Eugene's sewer team: 'New experiences every day'
EUGENE, Ore. -- Rats, sewage and grease may be gross to most people, but to Fuji Ngariki and Rick Perrot, it’s their bread and butter.
They spend most days unclogging Eugene’s pipes with a vactor truck, a vehicle that uses high-powered water stream to drag unwanted material out of the lines.
Perrot and Ngariki are two of 18 Eugene Department of Public Works maintenance workers who overlook 1,300 miles of stormwater and wastewater pipes.
“It’s a public service,” lead maintenance worker Ed Reynolds said. “The city of Eugene spends their tax dollars wisely. The citizens are getting a bang for their buck.”
When left unchecked, the pipes can get clogged with debris and grease or cracked from tree roots. It’s up to the crew to clear them out and patch them up.
To mend a break, the crew inserts an inflatable tube into the line, which they inflate to stick a resin-coated fiberglass sheet to the pipe walls. When the sheet hardens, it patches up the crack.
The process, known as a “spot lining,” sounds complicated, but it’s far cheaper and easier than digging up the street, according to Reynolds.
So far this year, the crew has installed over a hundred spot liners, yet the crew still has a backlog of work to do.
“Some of (the pipes) are probably close to a hundred years old,” said technical specialist Jerry Mounts (below), who operates a remote-controlled camera (at right) that inspects the sewer system.
“People thought that the concrete or clay (of the pipes) were going to last forever,” Mounts said. “That was a naïve assumption.”
Tree roots can also interfere with the sewer system, requiring specialized equipment to cut the roots, according to Subsurface Maintenance Supervisor Russ Deless.
“Trees and sewers are like oil and water; they just don’t mix,” Deless said of Eugene, which he calls “Tree City USA”.
“There’s new experiences every day,” said Jake Bennett, a maintenance worker. “Sometimes (the manhole) can cave in and you can have a bunch of rats. If it ever does, I’m gonna be out of there like that.”
Each worker is required to take confined-space training before entering a manhole.
Maintenance worker Jake Bennett is preparing the manhole for a fiberglass liner, known as a “spot liner.”
