They’re convenient and offer instant hygiene. But wet wipes are wreaking havoc with the drainage system, even though most people seem to know they should not be flushed down the toilet.
The Water Services Corporation is spending a considerable amount of money clearing the sewers of wet wipes and is appealing to the public to stop throwing them down the toilet.
“Wet wipes – both baby and make-up ones – are a disaster for us as they are clogging up entire areas. We remove skiploads each and every day from the Ta’ Barkat treatment plant,” CEO Richard Bilocca said.
“This week two basements in Buġibba were flooded with half a metre of raw sewage because the system was blocked.”
The corporation conducted a customer survey on the wipes and 95 per cent of the respondents said they knew they were not supposed to flush them away – but many people clearly still do.
There is fierce debate internationally about wipes labelled as flushable. The manufacturers claim that they disintegrate but sewage authorities say they break down too slowly and collect congealed fat as they go through the system.
Monster clogs, sometimes called ‘fatbergs’, recently caused chaos in places like London and Charleston in South Carolina, with tons of blockages having to be cleared out of the sewers.
The cost? £100 million a year in the UK alone. The water companies say that 80 per cent of the problem comes from wet wipes.
The water industry in Britain had conducted tests on the ‘flushable’ wipes in conditions simulating actual sewer flows – and all the brands failed to disintegrate. Both sides are now working to try to find products that do not contain plastic and which are more sewer-friendly.
Wet wipes – both baby and make-up ones – are a disaster for us as they are clogging up entire areas
The corporation has other headaches caused by illegal dumping in the sewage system. Mr Bilocca warned that it was clamping down on abuse: the Discharge Permit Unit carried out 5,193 inspections covering all types of industries in 2018.
But what can be done once breaches are identified? They are regulated by what he described as “archaic legislation based on criminal procedures”, so the corporation is proposing a new framework to the government which would make it easier to tackle infringements.
It also needs better tools to identify problems in the first place – ideally before they become a crisis. Part of a €3 million EU-funded project being completed over the coming few months will result in the installation of live monitoring stations across the web of sewers.
“Automated samplers at crucial nodes will send information to the control room, which will be able to flag any spikes in real time. We can then dispatch a team who would be able to work backwards to identify the source. You will be able to trace the culprits – and non-compliance will not be tolerated,” he warned.
Sewers – and sewage treatment plants – are far less forgiving than one would assume. When a plant gets blocked, it automatically shuts down, pouring 250 cubic metres an hour of raw sewage into the sea.
This happened recently in Gozo, where illegally dumped farm slurry had accumulated in the drains. The system shut down for days, requiring round-the-clock work to clear.
“It is no longer difficult to find the culprits. We know the drainage system and know all the tricks. If it is coming from a particular area, it is easy to identify the source.
“I have sympathy for the farmers who had all sorts of new rules imposed on them without real solutions being offered to help them comply. Now we can at least offer an alternative, first in Gozo and eventually in Malta: they can ‘dry out’ the slurry. From the equivalent of a bowser of liquid waste, you get a skipful of solid manure which can then be re-used by the farmers.
“Foreign scientists are currently fine-tuning this set up, and in four to six weeks it will be as near perfect as possible in terms of efficiency.”