Diver takes deep sewage plunge to stem pollution flow into Zandvlei

Then the Raapkraal sewage pump station broke down at lunchtime on Friday last week, spilling raw sewage into the Zandvlei nature reserve via the Westlake River, it was 24-year-old Troy Figenschou who dived in to save the day.

The company he works for, Guerrini Marine Construction, was called in by the City of Cape Town. Figenschou had to descend five metres into raw sewage that had flooded the pump station chamber, in order to stop the leak.

He was hailed as a hero after a photo of him was posted on the Ward 71 News Faceboook page.

It was the first time in his year as a commercial diver for Guerrini that he had done a sewage dive. A colleague recently had to do a similar dive at a failing pump station in Atlantis.

Mayco member for water and sanitation Zahid Badroodien said it was discovered that a “non-return valve bonnet was partially open”.

Figenschou had to fix it.

“It was pitch black, the darkest I’ve ever worked in,” he said.

It took two tries to tighten the flange on the pipe, as at first one of the bolts just kept turning and wouldn’t tighten. He surfaced and asked the team on land to switch the pump on to check, but it was still leaking, so he went back down. On the second try, although working in complete darkness, he discovered the bolt was hampered by rags and rubbish, and once he managed to remove this, the valve tightened up properly.

A video on his employer’s Facebook page shows Figenschou celebrating after successfully fixing the leak.

Commercial diver Troy Figenschou descended into a pool of raw sewage to fix a leaking pipe at the Raapkraal pump station on Friday. (Photo: Steve Kretzmann)