When you push the button or handle to flush a toilet, you probably stop thinking about what’s going down — but an engineer from Kitchener, Ontario thinks maybe you should.
Barbara Robinson says she wants to change the national sanitation code so that all washrooms have a bin in each stall. This would encourage people to throw away toiletries and wipes instead of flushing them down the flush, which in turn can clog drains.
“It’s a huge problem,” said Robinson, founder of Norton Engineering, in an interview with CBC Kitchener-Waterloo’s Morning Edition. “There are blockages in the sewers, mountains of fat, pumping stations are closed and all the material ends up in the sewage treatment plant.”
They discard these products because they have no other choice.– Barbara Robinson, engineer
Robinson, who used to work for the City of Kitchener, said people have been known to flush things down the toilet because they didn’t have direct access to a trash can.
“There’s a trash can outside by the sinks, but not at every booth. So women who are out in public in their office or at the gym and who are menstruating have to somehow get the product from the booth to the beach.” placed a public trash can in the main part of the washroom. We get small bags for it. However, in my research, I found that we know women never leave the cabin with that little bag,” said Robinson.
“They flush these products away because they have no other choice.”
Halifax Water released this photo of its sewage system. It shows flushable wipes clogging the system’s pipes in July 2022. (Halifax Water)
The solution? Robinson says the move is to change the National Plumbing Code in Canada – it doesn’t currently require all toilets to have a trash can in every stall.
Blocked drains are an ongoing problem in the Waterloo area
Dan Meagher, acting manager of Hydrogeology and Water Programs for the Waterloo Region, said that unflushable items going down the toilet are a problem affecting sewage drains in almost every jurisdiction.
“At our sewage pumping stations and treatment plants, we are finding that the pumps are becoming clogged and requiring emergency shutdowns and maintenance to get the pumps running again,” he told CBC News in an email. “This may also require replacing pumps, screens and other equipment.”
He didn’t have an exact estimate of how much the region would spend on this type of work, but said maintenance, like an annual inspection and a flushing program to keep the pipes clean, would cost all taxpayers.
In 2016, the community of Woolwich reminded residents to throw away their facial tissues and baby wipes as community workers had to deal with the accumulation of items on a daily basis.
At the time, Barry Baldasaro, head of the municipality’s Public Works Department, said the cloths did the most damage when they got stuck to the rotating blades in sewage pumps. If the pumps become blocked or clogged, the pumping station switches off automatically and must be flushed.
It was also a problem in cities across the country, including:
Kitchener engineer Barbara Robinson designed washroom signs to remind people what not to flush, including cloths and dental floss. (Kate Bueckert/CBC)
Marissa Mitton, chief of Calgary’s wastewater operations and maintenance department, told CBC Calgary that “in most cases, we see an accumulation of non-flushable items, including flushable wipes,” when crews respond to these calls.
Meagher said it’s important to remind residents to never flush away cloths marked “flushable,” grease, grease and other items not intended to go down the toilet.
“Also, it can be very costly for individuals when cloths flushed at home cause clogs in the pipes leading from their house to the larger pipes in the distribution system,” he said. “Fixing these clogs is at your own expense.”
www.cbc.ca
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/plumbing-clogged-toilets-pipes-waterloo-region-1.6898718
