Posted on 07/18/2004 4:27:35 PM PDT by aculeus
Julio Cesar Cuc spends his days blindly feeling his way through sewage and occasionally risking his life deep in the bowels of Mexico's capital.
"It's a great job," the city's most experienced sewage diver said, his tone betraying only the slightest hint of irony. "It's unusual, it's challenging, it's exciting, and it's a real public service."
That part I buy, especially during the May to September rainy season when emergency underwater plumbing can be the only thing keeping the rivers of sewage flowing through Mexico City's 1400 kilometres of pipes and tunnels - rather than bubbling to the surface or bursting the banks of surface canals.
"Black water" floods still happen here, but without Mr Cuc and his team of sewage divers they would be much more common.
The four-man team spends much of its time fixing the pumps that push sewage out of a sprawling metropolitan area twice the size of Sydney, or pulling out rubbish impeding its progress.
The risks are real, from minor infections to being stabbed with infected syringes.
But the Mr Cuc, who was one of the founding members of the team, formed in 1982, prefers to talk about the things he's found, including half a Volkswagen Beetle and more than a dozen dead bodies - "I don't know how they get down there, but we have to get them out."
There are industrial divers in other cities who sometimes work in waste, but Mexico City's are probably the only ones who do nothing else.
Their dives last anything from 10 minutes to three hours, at depths ranging from four to 100 metres, Mr Cuc says.
The divers work in impermeable drysuits designed for the icy waters of the North Sea, and a helmet connected to a tube that supplies them with oxygen from a surface tank and allows radio communication.
"I can feel rubbish, lots of it ... plastic bags, bottles ... nothing big today," Carlos Barrios says, giving a running commentary from the deep. Hiis only guide in the dense, dark liquid are his sense of touch and what he and his workmates on the other end of the radio remember about this stretch of drain.
Getting waste out of Mexico City capital became a problem once the Spaniards drained the highland lake system on which the Aztecs established the city.
A huge tunnel built in the 17th century provided a partial answer for a time, but an exploding population combined with the city's alarming rate of subsidence to necessitate a deep drainage system in the 1970s. This year, work began to extend the network, which is already under strain.
The Guardian
Anytime I feel like 'dissing' my job...
The name "Ed Norton" keeps popping up...
These guys should be paid a billion pesos a year each.
I can think of a number of things to say to this article, but I'd rather retain my posting privileges.
I wonder if he ever ran into Amy Richards down there.
That's nothing special. Gays do it on a daily basis.
And I always thought Mexico irrigated their crops with raw sewage!
What a s***ty job. Wonder if he brings he lunch to work.
And, Julio's work place is, of course, where Clinton recruited almost all of his staff, many of whom can still be seen on TV and in the sewers on Washington and NYC.
Whaaaa? There are jobs....in Mexico?
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