konstantinox

I'm a Construction Inspector for a Municipality, we hire pipeline CCTV like who OP works for so we can evaluate sanitary lines. You don't pump sewage except in some cases, it's all gravity based flow - so it runs along the contours of the land, which is very often near waterways. When old infrastructure fails the sewage goes into the Earth and leeches into the ground eventually making it's way to the water table, or simply spills into said waterways.

There are currently quite a few federally mandated consent decree contracts associated with the clean water act wherein municipalities (like mine) are under a time limit to evaluate and repair (by cured-in-place-pipe, pipe bursting, point repairs) old pipes in environmentally sensitive areas. It's really expensive because a lot of the time these ESA's are deep in the woods where machines and workers can't get to, so municipalities must build temporary roads with all the erosion controls associated to reach the old infrastructure.

This is all really boring when I tell my Wife what I do, but I think it's interesting. When we're tearing out the woods to build these roads I feel like the villains in Fern Gully but we spend a lot to restore afterwards so it's an important job (or so I tell myself).

Third would be random shit like syringes razor blades.

Did you ever work near the Baltimore City jail downtown? All contraband gets flushed. I remember back when they had the entire system backed up and we had to do a point repair to alleviate it. We hit it with the breaker once and it flowed little plastic bags for 3 hours.

Well you're in a cell and the only way to throw something away that you're not supposed to have is down the toilet.