Theres money in trash, but gold in waste.

[pepperj]

There's money in trash, but gold in waste.

Cleaning up some stuff and came across a little ring that's 10K, nothing special except where it came from and how it was found. These young guys used to go through the storm sewers during the dry times and look in the cracks for jewellery then they'd come in and sell it off to me every once in a while. Highly dangerous, illegal, and they never told which drains they were accessing.
But another interesting fact is the waste management teams that work at the local sewer plants and when they clean out the pits/tanks/or what ever they call them, it's gold bonanza for the guy. Lots of jewelry make it's way to the processing tanks and being heavy it sinks. I understand it to be a very lucrative sideline in working there and really not talked about it much as it's sweet bonus to a crappy job.

Just wondering if anyone else has heard of such ways folks are cashing in?

 

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[uglymailman]

I would think the place to look would be the bottom of the lift stations.

 

[pepperj]

I would think the place to look would be the bottom of the lift stations.

Getting late-what's a lift station?

 

[sandchip]

Getting late-what's a lift station?

Your sanitary sewage runs downhill in gravity mains until it gets to low area and can go no further, so in that spot a lift station is placed, which is a pump that forces the sewage up to the next high elevation, so it can drain downhill again. When I was a teenager, I worked under my father with the city. There was a lift station at the oxidation pond that would pump the raw sewage into the pond. When the alarm went off, we'd have to climb down into this little underground room, unbolt and hoist the pump and clear the impeller. Usually, the problem was where probably a young'un flushed a big towel down the john. Nice at 1:30 in the morning. Made all my jobs since then seem way better! The thing is, back then, we never once thought about wearing gloves!

In big cities, there may be lift stations for storm sewers too, but here in littlesville, it just runs into the creek.

 

[Charlie P. (NY)]

I am a business manager at a sewage treatment plant.

Problem is we have dozens, maybe hundreds of miles of sewers that channel waste and storm water to us - everything from the sink traps to the seams and cracks trap the heavy objects long before it reached the plant; 2° to 3° slope to the occasional lift stations. And a lift station is a big arse pump with a bar screen in front of it to lift the waste water from low areas to high. And usualy street sewers have cisterns/strum boxes with lines coming in from the sides and all heavy stuff sinks in the connectors. Then it gets to the BIG terminal pump stations. Pipes you could drive a car through. From there it goes to the grit room - this is where you might find a well crushed and mashed piece of jewelry. Problem is we can't ask 200,000 people not to flush or rains not to fall for a week so it is a continual scraping and conveyor screw process. Then the stream goes through thickening tanks to concentrate dissolved solids, ferric chloride and other chemicals added to flocculate solids and seperate grease and oils. Then it goes to a huge digester tank. Gets bubbles and bacteria and moves to a large cell where it is chlorinated and nitrogen and carbon is chemically removed. Then dechlorinization and back into the environment.

But if you want to pan through 15,000,000 gallons of water a day c'mon over.

 

[Plumbata]

I did a lot of this last summer, and it was consistently more productive than any normal detecting outing.

That's just a small sampling of what I found, from one spot. Later I discovered far richer areas.

 

[Professor of Engineering]

Very nice finds in interesting places! Good Luck in 2015.

 

[pepperj]

I did a lot of this last summer, and it was consistently more productive than any normal detecting outing.

That's just a small sampling of what I found, from one spot. Later I discovered far richer areas.

What were these finds from, water detecting, cleaning out sewer traps, what?

 

[Plumbata]

Those are scores from a single storm sewer, eyeballs and a sifter only. Also got outta there a big faceted stone that looks a lot like a diamond, but at 4.9 carats it's probably just a CZ.

Edit:
This might illustrate it pretty well for you. The dark grey disc in the sifter is a silver dime that just slid out of the sheet metal scoop prior to taking the pic. I wouldn't recommend this for the old or overweight, as it's pretty hard on the back and knees, but it's a lot of fun if your body can manage it.

 

[pepperj]

Nice work and I can see where it would play a number on the knees and the back. A piece of 3" SM insulation board works great to kneel on.

It's amazing what can be found as in the sewer clean up from the pits. I only learnt of it in conversation with a guy and his partner that recovered the gold. So what if the jewellery is hashed, gold is gold. There's another thought is where does the cities dump the pumper loads they get from the storm sewer catch basins?

 

[Chug And Red]

I like gold and Silver But I Don't think i'm trying this Anytime Soon!!!! I will Stick to P traps on Bathroom Sinks those little Chains Add Up I have found or recovered Several Over the Years

 

[Plumbata]

I dunno anything about where the contents of catch basins wind-up, let alone material from sanitary sewers. I've encountered plenty of the basins, but only in more modern drains, and being leery of "swimming" around in the traps I never really scrutinized them. They seemed to have their fair share of paving gravel and your ubiquitous wheel-weights but weren't of too much interest owing to the depth of questionable water and lack of age.

I focused on drains from the 60s and earlier, the one pictured above is from the 30s. It, like all the other older ones I encountered, contained no catch basins/traps and emptied into creeks (or ravines/rivers), with both the outfall areas and the gravel deposits inside being well-worth poking through. Employing the same strategies used in locating the richest crevices or sections of gravel in the drains, I also poked around creeks with bedrock beds and found lots of goodies, including plenty of pyrite and hematite specimens. If I lived out east in older areas I am absolutely positive that i'd make some pretty wild hauls.

I really like the low-tech approach to "treasure hunting", and being a hobbit at heart i honestly enjoy being in tunnels when that's where the search leads. It's pretty cozy and "safe" underground.