Wipes clogging sewer pipes

| August 2, 2014 9:00 PM

BURLEY (AP) - Disposable wipes are clogging the Burley sewer system and costing taxpayers, wastewater workers in the south-central Idaho city say.

Wastewater Director Dee Hodge said crews are taking out big balls of the pre-moistened towelettes often advertised as flushable.

"The wipes are killing us," Stormy Oldham, the city's wastewater collection operator, told The Times-News. "They get tangled up in our equipment and jam our pumps, they get caught around the tree roots in the sewer lines and they don't disintegrate."

Workers find the wipes wrapped around impellers of the pumps at a lift station, and have to use a pocket knife to cut them away.

"Many of the wipes say they are flushable, but they're not," said Hodge. "The problem has really gotten a lot worse because there are more types of wipes on the market."

"It's an added expense to the taxpayers and causes wear and tear on the city's equipment and pumps," Oldham said.

Crews divide the city into quarters and clean one section of sewer pipes each year. The city has about 50 miles of sewer pipes.

"We can't see into the pipes, so by the time someone is having a problem, it's too late," Oldham said.

Workers are worried that a blockage could cause a sewer system in a neighborhood to back up.

"People get pretty upset if they have personal property that gets ruined and there is a health risk involved with raw sewage," Hodge said. "We have to make people aware of the damage this can cause."

The National Association of Clean Water Agencies, which represents 300 wastewater agencies, said late last year that it had been hearing complaints about wipes from sewer systems big and small for about four years.

That roughly coincides with the ramped-up marketing of the "flushable cleansing cloths" as a cleaner, fresher option than dry toilet paper alone.

A trade group says wipes are a $6 billion-a-year industry, with sales of consumer wipes increasing nearly 5 percent a year since 2007 and expected to grow at a rate of 6 percent annually for the next five years.