Profile: Rueben Morales

Rueben Morales looks into the sludgy depths of Houston’s northside Sewage Treatment facility, where he and other workers are replacing failing pumps.

Rueben Morales and his colleagues are the masters of Houston’s underworld — the dense warren of pipes and tunnels that form its 650-square-mile storm sewer network and sewage system.

Morales is one of 3,900 workers at the City of Houston’s Department of Public Works. He and his colleagues work underground to clear blockages in storm sewers, repair broken water mains and replace pumps at the City’s sewage treatment plants.

This is no easy task. Houston is one of the fastest-growing major cities in America with a complex water system. The City is frequently pounded by tropical storms, such as Tropical Storm Allison, which dropped 33 inches of rain on parts of downtown, killed 23 Texans and caused $6 billion in damage in 2001.

Morales and other Public Works personnel fight flooding and back-ups by climbing down into sewers to remove debris from the City’s more than 100,000 storm water inlets and hundreds of miles of pipe. A major enemy: grease dumped into the system from kitchen sinks. When thousands of Houstonians dump cooking grease down the drain it accumulates in the city’s sewers and clogs them like giant arteries. The City of Houston spent nearly $5 million in 2006 unclogging plugged sewer lines. The unappetizing job of scooping giant gobs of stinky grease out of Houston sewers goes to city workers at the department of Public Works, where sewer maintenance workers make about $8.47 per hour. By contrast, a shift supervisor at one of Houston’s Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream parlors can make $9 per hour with tips. Which would you rather scoop?

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Profile: Rueben Morales