2020 will go down in history as a year with many firsts. Coronavirus, quarantine, home schooling, essential workers, COVID Clog. Wait… what was that last one? Yes, as if we don’t have enough on our overly stressed minds in this time of mass hysteria. It seems we also have a looming sewer system dilemma. Some are calling it the COVID Clog. Cleverly named after the COVID-19 toilet paper shortage of 2020.
Let’s not dive down the rabbit hole of why there is or was a toilet paper shortage. Nobody knows. So let’s not try to understand it, let’s just discuss what it’s doing.
Social media is full of memes about using everything from paper towel to socks in order to…*{cough}*…address the mess. Though many of us have found these entertaining as we scroll through our days under house arrest, some aren’t laughing at all. The reality is people are actually flushing things that shouldn’t be flushed. This is a common problem for the keepers of our country’s over 800,000 miles of public sewer infrastructure, but not to this degree.
There are reports of sewage systems clogging across the country as Americans face a toilet paper shortage. “Toilets are not trash cans,” the Environmental Protection Agency said in a tweet March 24th, using the hashtag #wipesclogpipes.
Most people don’t fully understand or don’t really care what happens when they push the handle on the porcelain god, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t. There’s a serious amount of infrastructure and resources at work to move and treat that flush so that it can be safely released back into the ecosystem. Americans send over 32 billion gallons of waste to treatment facilities per day. Nobody wants to block that flow to its final destination.
The inability to monitor or control what is flushed leaves the flow of yesterday to the technology of today. Municipalities have used Combo Sewer Cleaners for years to maintain their infrastructure. Now it certainly seems they will be the front line of defense against the “Great COVID Clog” of 2020.
Here at Custom Truck One Source, we have the equipment on hand to help those fighting the fight nobody wants to talk about. With units positioned at nearly all of our 26 locations, we can help the contractors and municipalities cut through the clog. Our sewer cleaners provide up to 80gpm move the mess and the most powerful vacuum systems in the industry to remove it. Contact us today to schedule a demo.
