New Career for 2008? Consider Sewage Diving

Bored with your job? Need a new challenge? Why not consider sewage diving.

We can be under several metres of sewage for up to four hours.

The first metre or two of sewage can be quite dense. We've had it that thick that the guys have dropped spanners and they haven't fallen.

It's black and silent. It's just pure black, you can't see anything. It can be very claustrophobic and it takes careful planning before you go ahead.

You can walk through the sewage but not really swim. We've had times when there were big islands we've had to remove when pumps have broken down. We've had to go in with big suction heads and suck 500 foot of solid poo out — lovely days!

It doesn't smell bad at all for the diver; he's normally on processed air. The hardest job is the people who have to wash them down and clean them up afterwards.

When I lived in Singapore I learned to Scuba Dive. Visibility in Singapore waters is very poor, and there is no coral because of all the dredging for land being developed in the sea to house petrochemical complexes and land to build on. That said, there is great diving in all the countries around Singapore. My favourite was on Mactan Island in the Philippines, where I stayed at the dive resort and had a dive in the morning before going to work and a dive in the evening before dinner. Very beautiful and considerably more fun than diving in human waste.

Green Porridge Sewage Bar

And the one you all wanted to read about. From The Australian

An overwhelming majority of Australians would be prepared to drink recycled sewage to help ease a national crisis in urban water supplies that has forced escalating restrictions on water use.

In an exclusive Newspoll for the Australian, almost seven out of 10 people favour water from sewage treatment plants being supplied to homes for all household uses, including drinking, provided it is treated to the same quality as existing water supplies.

Most of the remainder say they would be prepared to use recycled sewage for non-drinking purposes, such as flushing toilets and watering gardens.

So there you have it. I am very surprised that so many people are prepared to consider this. I am trained and work in the environmental field and I have many doubts about this, not least the numbers of chemicals required to get to the point where you could safely ingest the water. Personally I will stick to beer. That was the safest liquid when I lived in South East Asia, where most of the drinking water was contaminated with ecoli. Bit expensive for bathing however. Perhaps I could start a recycled sewage mineral water business. Guaranteed to fail I don't doubt.