Confined Space

The water and wastewater sector does not get the public attention that construction or manufacturing get. There are no skyscrapers and no front‑page industrial accidents for most of what utilities do. But this is the sector where I see some of the most preventable fatalities in my expert witness practice, and the failure pattern is almost always the same: the work feels routine, the hazards are invisible, and the rescue resources are nowhere near the people doing the work. A

As a safety professional and expert witness, I get the call about confined‑space incidents more often than any other category of fatality I review. The fact pattern is almost always the same. A worker enters a manhole, vault, tank, lift station, or pit. Something goes wrong inside — usually a low‑oxygen atmosphere or a buildup of hydrogen sulfide. A coworker sees them collapse and climbs in to help. Within minutes, two people are dead instead of one. OSHA has been telling us