You might call it reality TV at its most raw.
Wednesday, a white truck sat at the intersection of Kenmore Avenue and Mary Ball Street in Fredericksburg. A generator pumped air conditioning into a little room in the back where Chris Johnston sat reviewing a live video feed.
His camera's lens was pointed not at the families laying out blankets for picnics or the kids lined up to hit tennis balls at nearby Kenmore Park.
This camera crew, from Alabama-based UVT Inc., was taking live shots of the sanitary sewer line under Kenmore Avenue.
The goal: Find cracks in pipes, gaps where other pipes intersect and problem spots in manholes that could allow stormwater into the sanitary sewer. That's what causes toilets to back up and basements to flood when it rains a lot.
Sanitary sewer problems in the Kenmore basin will be fixed as part of a larger project the city is working on now as a public-private partnership with contractor W.C. Spratt and engineering firm PHR+A.
That work, which totals about $10.4 million, also includes repairing the water main that runs along U.S. 1 and improving sanitary sewers in the Lower Hazel Run, Smith Run and City Dock areas.
Last week's camera work was a way to pinpoint problems in the lines the city wants to fix so it doesn't have to dig anywhere it doesn't need to.
Timothy Ennis, who is managing the sewer upgrade project for the city, said this saves money. For example, the city had budgeted to repair the entire sewer line under Kenmore Avenue, but the cameras revealed that only about a third of that work will need to be done.
"It's come a long way since the early '60s, when you didn't know where to dig, so you just dug," said David Johnson, a project manager with UVT.
Inside the truck, Johnston watches the images sent back from the 4-foot-long metal camera--which looks sort of like a tiny Amtrak train--as it wheels its way through the sewer lines at the end of a cable that no one should ever touch without gloves on.
After the crew finishes on Kenmore, it moves up to College Avenue, where the 8-inch-wide clay pipe probably dates to the 1940s--old enough to qualify for historic tax credits from the government if it were above-ground architecture.
The pipe appears mostly intact, although Johnston records cracks and other problems at occasional intervals.
Scoping out sewer pipes is something most homeowners don't give much thought to when they flush goldfish and other unmentionables out of their residences.
But the job does have its occasional thrills.
Johnson said one day about 10 years ago, he was working on a line in the small town of Brownsville, Tenn.
He noticed a sparkle amid some debris and cleaned it off to find a class ring from the local high school.
A supervisor from the local government saw the initials on the ring and said he thought it might belong to his friend's daughter.
About 15 minutes later, that very friend drove by. He took the ring home and came back half an hour later with his daughter in tears.
She'd taken the ring off five years ago before a shower and hadn't seen it since. She lived eight miles away.
"She couldn't believe it," Johnson said.
Emily Battle: 540/374-5413
Email: ebattle@freelancestar.com