No Wipes in the Pipes - Damages occuring to sewer systems

flushed wipes cost sewer system

City of Negaunee staff ask the residents to not flush the now popular “wet wipes,” despite some being labeled “flushable.”

“The labeling is misleading,” said city manager Nate Heffron. “Baby wipes, adult wipes—all of them cause issues in our sewer system.”

According to a piece done by NPR, the buildups can damage machinery and back up the entire sewer system, all the way to your bathroom. Technical services manager Bill Cyrus, who works at a plant in Texas, says that in 2015, maintenance and hauling the waste to the landfill cost Dallas taxpayers $165,000. “That’s nothing compared to the millions spent in 2013 removing a fatberg from London’s sewers,” NPR reporter Lauren Silverman’s aid. “Fatbergs — massive globs of congealed cooking fat held together with the help of wet wipes — have formed in cities like Baltimore too.”

The National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA) claims that related complaints about sewer system problems have spiked in past years, which coincides with when the flushable moist toilettes entered the market in about 2007, AP reported. To prove this hypothesis, sewer officials in Vancouver, Washington, dyed various types of flushable wipes and sent them through more than a mile of sewer pipes to see what happened. Turns out, other than receiving a few rips and tears along the way, the wipes remained basically intact.

According to Medical Daily, the wet wipe industry does not have a clear definition of what “flushable” means, leaving wastewater plant managers and sewer system maintenance crews with a costly mess. NACWA puts the total cost of sewer problems caused by wipes, paper towels and feminine hygiene products in the billions of dollars nationwide. To help keep clean-up and maintenance costs down in our city, officials ask that residents simply put the wipes in the garbage.