SIMI VALLEY : Crews Dig Up Pipe to Retrieve Camera

Simi Valley work crews had to dig up a sewer line to retrieve a remote-controlled video camera that was being used to inspect a blocked pipeline, a city official said Thursday.

John Watring, assistant director of public works, said the camera got stuck Tuesday when it fell through a hole in an eight-inch pipeline in the 4500 block of Industrial Street.

The city had paid a contractor $784 for the use of the camera, and the cost of digging up and fixing the broken pipe came to $3,000, he said. He said he did not know how much the equipment cost.

Watring said the city would have needed to excavate the pipe to fix the hole even if the camera had not become stuck. “This is unusual,” Watring said. “We didn’t lose (the camera). It just became stuck, and that’s why we had to retrieve it.”

The camera is the same type of equipment that the City Council agreed last week to purchase for $134,000. The cost includes a television monitor and cables in addition to the remote-controlled camera mounted on a floating platform. The equipment is expected to arrive at the end of November.

City officials originally approved the equipment so work crews could discover the source of a problem without excavating. The mobile video system can travel through pipes as narrow as four inches.