Diving in contaminated waters in Newfoundland has been a hot topic for quite some time. The bungling of this issue by the department of Occupational Health and Safety stems back to Aug. of 1999 when my company had a contract to do pile repairs at the Seal Head Wharf in Corner Brook.

The department interceded after the contract was awarded from PWGSC and arbitrarily deemed the worksite contaminated without any formal testing based on an incident of an ear infection the year previous when work was conducted on a different part of the same project. That work was carried out on SCUBA. Diving in Newfoundland up to that point was like the wild west. Diving in this province was not proactively inspected by OH&S because they did not have the expertise. At the work site the previous year the work was conducted on open circuit SCUBA by recreational divers employed by a diving company with over thirty years of experience.

We proposed to the department that we conduct the work with Full Face Masks with dry suits having attached latex hood and locking cuff rings with no skin contact to the water utilizing SCUBA. They verbally accepted and asked us to submit the contingency plan, wireless SSB radio diver to diver diver to surface coms and the work scope indicated. I would expect all divers know that Surface Supply is the only acceptable method from a CSA Z-275.2. perspective but the regulatory authority has the right to vary or ammend any part of the standard. Surface Supply was investigated as a mode of operation but with the limitations of the contract deeming no hindrance to shipping, no occupying of loading space on the dock etc... we wanted to use SCUBA. Operating a surface supply station below the dock was hazardous as C-state changed quickly and operating space was limited. Water depth was no more than ten feet and the work basically consisted of tightening bolts.

The work started with all necessary documentation submitted to the dep't. ten days before any work commenced. Work continued untill I met the inspector in charge at a chance meeting in St.John's. He was their so called diving expert who was deemed so because he had a recreational SCUBA course. At that time he told me that he had not even reviewed the plan though it was on his desk for three weeks. Obviously it could not have been that important or he would have called about it. It was not standard practice for the dep't to recieve diving plans up untill this point. No one submitted them to the dept.

From this point forward the dept. crawled up our butts to wreak all kinds of havoc. They arrived at site to do an initial inspection where all things were fine according to their initial report. The next day they started to issue orders about work site delineation, minor contraventions to the plan nitpicking small things which continued for six days all the while trying to dump the responsibility to PWGSC for diver safety but they would not accept it as CSA deems the regulatory authority responsible for diver safety and so they are. They just did not want to accept it or be liable for their opinion.

Eventually they shut down the site for poor lighting with diving issues to be addressed which included an upgrade to surface supply. A new plan had to be submitted indicating the change and compliance with some CSA issues. In order to comply with with their request I purchased universal blocks and a divers panel and the proper equipment for surface supply and all divers were voluntarily replaced with SSU(CSA Z275-4) including a Cat I diving supervisor and a plan submitted indicating these things was given to OH&S. The diver upgrade was voluntary in order to meet any future requirements of the department. If they started quoting CSA Z-275.4 which only has force of law unless adopted by the province I wanted to be ready for it.. After these requirements were met they then told us the plan was refused and that the issue of suitable helmet with locking seal also had to be addressed. Now the system that I know that meets the requirement is a Superlite with a bare minimum of a locking latex neck seal. As a bare minimum it is diving industry standard that the FFM with a latex hood seal is acceptable to use in a contaminated environment but it does not meet the requirements of CSA surface supply or not. Again this is where I incorrectly depended on the department to issue variances but they would not as CSA is only a guideline at this point and not mandated as law. I also recieved a letter stating that all future diving would have to be in strict compliance with CSA Z-275.2. This was the requirement for my company.

I finally had enough and asked to have a meeting with the Deputy Minister of Labour who OH&S fall under to ask what in the world I have to comply with because I had already recieved departmental approval twice and now they were changing the requirements once more. At this meeting the deputy minister told me they are not in the gear approval business as they are not experts and if I can find a Diving Safety Specialist who can recommend the equipment that would go a long ways to establishing my equipment as suitable. I did find a DSS that very same afternoon who I explained my equipment to and he says it sounds suitable and makes the comment that if he keeps on getting consulted about this particular job he is going to want to start getting paid for it. Apparently the government inspector (The recreational SCUBA diver) is seeking out his advice in order to see if the equipment is suitable. This guy also has some KMB band masks for sale and is pushing to sell them. Any way he says the system sounds fine and he will inspect it and recommend it. I called the dept. that afternoon to tell them the progress I was making and that approval would soon be coming.

Shortly after the company I was subcontracting to asked me to buy some KMB band masks as this will make the site suitable. I said that no it would not because KMB band masks are not suitable from a CSA perspective and that is what I have to comply with. Apparently the OH&S inspector in consultation with the DSS is recommending KMB's as suitable for a contaminated work site. The company in question bought them against my advice which were purchased from this DSS. In the meanwhile the inspector has called the department to tell

them he is in over his head and needs outside help to conduct further inspections of the site. Lo and behold who do they employ but this same DSS who has sold unsuitable equipment to the site which is in bad shape and eventually had to be replaced. He is coming out to do a site inspection for equipment that he has sold to the site and tells me that he can no longer inspect my equipment as it would be a conflict of interest to be working for the dept. That is pretty lame as he now is inspecting and recommending to the gov't equipment not recogonised as CSA suitable that he has sold to the site.

It is interesting that one of the divers using the KMB's developed an ear infection within a week after starting to use it. This was the same type of injury that OH&S deemed the site contaminated months earlier and were purportedly trying to prevent further incidents of.

In the DSS's report he recommends to gov't to issue a variance for the use of KMB band masks as this is the only thing that will make the site CSA compliant but the gov't never does it because then they have to admit liability. He also recommends that any divers employed on the site be a minimum of CSA Z275.4 Surface Supply Restricted qualified. This precluded me from diving on site as I don't hold that qualification at that time. Surface supply divers in the province at that time merely needed to attain the qualifying time from CSA275.4 with no formal training to work. This continued for a couple of years after that.

Any way the company I was subbing to asked me to decline from the contract as they felt there was a bit of a rub there between OH&S and myself. Things could not progress smoothly as long as I was on the site. I had to agree as I had done so much to improve the site and the dept. was just throwing up obstacles at every turn to make things impossible. In the end they contravened that another company could use lesser equipment than I was being told that I had to comply with.

In an effort to keep my company alive I attended SSR training in Nanaimo, B.C. to meet the requirements of the DSS recommendations for the site. In the meanwhile in Newfoundland SS diving continued by unschooled On the Job training commercial divers but I was told by the DSS that all divers would have to be CSA 275.4 compliant from that point forward. I returned to Newfoundland where the job was still ongoing and approached the contractor about getting some experience time in the water and was told yes. Once OH&S found out they refused me access saying that all divers must now be category 1. CSA 275.4 states that the standard does not have force of law unless adopted by the jurisdiction having reponsibility for diver safety. At that point neither CSA standard was adopted as law.

Further to this the federal gov't did get involved and all divers on federal sites must be Cat 1. However the provincial standard says that SSR is suitable. They are the regulatory authority responsible for diver safety and diver qualifications have to be suitable to their satisfaction

At this time there is legal battle ensuing from my company and OH&S. It has taken five years and almost $45,000 to bring this matter to some conclusion. This is why I found it so strange that there is a headline stating that contaminated water issues are heating up on the east coast. They have been around a long time and the government is only starting to do their job.

The end result was that we lost the contract because of governement interference into an area they had no idea what they were doing. If they had deemed CSA strict compliance as the mode to operate from the beginning we could have invested in that equipment and become the premier dive company in Newfoundland for intervention for diving into contaminated environments. Instead it ended up in loss of contract, an investment of almost $70,000 in equipment trying to meet a standard that the government had no idea what to apply or what their responsibilities were.

In conclusion I would like to say to diving contractors that when dealing with all gov't dept.s and OH&S particularly, get any variances printed to paper, get signatures in the daily log of any site inspections and treat them with suspicion as they like you should CYOA.

Diver safety is the primary issue. Sewage type of contaminated environments have several types of potentially infectious viruses that cause Highly Credible Gastrointestinal Illness(HCGI), Cholera, Sceptecemia(potentially fatal), Klebisella Pneumonai(potentially fatal devastating type of Pneumonia), Hepatitus A and B, potentially C and dysentery to name a few. Open circuit SCUBA is not allowed in this type of environment because with an open type regulator every time you breathe through it, any contaminated water is potentially aerosolized and introduced into the respiratory tract and the lungs. Once introduced this way into the body or ingestion of contaminated water bacteria viruses or dinoflagellites have an opportunity to colonise and potentially cause death. I have become a so called expert in Contaminated Water diving by chance. I highly recommend a book by Stephen Barsky called Diving in High Risk Environments to all divers. There is an accompanying CD to use as a training aid. It gives all the information that contractors and divers should know to be involved in contaminated work sites. Two things that I have found out is that DSS's may not necessarily know all of the facts in this area as it is still relatively new and that legal advice is very very expensive.

Does any body know if SSR divers are allowed on Federal sites anywhere else in Canada? What does the SSR qualification entitle you to work at?

Bob Bartlett - June 2004 - Newfoundland.