You think it's cold and miserable sliding across Philadelphia on top of the street?
Now, picture yourself inching along under the icy surface, creeping on hands and knees through human sewage to pump out toxic gunk on the bottom of the sewer.
That's what's been happening this week in Bridesburg, as five divers in heavy cold weather gear crawled toward the end of a mile-and-a-half-long pesticide cleanup.
"They are working on all fours," said Leopoldo Perez, project engineer for Rohm and Haas, the chemical company that's paying $16 million for the work.
Yesterday, just in time for Christmas, they wrapped up the job in the 10- foot-square sewer, north of the Northeast Sewage Plant at Castor Avenue.
Five highly skilled divers, who earn up to $30 an hour for what an employee of their Cleveland, Ohio-based company called "normal" sewer or lake work (she cautioned that this was definitely not "normal"), took turns crawling far into the sewer with a vacuum nozzle. Since July, they've sucked up more than 500 cubic yards of DDT-tainted sediment - enough to fill dozens of dumpsters - as they have worked their way beneath Bridesburg from the chemical company at Bridge Street to the sewage plant.
The sandy sediment, about 2.5 feet thick, didn't test at hazardous levels and was shipped off to the GROWS landfill in Tullytown, Bucks County, after screening, said Perez.
The problem was that DDT from the sewer was getting into sludge from the Northeast plant, limiting the city's chances to market sludge compost. DDT, used by Rohm and Haas 20 years ago in making other pesticides, is suspected of causing cancer.
The contamination has cost the company nearly $40 million, including $18 million to compensate the city, company spokesman George Bochanski said.
The unusual cleanup ran into trouble when the commercial divers first went down in June 1994. They found the residue under the Rohm and Haas plant thick and gummy, defying the vacuum nozzles used in the rest of the cleanup.
So they went back with a mining cart last spring and chipped away with picks. They brought up 40 cubic yards of chemical-tainted waste that was burned at a hazardous-waste incinerator.
Then work started in July on the main length of sewer through residential Bridesburg, under Garden and Bath streets. Streets weren't torn up because the divers were able to get into the sewer at the chemical and sewage plants, and at the old Philadelphia Coke site midway.
The flow of sewage wasn't cut off, either. That's why divers - wearing heavy, airtight helmets - had to keep crawling under the sewage to the end of their job.
