Imagine driving a wide-bodied Hummer more than nine miles down a dark, 24-foot-diameter yet-to-be-flooded sewer discharge pipe thats buried under the Atlantic Ocean floor near Boston Harbor. The purpose is to remove 55 water-tight bulkheads at the offshore end of the new tunnel, where oxygen is too thin to support life.


If the thought makes you shudder, you may have an inkling of how Spokane-based construction diving company Norwesco Marine Inc., which this week is sending some of its workers on just such a mission, has managed to prosper.


It certainly is an unusual project, says Roger Rouleau, Norwescos owner. However, he adds, Weve done a lot of wacky stuff. Thats what makes this business fun. The weirder and wackier it is, the better it is for us.


A willingness to take on tough underwater jobs has allowed 8-year-old Norwesco to bubble up from nothing into a $3-million-to-$5-million-a-year enterprise, despite operating from semi-arid Eastern Washington. The company now employs as many as 30 construction divers during peak periods and accepts jobs across the country, although it does the bulk of its work in the Western U.S.


Depending on the job, its workers dig trenches, bore holes, pour and cut concrete, and assemble steel structures, among other tasksall while submerged.


Theyre construction workers and can dive, too. We dont do anything under water that you dont do above water, says Rouleau.


The big difference, of course, is that doing those things under water, often in limited-visibility conditions, while wearing cumbersome diving gear, requires skills that land-bound construction workers dont have, he says. These guys that do this work are a unique breed, very talented, he asserts.


Rouleau says Norwesco has managed to attract a good group of construction divers who allow it to take on some demanding projects.


A couple of the largest projects in which it has participated recently include the $400 million South Bay Ocean Outfall in San Diego and the $80 million-to-$90 million Lake Mead Intake No. 2 in southern Nevada.


The San Diego project involved the construction of a joint U.S-Mexico wastewater treatment system, including a 190-foot-tall, 410-ton offshore shaft that Norwesco helped install, connected to a three-mile-long seabed pipeline, to transport treated effluent out to sea. The system is intended to stop raw wastewater discharges from Tijuanas inadequate treatment plant from flowing north across the border, which has happened repeatedly, polluting the water on the U.S. side and forcing the closure of San Diego beaches.


The Lake Mead project in Nevada involved the construction of a smaller, but still massive intake system, including a 370-foot-deep underground shaft connected to a 1,600-foot-long tunnel that extends under Lake Mead to an underground pumping station. Norwescos primary role in the project was to help install the shaft, or riser, and a concrete pipe section at its base.


The Southern Nevada Water Authority is installing the intake system as part of a $2 billion capital-improvement program, slated for completion in 2002, thats expected to double water capacity to that part of the state.


Its the second such intake to be installed in Lake Mead, from which the Las Vegas Valley already receives 85 percent of its water.


Removing bulkheads


The earlier mentioned project off Boston Harbor may be the most unusual one yet. It involves the construction of another huge sewer discharge system, similar to the one in San Diego, that Rouleau says likely will be put into use within the next year or so.


Norwesco expected to begin sending its crews down the nine-and-a-half mile tunnel earlier this week to remove manually the 55 salad-bowl-sized metal bulkheads located at the far end. Removing all of them is expected to take about two weeks, Rouleau says.


The purpose of the bulkheads has been to provide redundant protection against ocean water flooding in while construction of the system was being completed. The bulkheads are located in 30-inch-diameter pipes that extend upward from the main tunnel to diffusers, which also are capped and are located in domes on the ocean floor. After Norwesco divers complete the job of crawling up into the pipes and remove the inner bulkheads, the pipeline is to be flooded and the diffuser caps then are to be removed from outside the tunnel so the system can begin releasing treated effluent into the ocean.


Rouleau declines to disclose the value of Norwescos contract on the project, except to say its less than $1 million. The contract is large enough, though, that it allowed the Spokane company to buy four of the expensive Hummers, versatile civilian versions of the Humvee military vehicles, and two custom-built trailers to transport divers and their gear down the pipeline.


Norwescos plan calls for one Hummer and one trailer loaded with equipment, including another Hummer facing the opposite direction, to be lowered by crane down a 400-foot access shaft to the pipeline entrance.


A team of five divers then is to drive the vehicle and the trailer down the pipeline to a point where it narrows, after which three members of the teamwearing breathing apparatus attached by hoses to an air supply on the trailerwill walk the remaining 1,100 feet or so to get to the bulkheads located farthest away. They then will begin working their way back to the vehicle, removing bulkheads as they go.


You can almost see the Hummer as a submarine, with guys deployed out of the submarine, Rouleau says. He adds that although the pipe hasnt been used yet, it will be slimy and there likely will be some water in it.


The workers outside the vehicle will be wearing remote cameras, and the two workers remaining in the vehicle will be able to keep tabs on their progress via video monitors in the Hummer, he says. The vehicle itself will be flooded with supplied oxygen so the workers inside wont need to wear breathing masks.


Because the oxygen levels at the far end of the pipeline are too low not only to support life but also to keep the Hummers engines operating properly, Norwesco had to have systems installed on the diesel-powered vehicles that sample and automatically adjust the amount of oxygen needed for the engines to fire, Rouleau says. Two Spokane companies, K&N Electric Motors Inc. and NexGen Manufacturing & Controls, did an excellent job devising and installing the systems, he says.


Removing all of the bulkheads is expected to take about two weeks, assuming all goes well, he says.


To exit the tunnel after each work shift, the workers will have to unload the trailered Hummer that is pointed back toward the tunnel opening, and load onto the trailer the vehicle they drove down into the pipe. The custom-built trailers can be hitched up from either end.


The second pair of Hummers, the second trailer, and additional divers will be on hand for standby use.


Adding the almost-completed Boston project to its resume should help Norwesco receive additional recognition for its ability to handle difficult jobs, but, Its doubtful one like this will ever come up again, Rouleau says.


Starting at an early age


Rouleau, a 47-year-old Seattle native, learned to scuba dive when he was 14 and attended a commercial diving school in Seattle after graduating from high school. He later went to New Orleans, a job market center for offshore oil rig employment, with the idea of pursuing such work.


He didnt like the New Orleans area, though, and soon returned to Seattle to pursue work as a construction diver in the Puget Sound area.


He moved to Eastern Washington in the late 1970s, after his father, who had been in the metal-finishing business in Seattle, retired and bought a several-hundred-acre ranch near Colville. Rouleau worked for a number of years in real estate sales in Spokane before getting back into the diving business and opening a U.S. subsidiary of Canadian-based Can-Dive Services Ltd., called United Marine Divers, here in 1987.


Although Rouleau had enjoyed working as a diver, and was grateful to have that background, he says he preferred to take on a more managerial role, particularly since a lot of the divers hired by the company were better at diving than I ever was.


Can-Dive closed the U.S. subsidiary in 1990, and Rouleau formed Norwesco the following year, after buying the subsidiarys assets. Who would open a diving company in Spokane, for crying out loud? he asks rhetorically, repeating a question he no doubt has been asked many times before.


Rouleau says, though, that Norwescos success is due partly to staple work it has been able to land at Pacific Northwest dams, such as Hungry Horse, Rocky Reach, and Lower Granite. He claims the Spokane company is one of few construction diving companies that specialize in dam work.


Norwescos offices are located in an industrial building at 3939 E. Boone. Although Rouleau doesnt dive anymore, his office is filled with marine-related decorations, from a large aquarium built into one wall and a large brass diving helmet to assorted fish pictures, a fish lampshade, and a stuffed piranha.


Norwesco opened a one-person office in Vancouver, Wash., earlier this year to pursue work in the Portland-Vancouver area.