LEWES, Del. - No wipes in the pipes. The Lewes Board of Public Works is urging people to stop flushing items down the toilet that don't belong, like wipes. This stems from a clogged pump that malfunctioned over the weekend near the Savannah Road drawbridge.
Pump station #4 malfunctioned, which resulted in untreated wastewater entering into the canal. The amount of wastewater that leaked is still under investigation, but there is a bypass pump in place, and that backup is going to stay there until the entire station is unclogged. If that backup fails, lift station #4 has two additional bypass pumps as a safety measure.
On Sunday, people in Lewes were asked to conserve water as one of the city's pumps was down. The board of public works says non-flushable items like syringes and wipes including disinfectant wipes clogged the pipes.
“This is ragging, rags collecting, we use the terms rags loosely because it could be a piece of towel, in many cases its wipes that are used,” said Preston Lee, president of the Lewes BPW.
Preston Lee says too many people are using “flushable wipes,” which he says are anything but. Since they've increased in popularity, Lee says they have had problems at the treatment plant, and pumping stations. He says they are damaging.
“Everybody, not just the Lewes BPW … is having the same problem. In fact, we understood the county had a backup that did not overflow into a water body, the same day in one of their systems,” said Lee.
Lee says wipes were not intended to be flushed, even if the packaging does say flushable. So next time you use them, throw them in the trash.
Bruce Chandler, a concerned citizen, has been following the Lewes BPW for a few years.
"The recent spillage, this has happened before, there have been malfunctions before ... I am not surprised this happened,” said Chandler.
He believes there is an even bigger problem beyond the flushable wipes.
"I don't know how you control that. Make a wider pipe? Have more pressure behind it? Clean them more often? ... So that needs to be looked into for sure, if that is the cause, but I think the cause is that it's more than they can handle,” said Chandler.
The Board of Public Works is hopeful that pump station #4 will be fixed in a couple days to a week, but cannot make any promises.
