Episode 2 Watermen: A Dirty Business

Getting clean water can be a dirty business...

Nice!

Mm.

..for the people who run one of Britain's biggest water companies.

Covering over 5,000 square miles.

And three million homes.

-HE KNOCKS AT THE DOOR

-Are we OK to come in?

We follow them though one of the hottest summers on record.

"I've calmed down, and I've counted to ten."

Obviously, the water should be going to our customers

but, unfortunately, it's flowing down the street.

-Are you short-staffed?

-No.

They get it for nothing, so why charge everyone for it?

From solid fat...

Urgh. It's caked in fat and grease.

..clogging up our drains and sewers...

Yeah, look at that bad boy. That's nice, that one.

..to the end of the road for all our waste.

Just be glad you don't have to do it with your bare hands.

No smell is too strong...

-HE COUGHS

-We have showers here.

And the wife can still smell it.

..or job too dirty...

Fancy a biscuit?

Clean hands. Best thing of the day.

..for the watermen.

Looks like we're going to get wet.

-See you in morning, Wes.

-Yeah, see you in morning.

Just another day in the office.

THEY LAUGH

Each week in the north-west,

hundreds of litres of fat are being poured down drains.

It's like your chip fat, when you're changing your chip pan.

Get your pan of lard or whatever,

turn the hot tap on, run it down the tap.

-Before you know it, you've got a blockage.

-Exactly.

Hi, Cliff, it's Vicky from the customer team. Are you OK?

Over half the calls we take are to do with blocked drains.

One of the big causes of that

is a large build-up of fat, oil and grease in the sewers,

and that can cause a nice wall of fat for us to unblock.

-Have you had a blockage yet?

-A literal blockage?

-No. I mean, a drain blockage.

-Nope, no drain blockage.

Bye.

-It even gets in the way when you're on the phone.

-It does.

Let me see it. Let me see it.

How big is that? It's massive!

Do you know what I like to do?

-What?

-Pass us your pen.

Just like...

And then, when you need your pen, you go, "Where's my pen at?"

I have no idea!

PHONE BEEPS Thanks for calling.

You're through to James. How can I help?

"There seems to be a sewerage problem."

-So the manhole's full to the top with waste, is it?

-'It is, yes.'

Blockages are so common, they cost the company £20 million a year.

Another day, another dollar.

Fixing them is down to waste water teams like Jason and Ashley.

MUSIC PLAYS Dance?

Not shy usually, are you!

Ashley started at the company ten years ago.

SHE GIGGLES

I've come up from the beginning, from raising the jobs,

then to passing them out. So, I just thought how well I've done.

Done my time in the office for eight years. I need to get out now.

But I'd never go back in the office. Never.

It's well better being out.

# Born free

# As free as the wind blows

# As free as the grass grows

# Born free to follow your heart. #

It's hands-on, and obviously it's outside.

You get to see everybody else,

and meet different people, you're not around the same people.

Obviously, I'm with Jas but, he's just Jas, isn't he?

Just have a laugh with him.

It's good, I like making people happy.

But how do they make a cheesecake?

-With cheese.

-They don't!

-Cheese isn't in cheesecake, is it?

-Dunno.

Why's it called cheesecake then, if it's not got cheese?

It doesn't taste like cheese.

I don't know, do I! Google it.

The hot, dry summer has increased the number of blocked drains.

Today, Ashley and Jason have been called to a nursing home

in Liverpool.

The reported problem is they've got internal flooding

at the bottom of a lift shaft.

We'll go and investigate now and see if it's our responsibility.

Somebody noticed the smell.

When we opened it up, that's when we realised the drain was blocked.

Get a torch.

-It'll take a while.

-Yeah, it will take a while.

You can't have blocked drains anywhere,

never mind in a nursing home. It's just not hygienic, is it?

-There's a manhole there.

-In that corner?

-Yeah.

We'll have to come back down in a bit.

There's fat in the lift shaft. I've just had the torch down there.

Ashley checks the public drain outside the property

to see if that's where the problem lies.

The line's just full of fat. The actual chamber's full of fat.

He's just trying to jet through the actual blockage.

But it's on full power as well, so, hopefully, it should go through it.

Jas!

Gone?

Yeah.

Well, we'll just see if this is clear now.

It's flowing now.

Once cleared, Ashley can see that the fat build-up

is from the nursing home.

It can only come from that property

so they need to stop putting fat down the drains, obviously.

I can't see that, because we only use vegetable oil.

And that would not solidify in a sewer.

But it's only your property that it's coming from, see.

SHE LAUGHS

You've done it.

You can get companies that take the fat away for you for nothing.

So, it's as simple as that, like.

A lot of chip shops, they do it now.

They get someone to come and take that away,

which is preventing a lot of the blockages now.

If it happens again,

the manager will have to pay a private contractor to fix it.

-OK, thanks a lot.

-All right then.

See you later, take care, ta-ra.

It was a private issue.

So I have explained to the customer it was a private issue

because it was only his property that was going into our mains sewer

which was causing the blockage.

All done. Move on to the next one.

Eight of ten blockages are caused by fat deposits.

Clearing one drain is straightforward enough.

But unclogging the sewers of a city centre requires a crack squad.

-Better get a bit dirty, mate.

-THEY LAUGH

Friday night on one of Manchester's busiest roads.

An emergency team are trying to deal with a seriously clogged sewer.

You ready? Oh. There we go.

Urgh.

It's pretty bad, that.

-HE LAUGHS

-Oh! That stinks!

-HE COUGHS

-That smells a bit, mate.

Well, I can't smell anything at the moment.

Been doing the job a good few years, that's just normal tender for me.

When we go down there, obviously, you get a bit more of a whiff.

But I'm a drain ninja, mate!

HE LAUGHS

You know what I'm saying, don't you, Just!

Just is a proper wasteman, you know what I'm saying!

It's caked-in fat and grease, yeah. There's quite a lot.

A lot of restaurants in the area

are putting things they shouldn't be putting down.

Basically, when they're washing the pots, they're doing the cooking,

it's the overspill off the fat, off the meats and stuff.

And the fat and grease, basically, they pour into the sewer.

It goes down. And basically it hardens.

And it hardens that much, obviously the water can't get through then.

Waste water operative, Shaun Dullaghan,

has worked down sewers for 20 years.

Oh, this one's, er... A proper dirty job.

You go home and you can still smell it on yourself

a couple of days after on this one, it's quite bad.

But you get used to it, I suppose, and it's part and parcel of the job.

It pays the mortgage and...

You know, it keeps the wife happy.

That's the main thing!

Anything to keep the wife happy.

Right, boys.

-Gas check when you get down there, Shaun, yeah?

-Yeah, will do, mate.

Ladders ain't in bad condition, mate.

Good condition?

Yeah, not bad the ladders, bit of fat and grease at the bottom.

Hey, this is nice.

It's always high risk, as sewers release harmful gases.

Gas readings, mate.

LAO zero.

LAO zero.

0220.7.

Where you've got your like, H2S, with your hydrogen sulphide,

they can cause you to pass out, die through intake of it.

I'll move out the way, then, you're all right to come in.

Second man going down.

It's dangerous, really dangerous, you know.

Put your life at risk every time you go down a confined space.

Basically anything could happen at any time.

If I'm keeping contact with them as much as I can, I've got

a better chance of getting them out there if there is a problem.

Safely anyway. Speak to me guys, what you doing?

Having a party!

What do you think we're doing?

LAUGHS

Right, I'm just going to traverse up this pipe, mate.

-You're going to traverse up the pipe?

-Yeah, will do.

-Keep talking to us, mate.

-Yeah, will do, only a little bit.

Nice!

In the sewer Shaun discovers a pipe leading to a nearby restaurant

is completely coated in fat.

'Ey-up. Right, Darren, what we got here, mate?

Yeah, look at that bad boy, that's nice, that one.

That's warm water that.

-It's warm?

-Yeah.

Let's get this drain here, let's get it cleared, boys.

There it is, it's there.

Put it on 70 bar.

Smells a bit better, Darren.

Aargh!

It got me!

The fat caked around the sewer walls is so solid it can't be shifted.

There's water running down the steps down there. Been on that one?

No, not been on that.

Lurking just down the road in Bolton...

..designated leak detectives, Fred and Mike,

with their hi-tech listening equipment.

It's the best time to detect leaks.

During the day people are running water all the time,

so you think you've got a leak,

it's just people filling the sinks or washing machines or something.

Where at night, quiet.

No cars. Most people are in bed.

It's the best time.

See if it's running through here, Fred.

It's like if you open your kitchen tap and you just open it a bit,

you'll hear it hissing.

We'll have to go further afield. Might be at the top o' the hill after the sound all this way up.

I'll go to top, hey.

Right.

Finely tuned detection skills and a well-trained ear are essential.

This is the sounding stick, it's just a means of

getting onto the fittings.

And then we just listen onto the end of it here.

And if it's sounding, then this amplifies the sound.

It is basic, but it works.

-These are modern, we used to have the wooden ones, didn't we?

-Yeah.

LAUGHS

Think it's on this.

There's a good sound on that, that's the only sound we've had.

We've had all the taps up here, but this is the only sound we've got.

-If we leave that off now...

-Yeah.

..Five minutes, we can check and that water should stop running.

Right.

There it is there, look. Just trickling in now, innit?

Just trickle, that's all it's doing now, it was gushing in before.

-We've found what we came to find anyway.

-That's it.

That's one leak sorted.

Morning.

Morning.

SIREN WAILS

Wha-hey!

DRUNKENLY: You guys are heroes!

Go on, lads!

Go on, dig that hole!

Listen, I got two lads down there who I need to hear.

-And you're shouting. I can't hear 'em.

-Whey!

In a bit, yeah?

You're going to get a reaction when they're bladdered.

SHOUTING AND CHANTING

# Don't worry, be happy...

# Don't you worry, be happy now... #

HE HUMS TUNE

For the past hour,

Shaun's been trying to break down the build-up of blocked fat.

Looking better, innit?

Justin! Take it over.

Shaun Dullaghan out the manhole, 23.20.

It's not too bad that, mate.

Warm down there.

It's just set solid, really.

It's really, really tough fat.

It's been in there a good while.

The team need to come up with another solution.

A blockage of this size will cost around £10,000 to clear.

Didn't you have someone come and drop off flowers for you once?

No!

Someone come in and drop me off a box of chocolates and a card...

-Same thing.

-..and said thank you.

That was nice.

I had one once who told me to take his personal number home and text him if I ever got bored.

No!

-Yeah. That was a bit odd.

-Did you take it?

No, I didn't take it! Data protection!

THEY LAUGH

PHONE RINGS

Thank you for calling, I'm Katie.

It's about a leak that's been on our front for six weeks.

-We keep getting told it's going to be fixed.

-Right, OK.

It's still not fixed.

In Warrington,

taxi driver Glynn is calling up about a long-running leak.

Last I was told, two days ago on Thursday, someone was coming fixing it Friday.

It's now been six weeks, and nothing's been done to fix the leak.

No, it's gone on for too long now, hasn't it?

I mean, if it was anybody else, if you had a fault with your telly...

Yeah.

-..and somebody took this long...

-Yeah.

-..to fix it, you'd take 'em to bloody trading standards.

-Yeah.

-Report 'em.

-But you get a rebate. I wonder if we'll get a rebate?

Don't hold your breath.

SHE LAUGHS

-It'll take twice as long as it takes them to fix this.

-Yeah.

And this has took for ever.

I'm just fed up of phoning now all the time,

and I'm treading muck in and out the house.

Every time we go out and come in, we got to keep

doing me hall, you know, cos of all the muck.

I've got wooden floors all the way through, it's a good job,

cos if I had carpet, there's no way you'd be able to do it.

There's people getting out of their car and the grass verge is all wet through,

you're bound to carry it on your shoes.

It does trail all the way through,

all the dirt trails through,

all the mess on the carpet.

And this has only been down whilst

I've had the problem outside.

A team's been sent out.

It's for a bigger leak just up the road.

When they dig down, they discover a break in the pipe.

That actually sits there like that.

But because it's rotted and snapped, that's what the leak is.

So we're going to put a new clamp on there now,

and then reconnect the service.

Half an hour, we should be done.

Oh, dear.

So we're no further on.

No, we're still at, er...

-still where we started.

-Started.

It looks like I'm leaving me rug down a little bit longer, doesn't it?

While calls reporting leaks and blockages are plenty,

the thing that generates more calls than anything else

is customer bills.

We're doing the Liverpool area this evening.

Right.

Over seven million are sent out every year.

There's a separate call centre to deal with queries.

-Hiya, it's Oliver calling from Billing.

-You all right?

I'm all right, thanks, are you?

Yeah, waiting for the end of my shift.

Ah, I think we all are today.

You're through to Susan. How can I help you today?

Hiya, love, I'd like to cancel my utilities bill, please.

Have you left the property already?

Um, no, I'll be leaving on Saturday.

OK, and are you moving into another property that you'll be responsible for?

I'm not sure.

It's a bad break-up situation type thing that I don't really want to go into,

-so I'm sort of unaware of what's going to happen yet.

-OK.

If you get my drift.

Yeah, no, that's absolutely fine.

Ah, hello, good afternoon. My name is Siddhi, um...

I just need to tell about my meter reading.

With the average bill around £400 a year,

no-one looks forward to them.

But there's a customer in Cheadle who's desperate to receive one,

after buying what she thought was her dream home

in this new development two years ago.

So I moved in in January 2011,

and almost immediately,

the drains problem showed itself,

and the toilets wouldn't flush,

you couldn't have a lengthy shower, the bath wouldn't empty.

When Mary contacted the water company to complain,

she was in for a shock.

United Utilities did not know that this development existed.

They had no idea there were five houses down here.

And it's been a nightmare.

And I'm a genuine customer, but I've had enough.

Project engineer, Michelle, is here to investigate.

It's obviously the way they've dug it all out, in't it?

-That's our water main.

-That's our main?

-Yeah.

Also feeds those five properties, so it's the apartment block,

and those properties.

Is that 25?

Yeah.

All of these properties here are fed by what we call

an illegal connection.

What that means is that we've no record of them

applying or paying for connections

and they're certainly not metered.

We've just turned the water off at the back.

When we've gone round the back of the properties the lines and levels of the land have been changed,

so we can actually see our water main and we can see a service going in.

And normally we do expect one property to be fed by one

25ml supply.

It looks like all 12 are fed off one 25ml supply.

Not surprisingly, it's affecting Mary's water pressure.

Does it affect upstairs, as well?

One day, I was in the kitchen or in my bathroom,

and my son shouted at me

that something had gone wrong with the water when he was in the shower.

So, the pressure drops.

Have you got any pipe work in there?

Hang on.

MICHELLE LAUGHS

It's how I bought... And that I didn't know.

I thought that was a cupboard, and when I came in...

Right.

And that's probably one of the only jobs I've not had

someone come in and rectify.

Most of my other jobs I've had somebody in, but that, I've left.

How much did you pay for this?

£315,000.

Really?

To live in this standard.

-Oh, dear, and it's not finished.

-No.

-But that's...

-OK.

You would've expected it all to be boxed in, wouldn't you?

You really feel for the customers,

because they've obviously invested a lot of money,

and it's a beautiful house. So you've done all the kitchen, as well?

Oh. Very nice, no, it's lovely.

And then we're going to go in there, and anybody who knows who has

internal plumbing work done, there's going to be an element of mess.

With no-one paying for any of the water supply to these properties,

it's in the company's interest to get the problem sorted

as soon as possible.

What we'll do is

we're going to requisition this main that's been laid previously,

and then give you all new supplies off of that main.

So it's going to take a bit o' while, you know,

it'll take us probably a couple of months to sort it all out

with all the legal paperwork that has to go through,

but, you know, it looks like really we'll have a solution for you.

I'm just happy that somebody's finally taking control.

Just bear with us, you know, nothing will happen overnight now,

but we'll, you know, we'll definitely get something done.

-Thank you very much, indeed.

-You're welcome.

Thank you, and I appreciate everything you've done. Thank you.

You're welcome. Bye-bye.

A team have arrived to fix Glynn's leak.

Why couldn't this job have been done four weeks ago?

I can only apologise for that, you know,

it's something that's, erm, fallen down in system.

Every time I phone up the water leak line,

one of the main questions they ask you,

have you lost water pressure, have you lost water supply?

-If you answer no to them, that's it, you're back of the queue.

-Yeah.

Things have to get like this before you get anything done.

-If you got a hole in your roof, you don't wait till it's raining before you cover it over, do you?

-No.

I spoke to the girl on the phone on Monday and she promised me

faithfully there was a team coming out on the Tuesday.

Tuesday morning, a team turns up, you put these barriers out,

ready - next thing, they're putting them away

an' down the bottom of the street. That leak only sprung up on Tuesday.

-This has been here like five weeks...

-Yeah...

McDonald's, their leak was never as bad as this.

That was done, dusted, tarmacked over,

road markings redone within ten days.

-Yeah.

-Why is McDonald's so special?

I can only apologise that the system's broke down on this one.

-So what's going to happen, then?

-Right, what we're going to do,

-they guys going to dig some extra holes here.

-Yeah.

-Right, they're going to, what we call bag it off.

-Right.

-So we going to insert two balloons on either side.

-Yeah.

So there's only going to be you

and possibly your neighbour whose water supply's going to be affected.

Rather than us affecting 600 properties or something like that,

we try and minimise that disruption to customers.

Well, it is a disruption.

My car, taxi, is in for test tomorrow, so I need to valet my car,

wash me car, get it ready, presentable for test.

I can't get it on me drive to wash it, to clean it,

to make it presentable for test.

I've had to drop it off and pay somebody to valet it.

A job that I could do meself if I could get on me drive,

which I can't.

If this was done four weeks ago, I wouldn't have this problem.

So, because the water board have put this job off four or five weeks

it's cost me money.

Whoever's in charge of logistics at United Utilities

ain't up to much.

They're not very good at coordinating what that's doing,

an' why can't they get all people at one job together to do the job?

Because with the number of jobs that we have, we have to...

Are you short staffed?

No. no. There's seven of us on this area.

-So United Utilities overall...

-But we look after all Wigan

-..are not short staffed?

-No.

-Well, I shouldn't be waiting five weeks then really, should I?

-No.

It's like I say, I can only apologise about that,

and hopefully we can get it sorted out now.

Hey it's gushing. Gushing. It's going to spring up in a minute.

Yellowstone Park's got nothing on this.

Going to get on with this now, get up, should get it done today.

I hope so.

It should take them a couple of hours, like I say, they've got to

drill two excavations here, so it'll take them a bit of time to do that.

Erm, then drill the main and insert the line stops,

and then carry on with the actual repair.

So we're probably looking most of the afternoon now.

Work gets under way, but within half an hour, it stops.

The reason we've stopped digging in there is, there's that much

pressure in that main,

if we were to dig any more of the top of that, the saddle would

come off altogether, and we'd have a 30-foot fountain in the air.

We can't work under them conditions.

If it just blew off, it would seriously hurt somebody.

Health and safety.

Where've they gone?

The only organisation I know can dig half a hole.

They start digging a hole there as if they're going to solve the problem,

and no, they get two foot down, they drive off in the van.

And here I am getting wet!

The leak's still pumping away, we've got half an 'ole over there.

We got, nobody can get anywhere near with their cars.

Nobody's knocked and said, we're coming back later,

we're coming back tomorrow, we're never coming back.

I've no idea, they've not told me. They've just sodded off.

An' here I am with one an' half holes, and one hole's full of water.

We've also lost the internet. No internet. No Netflix.

Can't see last night's episode of Breaking Bad.

Can't watch football tonight. It's not a very good day really.

-Are you doing the next Bake Off?

-Yeah!

-Can you not give us, tell us what you're doing?

-Vegan cupcakes.

-Vegan cupcakes?

-Yeah.

Nobody will eat them! There's only you that's vegan.

You won't know they're vegan, they're that good. I guarantee I will win that.

-What if you don't?

-Well, it's a fix.

LAUGHS

Thank you for calling, you're through to Elizabeth,

can I take your name, please?

That's great and can I take a telephone number, please, Margaret.

Right, can you describe the smell and taste of it?

'ell, it's just like, er, bleach.'

-Like bleach.

-Chloride.

Taste of tap water is one of the most common gripes.

She had a, sort of, chloriney taste to the water.

Erm, she said her neighbour was having it as well,

so thought we best have an engineer out to look at it.

Sometimes, they up the levels of the chlorine in certain areas,

at different times of the year, so it may be

that there's just been a little too much added.

Keeping a check on this are 45 water quality officers.

Stuart is one.

-Hello.

-Hi mate, how you doing?

-Yeah, I'm fine, you OK?

-I'm from United Utilities.

That's me van over there, I'm not a bogus caller.

I trawl round, sort of, Manchester and Cheshire

just spot-checking people's drinking water.

Hello, how you doing, you all right? I appreciate that.

-It's probably a first for you this, as well, isn't it?

-Yes.

He travels the region, testing the water for pH and chlorine levels.

This is just the chlorine test and it just

lets us know that the chlorine's in there at the right levels.

I don't like the taste of tap water because of the chlorine in it.

No other reason. If I'm desperate, I'll drink it,

but we usually buy bottled water.

Tastes lovely. Cheers for your time. I appreciate that.

-All right now.

-Cheers, bye-bye.

It's got to be in there, the chlorine,

to make sure no bacteria grow in there.

cos, I think, people would have the runs

and stomach problems and malaria and all sorts

if we didn't have chlorine in water.

There we go, on to the next one.

Arguably, it's a better quality product that comes out the tap,

because the regulations behind tap water,

are much more stringent and strict than what they are bottled water.

So, it's arguably a better product.

Let's go.

-So you've never had this done before then?

-No.

-Always a first time, then.

-Well, yeah.

Cos people just have this perception that the water comes from the sky,

and then, magically, it turns out at the end of the tap.

It is interesting, cos I didn't realise just how many houses

per day were actually tested.

It's good to see though, what goes on?

-Yeah!

-And what we're doing.

-I hadn't realised it was this extensive.

-Yeah.

And you clean up after yourself, I like that.

-I do, yeah. I'm not even going to charge you for this.

-LAUGHS

-Do you want to do the rest of the house?

-Oh, no, I dunno about that!

Hello, are we OK to come in? Ah, smashing, thank you.

Stuart visits over 7,000 homeowners a year.

I enjoy coming into people's houses, it's like Through The Keyhole,

and you can have a good look round

and you meet nice people and I like to say

I enjoy people's company, so I enjoy having a chat and a laugh.

Er, and it's nice to meet people.

I've done jobs, you know, for double the salary,

but I wouldn't swap this one for them.

You know, cos a lot of that was weekends away and night work.

Ideal job, really.

After seven weeks of waiting,

another team has arrived to fix the leak outside Glynn's home.

Sounds wet down there, I know that.

First, they sort the problem with the pressure.

Erm, that's going to send water around to the third hole.

This sends a bag in to here, to stop water.

So, I've got a valve here, to see if me water's off.

So, that's all I'm left with.

If you look on that one, there's loads there.

I can stop that wi' me hands so...

This bit between here and the next one is isolated,

but it's live up to this point.

A temporary water pipe will bypass the broken main,

maintaining water supply to the rest of the road.

With the broken pipe now isolated, Kevin can replace it safely.

We got it, thank God.

Just a matter of getting down there again now, to cut out

the middle section, but, we've got a lot of stuff in our way.

A lot of gases and electrics an' all sorts.

So, this is a bit of a nightmare.

Electric main, got to be careful.

Might think I've gone crazy,

but could have sworn I saw a little fish in it yesterday.

Little black fish.

Yeah, pumping out I saw a little creature, it were there..

-Where's that come from, what was it then?

-I don't know.

Little black one, about that big?

Yeah, a little..

Must have been an amphibian, then.

It weren't a newt, anyway, don't be saying that.

Finally, it took them seven weeks to attend to the leak

and less than two days to fix it.

It's been all right since they fixed the leak.

Yeah, yeah, it's sorted now.

It's nice to have your car on your drive, because, well, it's just nice.

For convenience more than anything.

-Just?

-Yeah?

Just give us a gas reading, mate. No, you're in there please.

20.9. Rather smelly down 'ere.

It's been three weeks since the team in Manchester first began

chipping away at the problem of fat deposits in its city sewers.

Justin, just put the camera in the line facing upstream, yeah?

Tonight, they're back with a remote camera,

which shows just how bad it is.

There's barely any part of the sewer

that isn't cemented in fat and grease.

Left like this, it's in danger of backing up,

and flooding nearby properties with sewage.

The only thing that'll cut through this is a high-pressure jet designed

to blast the cemented fat away.

Basically the hose screws into there, forces water in,

it comes out of these holes here,

and we'll suck it up and remove any debris from any pipe.

As it cuts through the fat and grease, it'll just cut chunks

and chunks and chunks off,

until, basically, it's removed completely from the pipe.

Once we start de-silting all the silt,

we'll put the suction in, and start sucking everything up.

As we're pulling the jet back,

removing everything from the pipe, we'll remove it into the debris tank

on the vehicle and then obviously take it to landfill.

See the curve on it,

that's been stuck to the diameter of the pipe.

Now, basically, you see it's been in there a while.

Got a lot of worms in there what's actually eating it

and breaking it down.

You know, so it's like, well, it's decomposing basically.

It's what they'll do to a body. Really.

Yeah, look, there's thousands and thousands of worms in it.

They begin to clear the sewer, but this is only one tiny section

of a whole patchwork congested with fat.

We'll finish this one, we'll go to another area

and that'll be the same.

If they stop flushing things down, basically, well, it'll

stop us coming back here and doing this repeat every six months.

Only last year, we spent nearly a million pounds,

I think it was, just relaying 30m of sewer behind me.

Based on the fact that people put fats down the sewers.

As much as 50% of the money from our water bills

goes on operations like this.

Once they pay their bill, they think they're paying just for water.

Now they don't see the other side to it, the cleaning side

and the camera-ing side,

the big projects of relaying the sewers, rebuilding them, you know.

And obviously, they're doing the water mains, as well.

You know, they don't see the background side of it.

They just make a phone call and want to complain.

Manchester's Davyhulme.

Built 120 years ago,

it's one of the biggest waste water treatment works in Europe.

We've got sewage from one and a quarter million people.

Where do we put it? What do we do with it?

I mean, a lot of people think they flush the toilet,

they forget it, it disappears, and we're the big hole under

everybody's houses where it disappears to.

We've got to treat it.

714 million litres of sewage are treated here

every single day.

Before we had sewage treatment we had cholera, typhoid,

diphtheria, the Black Death - we had everything, the Great Plague.

We had it all.

I think it was the greatest leap forward we've done in public health,

is sewage treatment.

Everything and anything the people of Manchester

flush down their drains and toilets ends up here.

You wouldn't believe the stuff that comes down here.

I was on here one night at Christmas and a guy had come in,

he'd actually climbed over the front gate, New Year's Eve,

he'd had too much to drink and vomited his false teeth down the toilet.

And somebody told him, "They'll finish up at Davyhulme."

Well, this guy turns up here to look for his false teeth.

If they're going to be here, they're going to be in the skip, with everything else.

The other thing that ends up here is all that fat

we throw down our drains.

When it gets here, we can get lumps of fat the size of that

excavator bucket.

It then floats round, like an iceberg.

We have to take a piece of kit out of service to clean the tanks out.

These huge tanks, the size of Olympic swimming pools,

are the first-line processors of the raw sewage, but the high fat

content means they need to be regularly drained and cleaned out.

Process controller, Scott Thompson, is overseeing.

We know that we're going to be looking at, almost balls of fat,

but we need to cut them up and then get them out of the tank basically.

Once drained, cleaning out the congealed fat is down to

maintenance team-mates, Ant and Dec.

We're always together, we work together, have done six years now.

By far, we're the best operators, aren't we, Dec?

This is the true Ant and Dec.

-The better version.

-Yeah, the better version.

A lot deeper than I thought it would be.

I know. Just don't slip, you'll be on You've Been Framed.

Dec will go down into the tank with a colleague, while Ant stays up top.

-All right?

-He knew exactly what he was missing out on, him, didn't he?

It's going to take a while get through this.

Thick sludge, smelly.

And it's very, very thick, as well,

so it's got a lot of crust on it, as well.

Luckily, there's only two harnesses an', er,

so I fell lucky today, definitely.

Doesn't matter how many times you have a shower, it's in

the pores of your skin, when you're sweating, it's coming back out.

Then, when you have the sludge spillage, you have the showers here,

and then you still go home and the wife can still smell it.

Really strong.

Fancy a biscuit?

HE LAUGHS

For me, I'll do anything.

I enjoy me job, so whatever job I get given - thrown at -

I don't mind, me.

It's unusual to meet people like these,

who are happy doing this job every day.

Which makes my life easier,

because I've got to come to these two lads and give them

what are - as far as I'm concerned - the worst jobs in the company.

And, every time I ask them to do a job, in credit to 'em, they do it,

but they do get, literally, the shit on the end of the stick.

Can't imagine many people are doing this right now!

The last job I had, I worked in a tannery.

It's basically near enough as a slaughterhouse.

So when I came here, it was fresh air to me, this.

Going to take a while to get through this.

Just be glad you don't have to do it with your bare hands.

A tank this size could take up to a week to clean.

Think I need a shower. I love it.

He'll disagree, but it's not that bad.

Here you are.

Believe it or not, there is worse jobs on here, though.

Most people who are in this job don't leave, you know, they actually do,

and it's not just because it's got security,

and it's not just because we enjoy what we do, it's because the lads

that you meet in here are a decent set of lads, as well.

I don't think you can be an idiot and do the job we do,

and not have a sense of humour, and not

get on wi' lads, you know, doing what we're doing, day in day out.

Another day's work in there yet.

The bloke who lent us this is going to go mad.

Said don't get 'em dirty. Sorry Pip.

LAUGHS

In Liverpool,

the waste water treatment works are located on the docks.

In order to keep the Mersey clean,

the plant is currently being upgraded.

The project manager is Lorne Large.

This is the largest waste water project that United Utilities

have done, and it is, without doubt, a flagship project.

Currently, treated sewage is pumped too close to the shoreline.

So, a new pipe,

almost 1,000-feet long, will be attached to the works

and sunk to the bed of the Mersey, to take the sewage further out.

The River Mersey is fundamental to Liverpool.

It's the lifeblood, really, of the city.

What this will do is actually take the discharge

around about 300m off the coastline,

and it'll mix it with the river water more evenly.

The pipe is being slowly towed from Norway, by sea.

It arrives on the Mersey today.

Makes you nervous, don't it? I'll be very relieved when it arrives.

We originally ordered this pipe back in August last year,

so, this is a culmination of probably around eight months' wait,

the actual pipe arriving.

Yeah, I'll be relieved when it actually does appear.

Hello, Rob.

What's the expected time when you'll leave there, do you think?

He's 15 minutes away, so he's on the vessel

that's towing the pipe, so they're bringing it up very slowly,

so we think because then the pipe won't move around.

Just wish he'd hurry up.

We paid half a million pound for this thing last year

and today we get to touch it, we actually get to see it for real.

I think there's a wide sense of relief to actually see

it here and to have it safe, you know, into the dock.

Over the next three months, concrete rings will be attached to the pipe.

These collars here, the big concrete rings,

what we're going to do with those is starting at one end of the pipe, is

lift the pipe up out the water, and start to slide them along the pipe.

They'll eventually form continuous protection onto the polyethylene.

Once the rings are attached, Lorne

and his team will attempt to lower the pipe onto the bed of the Mersey.

Everything's arrived, everything's gone really well and it's

good to see the pipe now tucked away in the dock.

And that's it, finished for today.

Did you go to doctor about the rash, Ade?

Yeah, been mate, yeah.

They just give me some cream for it,

and they've told me to pass some on to your mum, as well.

LAUGHS

Waste water team, Adrian and Wes,

are on their way to investigate a complaint about rats

by the drains on a North Manchester housing estate.

No, they don't bother me at all, rats.

In this job, you have to

toughen yourself up to a lot of things.

You know, rats is nothing compared to what we come across sometimes.

So yeah, if they're there today it's not going to bother meself.

Wes, now Wes on the other hand, he's a bit of a girl when it comes to rats.

Nah, don't believe him, don't believe anything he says!

Pest controller, Patrick,

has already tried to get rid of the infestation.

There's a hole, a burrow there, right at the bottom,

-near where the footballs are, the bottom there.

-Yeah.

It's going straight down there, and then coming up there.

Can you see all the droppings on the top?

-Yeah.

-So it's very active.

What we'll probably do is, is find

the main sewer that it actually runs to...

See if there's any access on it, and try and camera back up

to see, you know, just to see if there's any blockages.

-But, in terms of the defect that you've shown me...

-Yeah?

-That is down to the Housing Association to sort.

-Not a problem.

-All right.

-I'll pass that back straight to them.

-I'll e-mail it all to them as well, anyway.

-Brilliant.

-Is there, is there any more...

-That ways.

It always tend to be a case of, it's nothing to do with the sewer,

it's other factors like bin bags being left open,

erm, general, you know, untidiness round the back of properties.

You know, anywhere where a rat can get a healthy meal somewhere,

tends to be the case, but we're always happy to investigate it.

All the rat droppings are here, look.

They're all, yeah, there's one there now, green.

Sort of indicates the poison's gone through the system of the rat.

A break in the sewer could be drawing the rats to the surface.

We'll lift it up, see what it's like and then get the camera out.

So Adrian and Wes use a camera to have a closer look.

Take it to about 15, Wes.

Give us a shout, Ade.

-Right.

-Yep.

There is no blockages in the sewer, but what I thought we can see,

all this white around the sewer is traces of fat.

The traces of fat is not unusual to see down the sewer,

but it's heavy so it'll contribute to being rats there.

They'll thrive off that, it'll be like McDonalds for a rat, will that.

It's not uncommon to see fat in a sewer,

but when it's to that sort of level,

there's a hell of a lot of fat going in there.

So maybe that'll be one of the recommendations that I'll put forward

to the council, cos it's their responsibility ultimately.

If they can maybe just

notify all the tenants not to put as much fat down the sink.

-OK.

-Yep, OK, cheers. Thank you.

-Thanks again.

-No problem.

-See you later.

If there's any rat droppings, I need you to pick them all up

and bag them up.

Take it back to your house and we'll make tools out of it.

-A few ratchets.

-Rat-shits. Rat-shits screwdrivers, rat-shits spanners.

LAUGHS

Thanks for calling, you're through to Paul,

how is it I can I help you today?

'Erm, well I want to report two leaks, please.'

-Two?

-'Yep.'

Back at HQ, there's another burst pipe in need of urgent attention.

Where is the leak located or where is it? Do we know?

Right. Right, OK, no problem.

I will get an appointment raised and we can take it from there.

There's a big water leak, in Stockport.

It's bubbling up out of a grid.

Ah, yeah, it's been raised as an urgent response.

Parked me car and saw it gushing down the road, and then I looked up

the road, 100 yards away and I could see it bubbling out the crack.

A burst mains pipe on the A6, one of Stockport's major roads,

is affecting the locals' water supply.

It's very poor pressure, it's just small trickle.

Obviously, the water should be going to our customers,

but unfortunately it's flowing down the street.

Dispatched to sort out the problem, two top water engineers -

Mark and Dave.

-I love water so much.

-Yeah.

And so does Mark.

LAUGHS

Exciting.

They've had over 30 years on the job between them.

Tend to get very dizzy doing this.

I mean to be fair, we do deal with this fairly regularly,

so it's, in terms of a leak...

Quite a normal...

..it's a fairly normal occurrence.

The only thing you can't factor in is the location.

The location's not the only problem they face.

Mark and Dave need to try

and fix the leak without disrupting the supply.

They're going to have a scoop around, to see what

they can see on the surface.

See, if they can give us a bit more of an idea what's actually leaking.

Depending where the leak is,

depends how we're actually going to deal with it.

And by shutting this valve, we can prove which side

of the valve the leak is on, and what we really want is

not only be able to shut this valve, but not turn the leak off directly

and we can still deal with the leak on this side of the valve.

It's just really a case of trying to sort out what's going on.

They soon realise they have to turn off the water supply.

I'm going to give the warning out on the Tannoy to customers

that, in about ten minutes, the water supply will be affected,

so we're going to warn them all, so they can draw some water off.

-ON TANNOY:

-United Utilities. Please draw water.

Your water supply will be affected, for essential repairs.

United Utilities.

Please draw water.

Your water supply will be affected, for essential repairs.

When we isolate it,

we're going to have to shut off a small section of our network.

It's probably going to entail maybe in the region of about 30

or so properties, including the pub.

Not a massive amount we can do about that.

It's bit of a worst-case scenario really.

I find it rather annoying the fact that there is not going to be

any water of any pressure on this row,

when the water board could have been working on it last night.

United Utilities. Please draw water.

Your water supply will be affected, for essential repairs.

We've Tannoyed, we've warned them, let the ORC know

obviously that the water's going off. ENGINE ROARS

And he's got a lovely car.

I got it mate, yeah.

It's been nearly two weeks

since Shaun cleared fat from the Manchester sewer.

He now needs to get rid of it.

Oof!

What we took out of Oxford Road is fat and greases,

and there'll be quite a bit of silt,

so hopefully, it'll just come out in one go,

and I don't have to shovel it.

The blasted fat has been mixed with the silt,

and now resembles black soil.

Good ten tonne there, mate.

It's like taking things to landfill,

you know, which we try to reduce down on.

But obviously with people tipping things into the sewers and drains,

you know, it's going to keep on adding up and adding up.

This silt will eventually be used as fertiliser on farms.

Basically, I've changed me top.

Cos you get lots of splashes.

As you can see. Not very nice.

Get a quick wash with the sink we have on the unit,

and then back to work, basically.

Clean hands - best thing in the day.

In Stockport, senior water engineers Dave and Mark

are still struggling to fix a burst mains pipe.

Well, we've been out here for a good chunk of the afternoon now.

We knocked the water off at ten to five,

and we're just now monitoring the clock basically,

so we don't want the water to be off

for more than three hours, if we can manage it.

They were forced to cut off the main water supply,

but they've managed to connect up an emergency tanker, or ASV.

Well, we actually put water back into the main, to keep people on supply

to their house so they won't even know there's a disruption.

Tanker holds 22,000 litres, and it's just ran out now.

We're right up onto the deadline now and we've got two or three hours

and we want the water back on as quick as possible,

but we have to do it in a slow, controlled manner.

We can't just whack the valve fully open and just restore the supply.

Just as the emergency supply runs out,

the team manage to fix the leak.

About 10, 15 minutes over, maximum.

I think the majority were fed throughout that, off the ASV,

cos I think the ASV was feeding a lot more than initially thought,

which was great.

Erm, but, yeah, we had the valve shut for just over three hours

which was not bad when you consider

the complex repair that we've done.

Short of flogging the gang or whatever,

you can't do it any quicker.

Happy days.

In Liverpool, the pipe has been reinforced with concrete,

and is about to be sunk.

It's all to do with making everywhere more environment-friendly.

They'll put cleaner water, once it's processed,

into the tidal stream and disperse it quicker.

It makes the Mersey, makes the surrounding areas,

beaches, etc, cleaner basically.

Joe is overseeing a task force from the UK and the Netherlands.

At the moment, the pipe is sealed and full of air.

We're going to fill the pipe full of water, and the pipe will start

to get heavy from this end, and then it'll actually start to lower

into the water, this end first, and effectively do almost like

a wave action, heading out into the end of the pipe out there.

A trench has already been dug on the riverbed.

The pipe will be tugged out to meet a floating rig above it.

Once in position, it'll be sunk,

and attached to the treatment works on the shoreline.

Can I have your attention, Joe?

Yeah, Dave, we're ready this end, so do what you've got to do that end

-and let me know when you're starting to pump.

-OK.

We begin pumping water inside now, and er...

once we get a bit of a controlled flow going...

sink going that end, we'll open this valve fully.

The team need to try and sink the pipe before the tide changes.

The River Mersey's tidal, so it comes in and it goes out,

and it can do up to seven knots, um,

and so what happens is we'll be then trying to sink a pipe

against a flow of water, and as it sinks the pipe, it'll get

dragged around, so we've got about another 40 minutes of good tide.

Er, if we miss it, it'll be a battle.

Yeah, it's sinking this end, it's gone down, that's what I'm saying,

it's gone down this end so it needs to be...

Otherwise it'll sink in the middle,

so you need to keep venting that end.

It's sinking in the middle again, now, you see.

Divers are sent down with an air pipe.

That end of the pipe is full of water.

There's water in this end of the pipe, although it's not full,

so the end's gone down like this - it's creating an airlock.

We're going to pump air into this to force the water out here

and, hopefully, this will rise slightly.

When it does, we can start introducing water again that end,

and then what we planned before should happen.

Once the pipe is raised, the team try again.

The priority is to sink it now and survey it,

and see how she lies on the bottom.

A hydrographic surveyor is using sonar

to check the pipe is in the right place.

Pipe is on the bottom.

Er, think you just pump for five more minutes, Dave, to be sure.

The end of the pipe is in the middle of the trench.

It's half a metre from the centre, so it's perfect.

So we've done a very good job today.

It's always a good day's work out here in the sun, isn't it?

You know, but, yeah, I'm pleased,

there doesn't seem to be anything broken,

there might be a few minor adjustments, that's about it.

Back in the 1980s, the River Mersey was the dirtiest river in Europe,

and now, there's life out there.

Marine life, there are seals,

there are birds, you know, there are guys out there fishing on a weekend.

It's absolutely rejuvenated is this river.

And, to actually help improve it, is a great thing.

I think it's just so special.

-What is all this?

-Poo.

Any sort of contamination is really, really bad.

It's a massive inconvenience actually.

Socks, underpants, they run out of toilet paper

and they use owt that's at hand.

We're like Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator. We will find them.

Oh, 'ey up.

-DOG BARKS

-Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!

We are like the fourth emergency service.