You want to see the wipes? On a recent morning at the R.M. Clayton Water Reclamation Center, a wastewater treatment facility on Bolton Road, Quintin Blackwell lifted an aluminum ladder out of a puddle of sewage water and set it upright over a large dumpster.
The site manager pointed at the dripping steps, which oozed like something out of a horror movie.
Hesitantly, I climbed up the ladder, iPhone in hand, to look down and photograph the pile of used, chewed-up, disposable cleaning wipes that had been dropped down Atlanta's collective toilets — a Mount Flushmore of sickening size. (View the video: http://bit.ly/1JfJfZD)
These sturdy fibrous wipes have become Atlanta Watershed Management’s biggest nemesis in recent years, ranking right up there with that historic enemy of sewage pipes everywhere — kitchen grease.
Most wipes don’t disintegrate. They clog and snarl the city’s sewer tunnels, screens and pumps. Equipment repairs to fight the wipes build-up has cost Atlanta millions of dollars. Special blades to chop them up have been bought and installed. When centrifuges — machines that manage sludge — have to be replaced, they cost $2 million each, says Lillian Govus, spokesman for Atlanta Watershed. The city had to replace a couple recently after wipes and grease burned them out.
“It used to be that grease far outweighed any other cause” of clogs, Jo Ann Macrina, Atlanta Watershed commissioner, told me recently. “Now there’s almost a 50-50 split between grease and rags or debris.”
“Debris” is the broader term used in the industry. Cleaning wipes are the main culprit.
Apparently, many residents believe the cleaning wipes found on supermarket shelves are flushable, because they are moist and handy. A large majority of them are not. They are not bio-degradable and are not made to be flushed, and they say so on the packaging — though often in fine print, and some more visibly than others.
The problem is compounded by a blooming line of products: baby wipes, hand and face wipes, feminine hygiene wipes, bathroom wipes, kitchen wipes, makeup-remover wipes.
When residents flush them down the commode, they complicate a problem Atlanta has spent decades and billions of dollars trying to fix, under two federal consent decrees issued in the late 1990s. When wastewater machinery and tunnels and pipes get clogged, backups occur. When a backup spills into a stream, it means a fine, not to mention pollution, and a gross example of human carelessness.
“If a wipe makes it all the way through our pipe system and doesn’t get stuck anywhere, it will eventually make it to a wastewater treatment plant,” Macrina says. “The first thing at a wastewater treatment plant is our screening machine. And it will get caught up in the screening machine, and it will block our screen. It’s very difficult to get a cloth off that has adhered to that screen.”
Macrina estimates Atlanta Watershed has reduced the number of spills annually from 700 to 800 to about 150 over the last 15 years. “This is all about spills,” she says, “not polluting our natural streams with sewage.”
What defines a spill? Just a very little.
“It is sewage getting out of our piping system and making it to a natural stream — any amount that gets to a stream,” Macrina says. “We analyze the cause of those spills. It’s important to understand what is causing them, and to realize each and every one of us plays a role in this. Because if it’s grease and wipes” — which constitute about 75 percent of clogs — “then we need to really educate people.”
So remember this: When you flush a wipe, you’re essentially draining money out of your wallet or purse.
“You and me, that’s who it comes down to,” Macrina says. “We have to change our behavior.”
She recommends rolling baby wipes in a used diaper and trashing them. Put kitchen grease in a glass jar and dispose of it. “It’ll make a huge difference.”
It may even save ratepayers some money. Macrina was happy to report that among major cities, Seattle now has the highest water fees. Atlanta has dropped to second.
Jo Ann Macrina is commissioner of Atlanta’s Department of Watershed Management.
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