that must be performed. One of Kobryn's most important duties is to work with others in the lab to monitor local surface waters and industrial wastewater discharge. Industrial wastewater is monitored to recover surcharges for treatable pollutants and to monitor and enforce regulatory limits for non-treatable and/or harmful chemicals.

Other jobs

A number of other jobs in wastewater, whether at a treatment plant, in a lab, or out in the streets, include:

• four levels of wastewater treatment plant operators
• tradespeople such as electricians, millwrights, heavy equipment operators
• engineering technicians
• lab technicians
• pipeline emergency response, maintenance or cleaning workers
• assessment inspectors
• laborers