City seeks public’s help with ongoing sewer problem

By LOU ANTONELLI

Managing Editor

If you were asked what is a common thing that clogs up waste water pipes, you would probably answer “grease”

And you wouldn’t be wrong. But as a result of changes in household habits over recent years, grease poured down the drain is no longer the most common thing jamming up sewer lines.

“Eighty percent of clogs now are caused by baby wipes,” according to City Utility Director Matt McAdoo.

Grease is an intermittent problem, less serious during warmer months, notes McAdoo. Now that the weather is turning colder, it will become more of a problem as the grease solidifies in the mains. But baby wipes have become an constant and serious problem, and McAdoo and the City of Clarksville are asking for your help.

“Please don’t flush them,” says McAdoo.

Toilet paper is not a problem because it dissolves and is biodegradable, he said. But baby wipes do not dissolve. Even when labeled that they can be flushed down the toilet, “they really can’t,” said McAdoo.

Also called wet wipes, wet towels or moist towelettes, the cleaning products are becoming a problem in sewerage lines nationwide.

Every week the city waste water treatment plant has to collect buckets of them, along with other non-biodegradable products that are flushed which shouldn’t be, said McAdoo, such as condoms, feminine hygiene products and dope bags.

He noted that every week four pumps at the waste water treatment plant will each yield up a five gallon bucket of clogged material, consisting mostly of baby wipes.

The Clarksville sewage plant only has a screen for incoming waste water, notes McAdoo, and not a mechanical device that would separate solids, called a clarifier. Right now the city can’t afford a clarifier, which would cost approximately $200,000. That’s why city employees have to haul out bucketfuls of material clogging up the pumps by hand.

Each month when McAdoo makes his report to the city council, the baby wipe problem is usually at the top of the list for problems with city utilities.

McAdoo, along with the Mayor and city council members, urges you to throw wipes in the trash where they belong and save the wear, tear and man hours needed to deal with them in the waste water system.