Alabama fatbergs cause costly sewer system clogs

Is it just me or does that look a bit narrow to be the shite tube for the entire city

Flushable just means if will leave your house, doesn’t mean you should do it. Paper towels are just as much flushable and no ones flushed them. Muh regulation needed

"Flushable wipes" aren't flushable. Plumbers have been saying that for years. The manufacturers need to stop printing that on their packaging.

Of course a liberal paper would never place any environmental detriment on masks.

Well.. With toilet paper nowhere to be found that time last year.. What else are people supposed to use?

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Of course a liberal paper would never place any environmental detriment on masks.

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"This isn't a COVID issue, East Coast Band."

"Well, it isn't literally."

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Just over a year later, following the fifth wettest June on record for coastal Alabama, local TV media reports attributed some of the stormwater overflows to face masks being flushed down toilets and clogging the pipes

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Storm water pipes and sewer pipes are two totally different and separate things. Storm water will only infiltrate sewer lines during extremely heavy rains, and that's through unsealed manhole lids and cracks/breaks in the sewer lines.

That being said, "flushable" wipes and grease are the two worst things for sewer systems. Wipes do not dissolve as advertised and will get hung up on any root growing through a sewer line or any jagged crack in the piping, then gather more and more wipes and grease over time until a massive clog occurs.

Your local wastewater treatment plant spends BY FAR the most time and money trying to efficiently remove grease and wipes from the lines and their multiple traps on their plant, and their whole maintenance department spends every day out on the streets cleaning sewer lines in order to prevent these things from building up. It's a constant, never ending, extremely expensive battle.

The department I worked for in my younger years was a municipality with about 100k citizens total, and they had a 50 person department with about $15 million in specialized machines and trucks all dedicated to simply cleaning, maintaining, and repairing sewer lines. It is much bigger business than anyone ever realizes.

TLDR - don't flush wipes or pour grease down the drain, simply throw both away. You wouldn't believe the massive scale of the grease traps and wipe grinders at your local wastewater treatment plant, but even still wipes and grease are responsible for every clog or overflow that happens in the collection system piping on the way back to the plant.

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What else are people supposed to use?

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A quick addition for anyone.

Looks like a damn bedsheet in that pipe!

Just put some pressure to it and blow them things out.