Underwater pipeline work is both physically and psychologically challenging and demanding. The SCUBA-equipped working diver, free from the constraints of lifeline, communication and air-hose umbilical attachments associated with surface-supplied hard hat diving, has the ability to make deep penetrations into underwater pipeline systems. However, the SCUBA diver is 100% self-contained, as he carries with him on his back-pack, his limited-time-duration compressed air breathing supply. He must focus and maintain constant attention to the time his air supply will last him underwater. For when his air supply is completely exhausted, then he will be completely out of air and can no longer remain underwater. The close confines experienced when working inside of any pipeline structure assembly are also an ever-present condition confronting the working diver.
Written by Tory van Dyke, Copyright © 2020.
In the Winter of 1994, I was working with Paul and Craig Mark, MARK MARINE SERVICE, Camas, Washington, on a pipeline construction and installation contract job they successfully bid near Hermiston, Oregon, in the McNary Dam Lake Reservoir. It was a new replacement river water irrigation pumping station system designed to draw river water through an installed pipeline forty feet deep and deliver the water to four 1000 horse power electric water pumps located on the deck of the river water pumping station at the Oregon shoreline. Each pump had the capacity to pump over 6000 gallons of water per minute. The river water was pumped through an extensive, subterranean, pipeline system, combined with inland booster pumping stations over seven miles inland to provide irrigation water for farming more than forty 100-acre crop circles used to grow potatoes and onions and other farm production commodities.
The pumping station had been established in the early 1970’s as part of the crop circle farming phenomenon used to irrigate agricultural products grown by regional farmers. A man named Tex Ross, from Hermiston, Oregon, had invented the crop circle rotating sprinklers irrigation system in his welding and fabrication facility in town, and all the farmers were busy installing them in crop circle land growing operations. The numerous crop circles varied in size from eighty to one hundred and twenty acres.
The pumping station had been placed on a highway-side sandy beach area just east of the Sand Island Cove Beach and swimming recreation area, about ten miles upriver from the McNary Dam. The U.S. ARMY CORPS of ENGINEERS had established numerous irrigation water pumping station locations along the shorelines of the numerous, large, reservoir lakes behind the Columbia and Snake River hydroelectric dam facilities.
This pumping station had experienced years of trouble with continuous sand encroachment into the pumping station system. The sand had to be continuously removed and repositioned downstream away from the pump impellers using small float platforms, water trash pumps and hoses that lifted out and removed the sand accumulations. It was a never-ending underwater dredging process that required lots of time, manual labor and money.
A man named Gary Storment had built up a lucrative commercial diving business working for several farmers removing sand from their pumping stations over a period of more than twenty years. He worked for the fire department and eventually quit his job to work for the farmers fulltime diving in the sand dredging removal operation to enhance crop irrigation and help keep the river water pumping stations temporarily free of sand.
The pumping station to which this story relates was owned by Walt McDevitt and called the Royal Columbia Farms. The pipeline system is still active and in full operation to this day, more than twenty-six years later, pumping irrigation water to the farm completely free of sand! Walt McDevitt has passed on and Gary Storment has moved away, but the system they designed, built and installed has been a complete success!
Walt had been paying Gary lots of money over the years to remove the constantly encroaching river sand from the pumping station. Between the two of them, they came up with the idea to install a deep- water pipeline system, situated well away from the sandy beach head, in order to draw irrigation water free of sand.
The project involved an aggressive design and fabrication of the entire pipeline system associated components and installing them at a newly reconstructed pumping station. Gary Storment would use his large, industrial shop complex to fabricate and assemble the pipeline system in three large, separate components. These components would then be loaded onto enormous flatbed, semi-truck trailers and transported over the highway more than fourteen miles to the pumping station.
The old pumping station would be completely removed and replaced with a new concrete deck platform, pump mounts and all associated components necessary to tie into the new pipeline assembly structure. The huge pipeline assembly would be installed using a large, floating, derrick barge crane, material barges and tugboats. Gary put that portion of the job out for bid. Paul and Craig Mark used their sharp pencil accounting practice calculations to successfully capture the marine construction contract as the lowest bidder for the job.
Gary and his team of welders, construction workers and divers would handle the underwater pipeline assembly chores and all topside construction work on the new pumping station platform deck.
Construction work on the Columbia River system is controlled by the U.S. ARMY CORPS of ENGINEERS and various State regulatory agencies. New construction projects are always scheduled for the middle of the Winter, when the weather and water conditions are the coldest of the year. The reason for this is because the Summer months are specifically designated for outdoor public recreation on the expansive lake reservoirs located behind each one of the hydroelectric dams on the river. Also, the fish populations and migrating salmon runs are carefully monitored and protected on the river system. No river water construction projects are ever allowed to interfere with the fish protection environmental concerns.
Paul and Craig scheduled their work on the river every year well in advance, and carefully timed out each job for each job site location duration and target date completion. From their home port yard in Camas, Washington, they would set out on the upriver construction projects course with tugboats, barges and all the other necessary equipment to perform the various construction project contracts that they had received.
Mark Marine Service arrived in Hermiston in early January, 1994, and began to settle in for the construction project at the job site, eleven miles upstream of the McNary Dam. It was cold and snowing on the day of arrival. The local newspaper featured a front-page photo and short article about the DB Columbia steam crane and barge used for the construction job. The DB Columbia was the last steam-powered derrick barge in the Pacific Northwest.
The Derrick Barge (DB) Columbia was a boiler water, bunker oil fired, steam power equipped marine crane. It had a long boom and was set up to pick loads up to 40 tons in weight. Craig Mark ran the crane. I fired the boiler with heavy crude, black bunker oil. The crane, anchor winches and boiler fuel pump system all worked on steam generated by the oil-fired boiler. The crane required a constant steam working pressure of 90 to 120 pounds per square inch of pressure for normal operation. The boiler had a relief pressure blow-off valve set for 140psi. When pressure reached 140psi in the boiler, the popoff valve would open and vent release the excessive steam pressure.
It was also equipped with a diesel-powered electric generator to power the lighting system and all electrical components on the barge. The boiler-room was located on the bow section of the barge, and the crane was located on the stern-section of the barge. Two steam-powered, multi-drum, deck-mounted, anchor winches were positioned on each side of the barge amidships. The barge was equipped with a long, 24-inch diameter, center anchor, spud pipe located directly aft of the boiler-room. With the two stern anchors and the center pipe spud lowered into position on the bottom, the derrick barge had a three-point mooring to hold it in position on the river for craning work and dredging operations.
The primary mission of the DB Columbia on this job was to dredge out all the sand from the area around the pumping station to a depth of thirty-five feet. Craig Mark used a two and one-half cubic yard, clam style digging bucket to accomplish this task. The huge, floating crane would then be used to position the three pipeline components and assist in the assembly of same underwater, working with the divers.
Craig started digging early every morning on the job with the clam bucket. This went on for three weeks. He started casting the clam bucket spoils of sand near the port-side stern quarter of the DB Columbia on the beach. He built a mountain of sand more than twenty-five feet high.
Then he started casting the sand spoils forward of the first sand mountain, downstream and amidships, on the same side on the barge on the beach. He built another mountain of sand more than twenty-five- feet high.
Finally, he started building yet another mountain of sand from the clam bucket digging spoils. This mountain was downstream and toward the bow section, port side of the barge on the beach. The thirty-five-foot-deep glory hole was so massive, that the sand dredging from the first and second mountains that Craig had built continuously sluffed back down into the glory hole, continuously reducing the depth of the excavation site.
It was quite a lengthy process to finally get all that sand removed from the job site in preparation for the new pipeline installation, but it eventually got done. The boiler-room was definitely one hot place. We had to break loose from the job site and move ten miles back downstream to the Port of Umatilla to take on more black bunker oil fuel for the boiler after two weeks of steady digging. Three huge mountains of sand and three weeks later, the thirty-five-foot-deep glory hole was finally dug and ready for the new pipeline installation operation.
Gary Storment and his crew had been busy welding all of the pipeline pieces and components together at his large shop complex in town called the Storment Building. Gary had recently acquired a dealership license in “Spray-Line” pick-up truck bed liners. It was a black plastic vinyl spray-on application that was tough and resilient. Gary was excited about the product and talked Walt McDevitt into the idea of “Spray-Line” coating the entire pipeline system inside and outside, for enhanced pipe metal protection, longevity and for enhanced water flow characteristics internally underwater through the 54-inch diameter pipeline.
The idea sounded good but it came with some definitely problems that would ultimately have to be resolved underwater. I questioned the process and the sketchy, freezing weather conditions present for the application of the product to the pipe material. The winter was rather mild and the conditions remained somewhat favorable for product application. If the product did not properly adhere to the steel pipe material, then it would have to be removed underwater. I suggested that the longevity of the coating product underwater within the pipeline system would be limited and ultimately pose a risk for the irrigation system. I was overruled and the “Spray-Line” application proceeded as planned. Afterall, I was merely the lowly boiler tender and deck engineer, so what did I know of such matters?
Gary sold Walt on the idea and they proceeded to spray coat the entire pipeline assembly with the “Spray-Line” product, to the tune of $50,000 dollars into Gary’s “Spray-Line” business account. To Gary’s credit, the black plastic vinyl product worked very well on most of the system. I will cover the consequences of the failed section of covered vinyl coating application a little later in this story and explain some of the other issues that had to be overcome and rectified underwater.
The huge, 54-inch diameter, pipeline assembly was transported to the river station job site in three separate pieces. The first section included a thirty-foot section of pipe, with a fifteen-foot-long manifold room centered and welded on the end at ninety degrees. The manifold room had four, 24-inch diameter, riser pipes, over forty-feet-long, welded to it. These riser pipes were the water supply lines that fed each of the four, 1000 horsepower, water pumps mounted on the topside deck of the river water pumping station.
The water pumps on the river water pumping station were set in staggered positions, with one pump forward, one pump back, for the four pumps. The riser pipe lengths varied accordingly. The first and the third riser pipes were shorter than the second and the four riser pipes, due to the staggered position of the water pumps located on the pumping station deck platform. The riser pipes came off the manifold room horizontally for either eight feet or twelve feet of length to a gradual forty-five-degree angle bend, followed by another forty-five-degree angle bend and then vertically up to the surface thirty-five feet and to the pumping station platform.
It was a very unwieldy contraption and difficult to load and transport on a low-boy, flatbed semi-trailer. It was also quite difficult to rig and crane at the job site from the shoreline and lowered into the glory hole, 35-feet-deep, onto the river bottom using the floating barge derrick crane and some very large mobile cranes on the shoreline.
The other two components to the pipeline system were two fifty-foot-long pieces of 54-inch diameter, 3/8-inch thick steel pipe. The water intake end of the pipeline was fabricated with four intake ports, two on each side of the pipe, and had four, six and a half-foot-long, four-foot diameter, cylindrical shaped, stainless steel, water filter screens attached to it, complete with one, three-foot-long, steel landing gear pad welded near the end on the base of each screen. The end piece of the pipeline also had an inspection door fabricated in the end cover plate welded to the end of the pipeline. Two, steel, pipe- joint sleeve collars, with associated bolts and hardware were also part of the project, and these were used to join the pipeline sections together underwater, once they were lowered into position.
The Spray-Line pick-up bedliner product was Gary Storment’s new pet project. He had high hopes for making lots of money with the new product application. He sold Walt McDevitt on the idea and that gave his latest business venture a real boost, due to the massive size of the project. Spray-Line coating the entire pipeline assembly inside and outside was a major task requiring massive amounts of the black plastic vinyl Spray-Line coating product.
Somehow, Gary was able to crawl through each of the four 24-inch diameter, over 40-foot-long riser pipes and completely coat the inside of them with the “Spray-Line” product. Each riser pipe section was sprayed with the coating before it was welded to the main manifold room pipe section.
The riser pipes were welded to the manifold room pipe and then that entire section was sprayed with the vinyl coating material. Finally, the thirty-foot-long, 54” diameter pipeline section was welded to the manifold room and the “Spray-Line” product was applied to that completed section.
Gary had to use a forced-air breathing apparatus respirator mask system and a complete Zoot-Suit while spraying the coating to avoid breathing the toxic fumes from the product.
Once all the “Spray-Line” coating had been applied and given time to completely dry and cure, then it was ready for transport to the job site on the river.
Gary Storment directed the loading and transport of the new pipeline system components to the river station construction site. It was now early February, and the river water temperature was a hard, cold 36 degrees.
Two, large, mobile, land cranes were used to lift the pipeline components from the lowboy, flatbed, semi-trailers at the river pumping station job site. The two straight pipe sections of the pipeline were then transferred by the DB Columbia onto a flat deck barge positioned alongside the DB Columbia.
The old pumping station concrete deck and pumps had all been completely removed. The huge glory hole had been fully excavated. The first section of the pipeline was lifted off the beach and placed directly into position on the bottom of the river in thirty-five of depth. This was the thirty-foot section of main pipe, plus the manifold room and four attached, forty-plus-feet-long riser pipes.
The plans called for a gradual pipeline bending at each of the two, collar, pipe-joint connections, attaching the outboard two fifty-foot-long sections of 54-inch diameter pipe, to follow the gently sloping underwater bottom out to forty feet of depth where the intake screens would be located. I suggested that the last two sections of pipeline could be assembled topside with the pipe joint collar to cut down on the underwater time application requiring a diver. This idea was accepted and Paul Mark’s deck crew assembled the last two pieces of the pipeline using the pipe joint collar on the flat deck barge. It was assembled flush and straight, with no provision made for the gradually sloping river bottom depth increase.
The assembled two-piece pipeline section, one hundred feet long, was then rigged with the pipe joint collar loosely attached and slipped over the shore-end section of the pipe that would mate to the manifold section of the pipeline. The section was rigged with two separate lifting sling lines from the crane to allow proper positioning for controlling the underwater joint connection application.
Gary Storment had hired a special pipe welder for this project. The young man had recently graduated from a commercial diving school down in Southern California. Fortunately for the project, the man was an excellent pipe welder, but not much so when it came to the diving department. He was too green for the harsh underwater environment conditions on this job.
The pipe welder attempted to make a dive in the thirty-six-degree ice water, with zero underwater visibility, to begin the pipeline joint collar attachment phase. However, his vulcanized rubber, Viking drysuit had a leak in it and he was soaking wet after only ten minutes working underwater. He quickly aborted his dive after getting nothing accomplished. He spent the next two hours huddled very close to the boiler firebox door inside the boiler-room, trying to get warmed back up back to normal body temperature from his cold water exposure and resultant hypothermia. Wet clothing conducts heat away from the body thirty-two times faster than dry clothing. In thirty-six-degrees cold water temperature, with the underwater diver soaking wet, he could absolutely not fake it until he made it. To add injury to insult, the topside air temperature was about 35 degrees also.
Gary had two other men on his crew that had very limited diving skills. Gary had trained them for very light diving work with SCUBA. Gary was a good diver, but he was no longer actively diving, so I knew that the entire operation was now in great jeopardy of not being completed on schedule. I checked with Paul and Craig and then decided to head back down to my home base in Vancouver, Washington. That night I got all of my diving gear together to commence diving operations on the following day. The next morning, I started diving on the project.
The pipe joint collar had a fifteen-inch-wide, 54-inch-plus diameter, steel sleeve that was designed to fit over the two sections of pipe that joined together. The sleeve was designed as a complete circular piece of steel that would easily slip over the ends of the two pipe sections to make the completed, leak-proof seal, pipe joint connection.
Once the sleeve was properly positioned, then the multiple sleeve retaining bolts and nuts, spaced ten inches apart, were assembled and tightened all the way around the pipe joint collar. All of this hardware was necessary to tighten around the pipe joint assembly sufficiently to make the permanent pipeline joint connection.
The pipe joint collar was designed to fit perfectly over the steel 54-inch diameter pipe. It was not designed to fit over the 54-inch diameter steel pipe coated on the outside with “Spray-Line” black plastic vinyl coating. The close tolerance for the pipe joint sleeve to slip over the pipe was now reduced to an almost impossible close tolerance, due to the added outside diameter thickness of the pipe from the applied “Spray-Line” vinyl coating.
The pipe joint collar had a slightly flared ridge on both sides of the fifteen-inch-wide, circular sleeve. Gary’s best shop fabricator, and one of his other divers, Carl, formed a special two-hooked, Y-grip device to grab onto the slightly flared, pipe joint sleeve. Carl had made a dive on the pipeline, and knew first-hand what was needed to rectify the situation. He made a special hammer plate built into it so that it could be attached and hammered on while gripping the sleeve flange. This device allowed the sleeve to be slowly prodded over the receiving end of the pipe.
The hook device was frequently moved into different positions all the way around the collar sleeve and hammered upon to slowly inch the sleeve over the receiving pipe end. It was a very laborious and time-consuming project to get that pipe joint collar sleeve to finally slip over the receiving end of the pipe and into the proper position. I spent a whole day underwater hammering on the Y-shaped, twin-hooked, flange-gripping device, moving it around and around on the pipe collar, until it finally reached the proper position. Ah, the sweet satisfaction of success after a hard-fought battle is very gratifying!
Gary’s pipe welder/diver was sent down the road. All the pipe welding was done, and he didn’t make the grade in the diving department, so Gary cut him loose. He was a great pipe welder, but he was unprepared for the harsh winter environment and hard underwater temperatures in the Columbia River system.
The Norwegians say that there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing. The same could apply to frigid, underwater diving conditions and the right type of diving suit. In the winter, your drysuit for diving must not leak. You will only be able to fake it to make it for a very short period of time before hypothermia takes its toll on your body. Water conducts heat away from the body thirty-two times faster than air temperature. To remain in thirty-six-degree water temperature, working underwater all day long, you must have a well-fitting drysuit that does not leak. That’s what I had and everything worked out just fine.
So, once Carl had fabricated the special hammer clamp device, I was finally able to slip the sleeve over the receiving end of the pipeline. Once the pipe joint sleeve collar was in the proper position, I tightened all the retaining fasteners around the entire assembly.
When I started the diving operations, Deck Engineer Dennis Forsberg took over firing the boiler on the DB Columbia. Craig Mark had to hold the outboard, two-pipe, 100-foot-long pipeline assembly section with the crane in proper position so that I could work on it underwater and get the pipe joint collar assembly buttoned up. It took two days to finally get it in proper position and to fully tighten all the connections. The additional thickness added to the 54-inch pipe outside diameter made the pipe joint sleeve collar fit unbelievably tight, which accounted for the Herculean struggle to get the pipe joint collar finally into the properly fitted position.
Gary had welded three additional, one-inch thick steel, external strongback holding, tie-down pad brackets to the pipes on each end at each pipe joint section. One tie-down strongback on each side of the pipe end and one tie-down strongback on the top of each pipe end. Each tie-down assembly strongback incorporated five, stainless-steel, all thread rods of one-inch diameter thickness and thirty inches long. They were positioned into the welded steel strongback pads, with five eye holes one-inch think, reinforced with gusset braces. The stainless-steel all-thread rods were spaced two-inches apart in three groups of five total at each support strongback tie-down assembly. These were designed to provide additional pipeline attachment support at the two pipeline joints for greater strength and security beyond the pipe joint collars themselves.
These strongback tie-downs were tightened up to hold the pipeline at both unions in a continuous straight-line configuration, not taking into account the gradually sloping bottom in the river and the depth increase of five feet, from the pumping station position near the shoreline, out to the intake screens at the end of the pipeline.
In retrospect, it would have been a good idea to pay closer attention to the project drawing plans of the pipeline, which clearly showed a well-drawn, bottom contour side-view indicating the slope of the river bottom and the necessity for the pipeline to bend slightly at each pipe joint to accommodate for the gradual slope and corresponding water depth increase.
We ended up with the manifold room section being level on the river bottom to make the risers pipes plum and vertical to tie-in with the pumping station deck platform and the four 1000 horsepower electric irrigation water pumps. I placed sand bags under the manifold room section underwater to gain the necessary leveling condition on the river bottom while Craig held and moved the unit with the crane.
Once the one-hundred-foot section of pipeline was coupled to the shoreside manifold and riser pipe assembly section of the pipeline with the pipe joint collar, then the entire pipeline section was lowered to the bottom. When Craig lowered it to the bottom using the crane, we were all topside observing the action. There was a very loud pop type explosion that resonated from underwater when the pipeline was rested on the river bottom. Walt McDevitt and Gary Storment looked at each other and probably thought something really bad had happened to the pipe connection. I was all done diving for the day, so we buttoned everything up and returned to town.
The next day, I suited up and went down to the pipeline underwater, carefully checking the inboard pipe joint collar coupling. Everything was still together and looked normal. I then observed that the top all-thread support strongback bracket weld had broken off from the pipe and allowed the one-hundred-foot section of the pipeline to angle down on the bottom slope in a straight line. The manifold room remained firm and level on the river bottom. So, the pipe joint collar continued to hold fast, but the long section of pipe now angled downward along the sloping river bottom while the manifold room pipe assembly remained level.
The loud noise we all heard was the weld breaking off of the top all-thread holding strongback pad. The two remaining side all-thread connecting pads still held on and remained intact. The pipeline system was now installed and has remained in that position to this day.
Time was critical on this operation because the farm needed irrigation water to grow the crops. Once the pipeline was successfully installed, then Gary and his crew of workmen had to build the new pumping station deck concrete platform and tie the four riser pipes into it. The four, fifteen-foot-long, water pump impeller shafts, connected to the four 1000 horsepower water pumps had to insert into their respective 24-inch riser pipes for the river water pumping source. Walt McDevitt wanted to be pumping water onto his crop circles no later than mid-April or early May. So, time was of the essence.
Mark Marine Service had completed the pipeline installation operation near the middle of February. 1994. They proceeded on up into the Snake River reservoir system to complete a couple more jobs before heading back to the Camas, Washington, floating marine construction yard.
PART TWO
At the beginning of June, 1994, Paul Mark received a phone call from Gary Storment. Evidently, the Royal Columbia Farms pipeline was having an issue with one of the irrigation pump impellers. The pump was not working properly for some reason and they needed a diver to penetrate into the pipeline and make an assessment as to what the problem was with the pump. Gary had called all of the local divers in the area, and all of them had refused to do the job when they learned what the circumstances were. It was going to be up to Paul and me to investigate and save the day, before Walt’s crops were turned over to crop loss insurance settlement.
All the pumps had been rebuilt during the pipeline installation project, when the pumping station had been dismantled and removed for the construction and installment of the new system. They were all ready for service for the irrigation growing season.
It was reasonably ruled out that the problem could be with the pump itself. It had to be something else. Walt McDevitt suspected that the “Spray-Line” coating had failed inside the pipeline. He thought some plastic vinyl debris from the coating may have separated and become fouled in the pump impeller, thereby disabling its normal rotational function.
Gary Storment was vehemently opposed to that idea, thinking rather that the pump itself had developed some unforeseen mechanical malfunction. He thought that the super-strong, black vinyl, plastic coating “Spray-Line” that he had sprayed on the pipeline and components was virtually imperishable and indestructible.
Paul called me up on the telephone and explained the situation. I quickly got my dive gear loaded up and we headed up to Hermiston together to investigate the problem inside the pipeline. Paul and I speculated on what the trouble could be inside the line. I was of the opinion that Walt McDevitt was right, and that somehow, the “Spray-Line” coating had failed. I visualized the enormous work that would be involved removing all that black plastic vinyl coating material from inside the massive pipeline system.
It was the same vision I had seen when the pipeline was in pieces at Gary Storment’s Industrial Yard, before he had applied the “Spray-Line” product to it. I had taken the time to walk inside one of the fifty-foot-long, 54-inch diameter pipe sections as it laid in Gary Storment’s Industrial Yard. I was always opposed to the idea of internally coating the system because of the potential risk of coating failure and separation was too great. Outside coating on the pipeline system, no problem. Inside coating on the pipeline system in case of product failure, big problem!
Paul Mark and I arrived at the river water pumping station about ten o’clock in the morning. It was the first time we had seen the completed, concrete-covered, pumping station platform, with the four massive pumps in position and plumbed into the four riser pipes under the pumping station deck. Everything looked very good topside. Much of the sand from the three sand mountains that Craig had built digging the station out for the new system installation had already shifted back into pre-construction position.
Walt McDevitt and Gary Storment were there waiting for us. There were also some other men there, including Walt’s irrigation system manager and some of Gary’s crew. Everyone was anxious to learn what the problem was underwater inside the system.
We talked together about what needed to be done by the diver. I was instructed to proceed underwater out to the end of the pipeline and open the end-mounted inspection door. It had a closure device on the door hasp that would have to be removed before the door could be opened inward. Once the door was opened, then the penetration exploratory dive could begin.
The penetration dive required the diver to swim all the way into the pipeline and up into the manifold room. The affected pump was located in the third position riser pipe, downstream on the pumping platform. Fortunately, it was one of the closer positioned pumps to the river. Therefore, the connecting riser pipeline horizontal section was shorter by about four feet.
The diver would enter the manifold room and locate the third riser pipe branching off of the manifold room. The diver would enter the 24-inch diameter riser pipe and swim into it through the horizontal section. Then he would pass through the two 45-degree-angle bends into the vertical section leading to the surface.
The pump impeller extended down into the vertical section of the riser pipe fifteen feet deep. The riser pipes were thirty-five feet long vertically, including the two forty-five-degree angle pipe section bends. The diver would ascend up inside the straight vertical section fifteen feet to reach the #3 pump impeller tip.
Once the diver reached the pump impeller tip, he would inspect the impeller and remove any plastic vinyl “Spray-Line” coating material fouled in the impeller. The removed coating material would be the evidence of the coating failure necessary to solve the mystery of the pump malfunction.
Of course, the atmosphere within the pipeline system was total darkness. The water was relatively clear because the system had been in continuous water pumping operation, so it was free of silt and excessive suspended particulate matter. The diver would use underwater lights in the form of a helmet light and a back-up hand-held diver’s flashlight.
Once the pump impeller had been cleared of the fouled material, then the diver would reverse his direction, slipping down the close enclosure and back through the angle bends to the horizontal section and finally back into the manifold room.
From the manifold room, the diver would locate and move back into the main pipeline and swim the 130-foot distance back down to the pipeline entry door at forty-feet of depth and exit the system. Then he would swim along the outside of the pipeline back to the shoreline and present the evidence to the people standing on the pumping station deck.
That is essentially the course that I took. I used one tank to go out to the end of the pipeline and buoy it off. I went down and opened the inspection door and secured it open with two C-clamps attached to the door frame so that the inspection door could not close prematurely and trap me inside the pipeline. The inspection door opened inward. Then I returned to the beach and got a fresh tank and an extra smaller tank with a second regulator attached to it to take inside the pipeline with me for additional air if needed. That tank was called the “Bail-out” bottle.
I swam out on the surface to the buoy marker floating on the water. I headed down the buoy line to the bottom and immediately entered the pipeline. I swam slowly inside the pipeline, noting the condition of the “Spray-Line” coating as I penetrated deeper and deeper into the pipeline.
I immediately noticed that the “Spray-Line” coating had started to separate in small areas from the interior pipeline walls in spots. The coating separation showed that the “Spray-Line” adhesion process to the interior walls of the main pipeline had failed. Evidently, the pipe surface material had not been adjusted to the proper temperature required for the necessary coating adhesion to take place. That ultimately meant that all the interior applied pipeline “Spray-Line” vinyl coating would have to be removed for normal water irrigation pumping to take place.
I saw the first pipe joint seam which was completely flush and tight. I came to the second pipe joint seam and noted the pipeline bend at that point. The pipe joint was tight, with both pipes touching each other at the bottom. The top of the pipe joint had about a six-inch spread space between the two pipe ends exposing the inside of the pipe joint collar sleeve. The pipe joint was completely sealed, but the bend in the pipeline resulted in the upper gap between the two pipe ends. That was the high point of the pipeline system underwater.
I proceeded on into the last thirty feet of the pipe and into the manifold room. I checked the condition of each of the four riser pipes running horizontally off the manifold room. The black vinyl coating looked good in all of them, as I shined my dive light into each one.
Then I placed my extra tank in the manifold room adjacent to the third riser pipe. I entered into the third riser pipe, going from a 54-inch diameter pipe into a 24-inch diameter pipe. I made sure that my drysuit internal air volume was low because of the twenty-foot ascent I would make inside the riser pipe, not wanting to become overly buoyant.
I slowly made my way through the horizontal section of the riser pipe and through the first and second 45-degree-angle bends in the pipe and headed up into the vertical shaft toward the pump impeller base. When I got to the impeller base, I shined my dive light up into the pump shaft exposing the pump impeller. There it was! Sure enough, some of the “Spray-Line” black plastic vinyl coating material had separated and gotten sucked into the pump impeller. It was stuck and jammed in the pump impeller, impeding its operation. I reached up and pulled the coating pieces of debris out of the pump impeller, making sure it was all clear.
At that point, feeling like a big sardine stuck inside of a tightly packed can, I exhaled and began my feet first return back down the vertical shaft, through the two-angle bends, and eight feet through the horizontal section and finally back out into the manifold room. Talk about a tight squeeze. No claustrophobia please!
Once I was back inside the manifold room, I grabbed my extra tank and quickly located the entrance to the main pipeline. I swam into the main pipeline and headed back down the long way to the pipeline end exit door, 130 feet away.
Due to the slight silt accumulation inside the pipeline, the swim going in was clear water when illuminated with my dive light. Going back out of the pipeline, the small amount of silt debris was disturbed, making visibility nonexistent, except for the glow of my helmet lamp. I made my way past the four screen filter opening pipes in the end of the system and finally reached the inspection door. I quickly exited my way through the door entry and back outside into the open water on the river bottom.
After exiting the pipeline, I swam on the bottom, hovering over the pipeline back to the shoreline. I surfaced and took the coating debris up to the pumping station deck and handed it to Paul Mark. Then I took my tank and fins off and headed up there to give them a verbal report of my findings.
I told them that the main pipeline “Spray-Line” coating was failing and bubbling up in small spots as it was separating from the interior steel pipe material. Evidently, some of the coating material had broken loose and become fouled in the pump impeller. It now appeared that the entire interior of the main pipeline would have to be stripped bare of all the “Spray-Line” coating that Gary had worked so hard to apply. The winter weather must have been too cold and the interior pipe surface must have been too cold to allow for proper adhesion and curing of the product to take place.
I reported that the riser pipes all appeared to be in good condition as far as the “Spray-Line” product was concerned. That was a tremendous relief to me, for the degree of difficulty in removing that coating material from the smaller riser pipes would have required an extraordinary effort and superior diving expertise well beyond normal limitations. It could have been done, but I was very relieved that the coating was holding well in those tight spaces.
The obvious solution to rectify the problem of the failing “Spray-Line” coating within the pipeline interior was the immediate removal of same as soon as possible. That is precisely what Walt McDevitt decided to do.
Walt McDevitt, Gary Storment, Paul Mark and I discussed the timeline and procedures required to accomplish the removal of the “Spray-Line” coating from inside the irrigation system underwater pipeline.
Obviously, it would require a diver going inside the pipeline and physically pulling and separating the coated, black vinyl, plastic material from the complete interior surface of the pipeline and manifold room and removing all of it from inside the pipeline system.
I was immediately assigned the task of doing all the diving on the job. Gary Storment was chosen to work as my tender on the beach and use his pick-up truck to haul away all of the removed “Spray-Line” coating material. I would work to strip away large quantities of the coating in huge, vinyl sheet pieces, rolled up into arm bundles. Then I would take it out of the pipeline and swim it to the surface. The material floated, and I would swim it into the beach for Gary to load into his pickup truck bed.
Gary would have to manhandle the coating pieces and place them into his pick-up truck bed. Once we had completed diving operations for the day, then Gary would return to his Industrial Yard and offload the wasted coating material. This process would be continued until all the material was successfully removed from the interior of the pipeline.
Irrigation system water pumping would take place at night when I was not working, diving inside the pipeline.
It was all decided and I would return in the morning with all of my diving equipment to start the job. The goal was to remove the material as quickly as possible and restore normal pumping procedures for crop irrigation.
Paul and I loaded up my dive gear in his pick-up truck. I quickly changed out of my diving suit and we headed back to town.
On the four-hour-long journey back to Camas, Washington, and Paul’s floating MARK MARINE SERVICE Industrial Yard, we talked about diving inside pipelines.
Paul had worked for years on a 1,100-foot-long, 54-inch diameter, corrugated galvanized steel culvert pipeline, seventy feet deep, for the Crown-Zellerbach Paper Mill in Camas, Washington. Paul and his diving partner, Bud Sanders, had worked together installing that pipeline, and then doing repair and maintenance on it for many years before it was finally abandoned for a new outfall system.
Paul talked about how he and Bud became more and more comfortable working inside the pipeline as they added section to section and joined them together, constructing the entire system underwater. Eventually, the pipeline reached its maximum length of 1,100 feet. It was constructed using 30-foot sections of culvert pipe, which had wooden cross-support brace reinforcements inside that had to be removed as they went. Paul and Bud soon realized how long their SCUBA tanks would last, as they made longer and longer pipeline penetrations. Eventually, they figured out that they could swim one way through the entire 1,100-foot-long pipeline system using a single tank of compressed air.
Although the Royal Columbia Farms pipeline was only forty-feet-deep at the lowest point, Paul suggested that I would develop a calming familiarity to the interior pipeline environment that would work in my favor and make the task at hand easier to accomplish. I listened carefully to Paul’s knowledgeable instructions and suggestions. His decades of diving experiences that he shared with me helped greatly in overcoming any psychological obstacles I may have had related to pipeline diving.
Pipeline diving is akin to deep penetration wreck diving, extreme deep diving and cave diving. A diver loses his direct access to the water’s surface during the penetration and confinement phase. He must make additional safety provisions to compensate for any unforeseen out of air emergency while being within the confines of the pipeline.
Secondary air supply sources strategically positioned within the structure allow the diver access to additional breathing air should it become necessary for him. I always positioned an extra SCUBA tank with regulator attached inside the pipeline where I was working for this very purpose. At the end of the work day, all of the extra equipment had to be removed because the water pumping commenced as soon as I was finished.
Paul Mark and Bud Sanders had worked the long pipeline so much over a twenty-year period before it was abandoned, that they developed a comfort zone of familiarity from the repeated exposures to the pipeline environment. They routinely did the impossible in underwater construction work and always made it look easy. When they finished for the day, they headed home to their families and enjoyed a big steak dinner!
When I finally got home that evening, I quickly loaded up all my dive gear, including about ten SCUBA bottles and prepared to head back up river very early in the morning. Gary Storment had a SCUBA high pressure divers’ air compressor at his shop for filling tanks, so I was covered in getting my tanks recharged.
The next morning, I met Gary early at his shop and we quickly headed out to the job site on the river. Gary had his pick-up truck and I had my white Ford, 1-ton, Econoline, diving van loaded to the max with all of my dive gear. Gary would stand by on the beach and receive all the vinyl coating material I extracted from the pipeline interior.
The black vinyl plastic coating material was slightly buoyant. I worked to strip and remove large sections of the coating from the interior of the pipeline surface. I used my knife to cut the stripped coating section from the remaining material. I rolled the coating up into a manageable package and then worked that section out of the pipeline and floated it to the surface.
Once I got the removed material to the surface, I pushed it ahead of me as I swam back into the beach where Gary was standing. Gary had to wrestle and manhandle the removed sections of coating material from the beach up into his pickup truck bed. It was quite a difficult chore for Gary, as the weather had turned hot. He took off several times during each day to head down the road to a local Quick-Stop convenience store to get some cold drinks. I was fine in the water and staying cool during my work. Gary was sweating like crazy!
Each day, I was spending more and more time and penetrating deeper and deeper into the pipeline as I worked to remove the vinyl coating from the interior pipeline surface. Eventually, a large air pocket formed inside the pipeline at the high center point where the pipe collar we installed was located. This was formed from all the compressed air I had exhaled from my SCUBA tanks while working inside the pipeline. The trapped air-space continued to expand until it formed an elongated bubble inside the pipeline about twenty-five feet long and over two feet thick. It was kind of weird, working inside the pipeline and inside that compressed air bubble in the dry, while I continued to breathe through my SCUBA regulator.
Eventually I got all the coating stripped from the main pipeline and removed. Then I started working inside the manifold room that T-branched off the end of the pipeline.
The manifold room was a 15-foot-long and 54-inch diameter pipe section that had the four riser pipes welded to it that extended up to the surface pumping station. The “Spray-Line” coating separated from the interior of the manifold room in the same way that the main pipeline coating material was removed. It was like stripping a humongous, thick, black, Hefty trash can bag liner from the steel pipe interior surface.
Fortunately, as mentioned before, the riser pipes “Spray-Line” coating had excellent affinity to the respective interior pipe surfaces and did not have to be removed. It remains inside the pipeline system to this day.
Once the manifold room was cleared of all the coating, then my job was completed. We worked all day during this project for three days, with the water pumps secured. Walt and his crew ran the pumps all night long, every night, when the diving operations were completed for the day.
I had to make sure that I left no pieces of vinyl coating floating around and remaining free inside the pipeline at the end of each diving day to avoid fouling the four massive, 6000-gallon per minute, irrigation water pump impellers. I would swim the entire length of the pipeline and survey everything at the end of each diving day to ascertain that the entire system was secure and ready for pumping that night.
As Paul had so accurately predicted, my diving comfort zone inside the pipeline, working long hours every day, was excellent. Over the three days of diving inside the pipeline and removing all the “Spray-Line”, black plastic, vinyl coating, I had accumulated almost 24 hours of underwater working time on SCUBA. Swimming the entire length of the 150-foot-long pipeline system had become routine for me. Making the evening pipeline swim survey before stopping diving operations for the day was just another part of that routine.
Walt McDevitt operated his new pipeline system every night, and thankfully there were no more fouled pump impellers to contend with and clear. It has remained so unto this day and continues to serve the Royal Columbia Farms growing operation without problem.
Gary Storment had developed a large commercial diving operation over the last twenty years, working primarily for Walt McDevitt and his river irrigation pumping station neighbors, removing accumulated sand from their river pumping stations. He had managed to build a large, industrial, building structure, complete with offices and five attached, multiple, industrial, fabrication shop monthly rental units.
During his rise to prominence in commercial diving, he had never used his insurance coverage to pay a claim against his multiple business operations. Gary thought for sure that my bill for the removal of his “Spray-Line” coating from the interior of the pipeline system would be the time for such a claim. I believe he was prepared to pay me over $500,000 for the three-day diving job I had just completed. He had secured some major financial scores on several emergency diving calls over the years, and he thought that it was now the time for him to taste such a massive financial payout.
Walt McDevitt had paid Gary $50,000 to “Spray-Line” coat his new pipeline system. The strange nature of this coating failure and the sub-aquatic removal operation was now going to cost Gary plenty, and he could only imagine how much. He was prepared to turn the entire bill over to his insurance company as a claim. This was something he had never done during all his years of being in the diving business.
I charged Gary my usual underwater diving hourly rate, plus additional costs for pipeline depth pay and unlimited, multiple, pipeline penetrations daily. When I told him that I would settle the account with him for a little over six thousand dollars total for the three days, he must have thought I was crazy and/or extremely generous. He had his check book out and a check written and made payable to me in less than a New York minute!
I was happy with the money amount for my labors, and he was happy to have settled the account for less than a fraction of what he had anticipated.
I went home to my wife and family and slept very well.
Gary ended up selling his entire business operation that he had built up over the last twenty years. He and his wife Vicki got divorced and he relocated back down to Arkansas and went to work again as a firefighter for a local municipal fire department. He said that he had lost his desire to continue in the diving business, and that his life in Hermiston, Oregon, was over. He had lost his fire for the game and just wanted out.
I did a few more diving jobs for Gary, getting his accounts wrapped up on the promises he had made for diving work contracts. It took him about six months to wrap things up in his life at Hermiston, and then he was gone. I have not seen or heard from him since.
I have continued to work for the Royal Columbia Farms growing operation since we did this diving work so many years ago in 1994. The system has proven to be an excellent deep-water pipeline model, and one of the first of its kind to be installed in the area. Annual inspections, underwater video surveys and periodic screen cleanings have kept the water system in top working order for all these years.
Walt McDevitt and Gary Storment worked together and developed a very excellent pipeline water pumping system. It is to their credit, forethought and hard work that the system is still working perfectly today!
Written by Tory van Dyke, Copyright © 2020.