Waste Water Pipeline Inspection

Do you have high risk Waste Water, or Force Main pipelines?

In a report released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), since 2003 hundreds of municipal sewer authorities have been fined for violations, including spills that make people sick, threaten local drinking water and kill aquatic animals and plants. Fines totaling $35 million were assessed.

The report indicates, 3 billion to 10 billion gallons of raw sewage spill accidentally every year, from the 1.2 million miles of waste water pipelines snaking underground across North America. Causes of these spills include corrosion pits/cracks in aging pipes.

Some examples are:

  • A 42″ pipe ruptured, spilling about 20 million gallons of sewage into the Pennsylvania’s Schuylkill River.
  • A damaged pipe spilled 700,000 to 1.3 million gallons of human feces and other waste into the Grand Lagoon at Panama Beach, Fla.

Don’t let this happen to you! PICA can help identify the condition of your waste water pipelines using it’s suite of patented state of the art Remote Field Technology (RFT) See Snake Tools. Join the growing list of water and waste water companies around the world who have used our Direct Condition Analysis (DCA) service to assess the condition of their pipelines. To date PICA has inspected over 660,000′ (200 kms) of water mains using the RFT technique.


The See Snake Tool solution.

There is a demand in the market for improved probability of detection (P.O.D.) and exceptional accuracy for sizing of corrosion pits. Competing Tools that use Magnetic Flux Leakage (MFL) require intimate contact with the pipe wall in order to achieve acceptable flaw sizing. Unfortunately many pipelines have internal deposits of FOG (Fats Oil and Grease), scale or sand, and others are lined with cement mortar, epoxy or polyethylene, preventing the effective use of MFL Tools. See Snake technology, on the other hand, requires no contact with the pipe wall, and can measure through internal deposits, debris and non-magnetic liners. In fact, See Snake Tools have a clearance of up to 2″ (50mm) to allow passage of the Tools without extensive pipe cleaning.


The See Snake Tool advantage.

  •  Non-contact NDT method.
  • Equally sensitive to internal and external flaws.
  • Complete coverage at fast inspection speeds.
  • Accurate results that identify both the severity and location of areas of wall thinning.
  • Novel mechanical design can accommodate ID variations as well as traverse sharp bends and elbows.
  • Tethered or Free-Swimming, the Tools are completely autonomous robots that have memory, odometers and batteries on board.

Semi-automatic Analysis Software

See Snake data analysis is semi-automatic and a report is created as the analysis is being performed. Depending on the line condition, analysis and reporting can be done in the field, but is usually started the next day, off-site, to reduce labour costs.

The multi-channel See Snake Tools inspect 360° of the pipe for the full length of the pipeline. The data is displayed as color maps, strip-chart logs and voltage planes. The screen capture below shows two pits at 6 o’clock (bottom of the pipe) that are 40% and 60% deep. These indications can be seen on the charts as horizontal jogs in the signal, and as dark patches in the colour map.