CHICKASHA – The City Council authorized funds to repair a critical piece of equipment at the wastewater treatment plant that is vital in preventing rags and disposable wipes from gumming up the works.
The council approved a sole-source expenditure of $52,389 to replace the broken chain that drives the bar screen in the headworks at the municipal sewage treatment plant.
A bar screen is a f ilter that removes solid objects from wastewater. It’s a type of coa rse screen that blocks rags, plastics, papers, metals, etc., that enter a treatment plant. As the name implies, it usually consists of vertical steel bars spaced 1 to 3 inches apart. A bar screen is usually the f irst step in a wastewater treatment system; it is followed by additional screens and treatments to remove other pollutants.
Because of the broken chain, “We are bypassing the bar screen at this time,” Derrick McDaniel, U.S. Water Utility Group project manager at Chickasha’s wastewater treatment plant, informed the city council. “We are keeping a close eye on what is coming in and catching all the debris possible to keep the plant operating properly,” he wrote.
However, “This is an emergency. We have a lot of rags coming into the plant and pumps.”
Repairing the broken equipment “seems to be a specialized job” which will require “the authorized company that services this system” – Automatic Engineering, a Cogent company from Tulsa – to bring a cr ane to remove the system and fix it, McDaniel said. The bar screen was installed in 2018, he to ld Southwest Ledger.
Disposable wipes have a variety of uses – from sanitary cleansing to make-up removal. However, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends never flushing disinfectant wipes, baby wipes and paper towels.
The problem with wet wipes is not that they won’t flush through the toilet drain, Roto-Rooter says. “The real trouble begins downstream in the sewer.”
These items do not break down in sewer or septic systems and can damage a home’s internal plumbing as well as the local wastewater collection systems.
Flushing wipes can clog a toilet and/or create sewage backups into a home or neighborhood. Blockages often occur in residential and municipal sewer systems from accumulations of disposable wipes in wastewater treatment systems.
Even supposedly “flushable” wipes do not readily dissolve in water like toilet paper does. Instead, they can get stuck in bends in the pipes or cling to grease buildup, causing clogs that lead to sewer backups and/or spills.
And when antibacterial and baby wipes and other items aren’t creating fatbergs in sanitary sewer lines, they are wreaking havoc on wastewater treatment plants. Those materials don’t break down in the sewer system like toilet paper, so they arrive at sewage treatment plants and jam mechanisms, choke pumps and break critical machinery.
The fibers in wipes can clog pumps and cause them to overheat or burn up, Roto-Rooter explains. Those industrial- grade pumps are expensive, and taxpayers are picking up the tab every time one goes down.
In Vancouver, Washington, sewer officials blamed wipes for a problem that caused the city to spend more than $1 million in f ive years to replace three large sewage pumps and eight smaller ones that were routinely congested.
Disposable wipes “can plug our pumps and wrap around the shaft on our pumps,” one wastewater treatment plant employee said.
Officials of water/ sewer utilities nationwide complain that flushable wipes jam pumps, block screens, and obstruct equipment at sewage treatment plants. The problem costs U.S. utilities up to $1 billion annually, according to the National Association of Clean Water Agencies.