Products labeled as flushable will continue to be a concern among municipalities and treatment facilities dealing with overflows, damaged equipment and increased maintenance costs. Thiensville, Wis., is one community dealing with more and more wipe products in its system.

“Increasingly, probably over the last four or five years, we’ve been getting more and more wipe-type products, both ones that are advertised as flushable and ones that are advertised as disposable, but not particularly flushable,” says Andy LaFond, Thiensville director of public works. 

With a population of 3,200, Thiensville owns and operates 18 miles of 8- to 15-inch-diameter sewers. It is one of several communities that make up the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD). “We serve 28 communities that each own and operate their own sewer systems, which is about 3,000 miles of sewer pipe,” says Bill Graffin, MMSD public information manager. “They then empty into the regional sewers that we own and operate. We have about 300 miles of sewer pipe.” 

Nondispersible products, those labeled as flushable and some nonflushable, have been causing increased problems due to the size of the system in Thiensville. LaFond references a Consumer Reports study comparing disintegration times of toilet paper and wipes where a mixer in a beaker simulated the swirling action of a toilet flushing. He says toilet paper dissolved in 30 seconds, but wipes advertised as flushable took up to three days. 

“With a smaller system, with a localized pump station, things get there well before three days,” says LaFond. “We used to be able to pump anything that fit through our screening system, but now we can’t push it through anymore. We have to remove it and put it in 5-gallon buckets and haul it out, or it gets wound around pump impellers and gets stuck in the check valves.” 

The issue was recently brought to the forefront because LaFond was reviewing the budget with the village board. “I was just making them aware that in the future there would probably be a larger capital expenditure to put in a grinding system at the pump station,” he says. “The intent in the meantime was to do a public information campaign to let people know the difficulties they’re causing. Of course the first place they can cause an issue is in their own lateral where the sewage can back up into their own house.” 

Education efforts to bring the public up to date on proper disposal procedures are in the beginning stage, and Thiensville is taking notes from other local communities facing similar issues. “I got in touch with a few local communities, like Waukesha, and they’ve got a campaign in a flyer they started called Keep Wipes Out of Pipes,” says LaFond. 

Nondispersibles in the small sewer system cause problems with pump equipment as well as creating added costs for maintenance. However, the products that pass through the bar screens and make it to one of two wastewater treatment facilities in Milwaukee are not causing major problems. 

“It’s an issue at the local level,” says LaFond. “Once you get into more of the collection system and the bigger areas like MMSD with higher flows with more turbulence and bigger pumping equipment it’s not an issue.” 

Pat Obenauf, P.E., MMSD manager, agrees that this is an issue affecting local communities rather than the larger wastewater treatment plants. “We haven’t had any situations where the nonflushable products clogged any of our pipes or caused us to lose any equipment or capacity causing overflows,” he says. 

Graffin says the district will do what they can to help the communities. “It’s really something the local communities are going to have to deal with the most,” he says. “If we heard from our communities that they needed help getting the word out on this, we would do it in a heartbeat.” 

Curbing the amount of nonflushable products in the system will be done locally, but both sides agree that education needs to lead the movement. “I think it would be good to educate people because the people that are going to suffer the most are individual homeowners,” says Obenauf.