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Have you ever wondered what really goes on in your city's sewer system? Perhaps there's no evil clown or group of giant upright-walking turtles, but the mystery is still quite suspenseful, isn't it? Perhaps only those who work below our streets know the real answer. Thanks to them, 83% of Americans have a water supply in their homes.
But we also have them to thank for finding out what really goes on in the sewers. Underground workers have some pretty crazy stories to tell, and Bored Panda has collected the most shocking, gross, and surprising ones from two separate Reddit threads.
"What interesting things lurk just below our streets which are inaccessible to the public eye?" the people asked. And the answers had everything: clogged pipes, an occasional bowling ball, fully growing tomato plants, and, of course, people, in varying states of consciousness.
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#1
Previous job had me inspecting sanitary sewer systems and treatment plants during construction and immediately post-completion. In the treatment plants, corn. So. Much. Corn. All day, every day. Corn.
One small town had a tomato festival and cook off. Tomato seeds do not, in any way, get digested. Not by humans, and not by the aerobic bacteria in the digesters. The town would spray the processed solids over a nearby field and it ended up being the biggest tomato garden I've ever seen. Acres of forbidden tomatoes!
blue_molly 2 months ago
I've heard tomatoes randomly growing in sewage treatment plants (pun not intended, but also lol) is a whole situation. Apparently the human body is just a distribution system for tomatoes, who knew.
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#2
I used to work... sort of tangential to sewer workers. I did tech support for sewer inspection software, and often I'd end up fixing busted video files from an inspection. These videos were collected by lowering a water-resistant camera on a remote-controlled rig down into the pipe and driving it through.
There was one video from Fort Worth where they found a lateral (one of those pipes that connects a specific building to the main sewer line, like the pipe from your house to the main) that was completely clogged with used needles. It was a lateral off a hospital.
My favorite would be one from Florida (I think Sarasota) where they found a gator in the sewer. They were replacing the camera the next day, so the supervisor just said to ram him. What followed was about 15 minutes of an increasingly concerned alligator getting bumped by the lens until it got to a manhole chamber and took off down another line.
#3
A 200 ton wad of "flushable wipes". Just because it's "flushable" does NOT mean it's biodegradable. seriously you're f*****g up your plumbing. Stop flushing stuff you SHOULD NOT be flushing.
Say No to Downvoting 2 months ago
I really don’t think the general public should be vilified for thinking that “flushable wipes” means “flushable without f*****g yo your pipes”. When I eat things that are “fit for human consumption” I assume that means “fit for human consumption without perforating your bowel”.
#4
The strangest thing was a mattress in the 10' pipe carrying sewage out of downtown. It had oversized manholes, so someone must have decided to just dump it in the sewer. It became an island home to a large colony of rats.
#5
The bar screen (a big metal grate to catch large items) at the wastewater treatment plant caught a bowling ball and half a cow.
Somebody was living with a couch and refrigerator and all in one of the maintenance access tunnels.
#6
A friend of mine has found jewelry, gold plated cutlery, money (lots and lots of it), dead pets, and all sorts of weird and wild. He found 10K in a plastic bag about 10 years ago. How they flushed that, I’ll never know.
#7
I'd just like to register my formal apology to whomever had to clear out the storm drain that my brother and I painstakingly filled up with rocks over the course of several years of waiting at the bus stop until it caused a flood and also forced our neighbor to buy more driveway rocks.
#8
A bright orange full-body jumpsuit from the county jail.
#10
Not a sewer worker, but there was an amazing one in Vancouver.
City sewer worker finds a body, calls the coroner. As the coroner arrives, the body drifts away. They follow the body.
At a certain point, they realise that the insides of the sewers in this area have been painted.
Not painted as in a colour: painted like the inside of Goya's house, with endless, horrifying murals of the damned, mile after mile.
Anthony Elmore 2 months ago
I'm a little skeptical on this one. I actually tried looking it up so I could see the art, and there's just nothing on it. I'm actually a little disappointed, because I really wanted to see the art...
#11
There is the hidden beautiful station in the NY subway. Isnt big enough for the new system. So its a time capsule of tile work.
#12
I work in utility infrastructure asset management. Fancy way of saying I track whats under us. Theres nothing too interesting under us. Occasionally our crews find trolley tracks, or cool old steam tunnels.
Personally, the most interesting to me is the age of infrastructure. I just checked and in my city we have 37 active water mains that are made from clay and installed ~100 years ago. Still serving you today. We also have 3 wooden mains that still serve some commercial sections of town.
Judy Reynolds 2 months ago
I wonder what happens when the clay or wood doesn't function any longer...
#13
Aside from the typical stuff like corn and bugs, I think the most surprising thing was the *greenest* poop I have ever seen. It looked like someone had dyed it with a bunch of dark forest crayola crayons. For a second I wasn't sure it was real. I later learned that this is indicative of gallbladder problems - someone in that house was having a bad day.
There's probably a lot of stuff we see in sewers that non-industry people would consider weird - plumber's rods, cross-bores of gas laterals (it's what it sounds like - they bore right through the sewer pipe), construction debris (saw a sandbag once). Also some huge voids behind broken pipes that make you wonder how the hell the road hasn't collapsed over it yet.
#14
The obligatory I’m not a plumber but the apartment complex I lived in had to call a plumber out. All our toilets were backing up. The plumber finds several T-shirts had been flushed down by someone living in the complex. Don’t know why someone was flushing t-shirts.
#15
I was replacing a grinder pump at a customers house and the tank was full to the top. At the top with the rest of the solids were 6 hard boiled and peeled eggs. I will never understand why someone would rather flush eggs down the toilet rather than just throw them in the trash.
blue_molly 2 months ago
I'm guessing because they may have been inserted somewhere after peeling...
#16
In Las Vegas, there is a network of huge storm sewers under the city. Some of the tunnels have people living in them, sometimes literally under the Strip. It's out of the heat and they typically chose tunnels that don't flood.
Anthony Elmore 2 months ago
Understatement of the year. They practically have cities down there.
#17
Not a worker, but I lived in a suburban neighborhood. Just houses and a few trees. Always sunny on the weekends. There was a big park though. Just big pain field of grass and some trees. But it has a little creek river of some sort. Me and my friends followed it to a tunnel. It was like the entrance to a military bunker. We went in and for seemed like a minute. We ended up on the other side. It was like the forest of Jurassic Park 3. Big logs and thick trees. Seemed magical since we lived in a neighborhood that seemed far away. Plus it was in Texas so there’s only like plains and fields.
#18
Bats, lot of bats.
Agfox 2 months ago
I believe that is a grey-headed flying fox, which is often just called a fruit bat. We had lots of them crash into the banana plants alongside our bedroom during the night - followed by the sound of them eating the bananas. We could hear them clearly because that side wall was almost all metal louvered window that we kept open to cope with living close to the equator. As much as we liked the bats, they tended to leave worms that infested any bananas left uneaten on the plant
#19
A Dirty McDonalds Bag with still warm French Fries in it that somehow hasn’t gone bad.
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