I worked dredging and de-watering at a tailing pond in Hinton.

For those not from Alberta there is a Town callled Hinton that only exists for a Pulp Plant (smells like burning death) and the oil industry. The tailing ponds here aren't the usual ones you see in the oil sands, they are located right beside the Pulp Plant and are for all waste water coming from the facility and from the town. Their function was to allowing the non liquid materials to settle at the bottom so the liquid could run off to the nearby treatment facility.

The ponds were dug out to clay initially 25 years ago at a depth of 30 feet, and were never maintained until I started with the company. They heat the ponds to speed up the separation process and keep them from freezing and well, It's pretty much boiling 20 year old turd water I worked with.

My job was 12 hour nights, and sat in my control booth to make sure the centrifuge separated the water and "solids" correctly (dewatering) that was sucked up from the bottom of the pond (dredging). Easy right?

No, the clogs.

Another thing I had to do was dislodge the clogs by hand in our piping, used condoms, toilet paper, tampons you name it; was something I had to remove from a shoulder deep pipe 3 times an hour to keep the flow moving. Because of the age of the shit we were pulling it was HEAVY H2S and oh god the smell. I couldn't smell anything else for the 2 months I worked there, it ruined food for me.

By far the worst was when we had a clog that we needed to break the piping for, I broke the connection and it dislodged immediately... after I got sprayed right in the eye with hot liquid turd and slapped in the face with a tampon.

The pay was nice though.