Bend’s climate-conscious sewer line assessment tool will bring music to your ears

(Update: Adding video)

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- Have you been hearing music in your pipes? It's not your imagination, or a noisy neighbor. It's the city of Bend's new climate-conscious effort to help clear any sewer line clogs.

The Sewer Line Rapid Assessment Tool (SL RAT) plays loud music to determine if pipes are clogged.

"It's a tone that once you hear it, it'll stick with you," said collections system supervisor Justin Young, "But it's got a musical tune to it. It can be very apparent. It's no secret that there's noises going through the sewer lines."

A transponder is placed in one manhole, and emits the sound waves through the sewer lines. The receiver at the the other hole takes the sound waves and calculates them into a score to determine if there's a clog.

"The assessment score that the SL RAT produces will give us a score, zero through 10 -- 10 being that the opening of the pipe is fully clear, with no blockages. And as it goes down to zero being the worst, where there's a full blockage in the pipe."

The new sound wave tactic is part of the city's Climate Action Plan, which aims to reduce community-wide fossil fuel use by 40% by 2030.

"This greatly reduces our water usage, fuel usage, reduces our carbon footprint by pulling heavy equipment off the roads and having them out less frequently," Young said. "We're able to work a little bit smarter and use data to decide and focus our cleaning efforts."