Septic

On a sweltering 90 degree afternoon, it was time to clean out the septic system at Rock Cut State Park where I am a seasonal worker. The septic field had gotten clogged up with “solids”. These solids are of the smelly and gooey kind, if you know what I mean.  Now let me give a little background on the intricacies of a septic system. This septic system deals with the liquids and solids from the two shower buildings in the campground. There are two holding tanks that hold both the solids and the liquids. Then, there is the septic field. This is a square plot of land full of pea gravel. Under the pea gravel is a network of PVC pipes. Our system has twenty 1 inch pipes about fifty feet long.  Each pipe has 25 small holes. Most of the holes face down into the ground and each hole is covered with a cap. The liquids are shot through the septic field pipes and the liquids drip out through the little holes and go though the pea gravel and into the sand beneath where there lives a colony of happy bacteria who eat all the toxins and nutrients out of the pee. The liquid is now clean and can eventually make its way back into the well.

This septic system was installed at Rock Cut about 10 years ago and had never really been cleaned. There was some other problem with the septic system holding tank and solids had been getting pushed into the pipes as well. This was a two day project on some of the hottest days of the summer. Each of the 20 pipes were pulled up from the gravel one at a time. It was my job to pull to cap off the pipe. These caps were full of gravel and brown, slimy, shitty, sludge. I would lift the pipe up into the air and try to find the little hole. Some of the holes were invisible because of all of the slime and gunk growing all over the pipe. I would rub my gloved finger, like a doctor looking for a tumor  use a hanger to poke each hole to unclog it.  Then, the liquid would  be turned on and flush the holes. Once the liquid was pouring out of each hole, it was good to go. There were a few times when I got this water in my face. This actually was not as disgusting as I thought it would be. If you think about it, the water in a lake is pretty much made of the same thing. When each hole was flowing freely, the pipes could be covered back up with pea gravel.  This whole job took our crew of 10 people about 6 hours to do in the sweat sucking sun. My coworkers and I were quite dehydrated at this point. We twisted off the caps of our waters with our slightly contaminated hands. Oh well, like I say, “probiotics.”