This job stinks

By CANDACE CHASE

Sanitation employees do the dirty work so we don't have to

The Daily Inter Lake

It's 5 a.m. in the Flathead. As most of us snooze in our warm beds, Tom Gordon and his crew at North Valley Refuse hit the streets to remove our trash.

Even on Labor Day, Larry Bellmore and some of his crew put in a 10-hour shift pushing, piling and compacting our garbage into a growing mountain at Flathead County Solid Waste. He said it's called solid waste because they don't take the wet stuff, such as sewage.

That's where John Tveit and Ken Pedersen come in. For people not connected to a sewer system, Tveit and Pedersen haul away what we flush and often forget until the septic tank goes on strike.

"If it plugs up and backs up in the bathtub, you're in deep doo-doo," Pedersen of Ken Pedersen Pumping said.

In his 59 years in the business, Pedersen has hauled away a lot of Flathead County residents' "doo-doo." He got started in the 1950s when he was 21, working with his father-in-law.

He recalled first helping out on pumping jobs while he was on leave from the Navy. When his hitch was up, his mother loaned him $1,000 to buy a backhoe to install septic systems as part of his father-in-law's business.

Although he's had another driver for 25 years, Pedersen doesn't shy from jumping in a truck himself to service a tank or bail out a homeowner who ignored the ticking bomb in the yard. He called the job "only as nasty as you make it."

He begins by plunging the tank to break up the thick material with a flat piece of metal attached to a pipe.

"You have to get it liquefied," he said. "The truck is like a big vacuum - it sucks everything up."

From there, Pedersen drives to a leased farm field where he dumps the sewage. By law, he has just six hours to plow the fresh load into the soil, all of which he must document on a log.

County sanitarians as well as the Department of Environmental Quality keep tabs on all pumping businesses to make sure operators follow the rules in fertilizing fields. Pedersen said they lease only farmland used for above-ground crops like wheat.

"It's getting very hard to find fields to lease," Pedersen said.

The shortage of land, loads of record-keeping and the equipment from truck to plows play into the expense (which varies) for pumping tanks.

According to Pedersen, a new pump truck runs about $100,000.

John Tveit, owner of Ready Freddy Septic Service, recently made the investment in a new truck he proudly drove in a recent Columbia Falls parade. His stepsons rode on the tanker, lobbing toilet paper attached with Tveit's business card into the crowd.

"It was hilarious," he said with a laugh.

His truck provides a daily giggle for motorists, proclaiming "Satisfaction guaranteed or double your poop back; We're number one in number two," and his personal favorite, "Your poop is our bread and butter."

It helps to have a sense of humor in his line of work. Tveit said business partner and wife Tamra takes the same attitude, although she tried to boycott John's "bread and butter" joke.

Otherwise, Tveit said she deserves a wife-of-the-year award. Tveit said she willingly goes along and helps out on jobs if needed, like the time he had back surgery and Tamra handled the heavy lifting and shoveling.

He used an effective screening method for a perspective wife.

"I took her out on one of our first dates on the truck, along with her two boys," he said. "I couldn't scare her off."

Tveit said he got started in the business by going out on a pumping excursion with his uncle, who owned Ready Freddy. He quit his job at Stacey Oil and a sideline mechanic job to work full time in the septic-tank business.

"Freddy retired in 1994 after 30 years," he said.

Tveit said wrangling sewage actually pales compared to his days working on a ranch near horses, cows and pigs. He said he stays about 8 feet away from offensive waste products when pumping.

"It's better than getting unloaded on by a cow," he said. "Anyone who milks cows will tell you they don't wait for you to finish if they have to go."

He keeps that in mind when he has to crawl into a tank to repair a lift station. Even that isn't as bad as a person might think since he washes down the sides and suits up in his foul-duty blue Docker coat.

According to Tveit, he rarely gets dirty at all when out on pumping jobs because he knows the pumping doo-doo don'ts. His four full-time employees and one part-time workers learn when they ignore his warning, "you might not want to do that."

"Once they get poop on them a couple of times, they listen," he said. "I've been doing this so long, I could do it in my sleep."

Gordon, lead man at North Valley Refuse, wishes he could work in his sleep on the days he starts at 5 a.m.

"That's the worst part of the job; it can be really cold," he said. "The best part is the people I work with. They're all really good guys."

Gordon said he was working as a school janitor 19 years ago when he got into hauling garbage. His brother was working there at the time.

"It wasn't too hard," he said. "The smell was the hardest part to get used too. When it gets hot, it's the worst."

He recalls one bad experience - finding a frozen dog dumped in a can. Turned out that the owner had borrowed a neighbor's can for his heartless disposal.

Gordon thoughtfully tracked down the miscreant and returned his dumped pet.

About four years ago, the heavy-lifting part of the job got a lot easier when North Valley Refuse purchased fully automated trucks. Instead of the crew curb-loading each can, a side arm of the truck picks up and dumps the cans.

"The only bad part is when you drop one (a can) into the truck," he said with a laugh. "Usually you can just reach in and get it."

He said the job has some frustrations, such as customers leaving their cans facing the wrong direction. Gordon says it drives a person a little crazy after jumping in and out of the truck dozens of times a day.

Overall, he has no regrets about getting into waste hauling.

"The wages are pretty good for this area," he said. "The best part is it's a year-round job."

Bellmore, foreman at Flathead County Solid Waste, feels the same way about his more than 30 years at the landfill. Like Gordon, Bellmore has benefited from many improvements in the operation over three decades.

"When I started, we didn't have cabs on anything - just roll cages," he said. "We breathed a lot of dirt."

Now they work in pressurized cabs with filters. Better still, they have heaters that make winter work less taxing.

Bellmore said the landfill stays open seven days a week all year, closing only on Thanksgiving and Christmas. It's a near necessity with the volume of solid waste generated by the Flathead's growing population.

He and the crew push, compact and cover 100 tons of appliances a month. When Bellmore started, he said the landfill received about 50 tons of trash a day, compared to about 400 tons a day now.

"When I first started, we dug trenches 30 feet in the ground to bury the garbage," he said. "Now we're 100 feet above ground."

For that reason, Bellmore said working at Flathead County Solid Waste means job security. He said the volume actually increases when this area has layoffs, apparently from workers using their extra time to clean out the garage and house.

"It's a good job," he said. "It's the kind of job you never get laid off from."

Bellmore laughs when he remembers friends telling him they would never take a job operating equipment at the landfill. Since then, he said every one of them has asked him about getting on the crew.

It's a familiar theme from these men who appreciate the security and good living they earn for helping the rest of us enjoy clean and sanitary lives. Still, they admit their work stinks.

"It all smells like money to me," Bellmore said with a laugh.

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com