Wet wipes flushed down Anchorage toilets wreak havoc on city water utility, contributing to higher costs

For 10 years, part of Brian Schmitz's job at Anchorage's Asplund Wastewater Treatment Facility was "de-ragging" equipment.

That is, manually removing masses of fouled wipes flushed down people's toilets that eventually congeal throughout the sewage system and gunk up equipment.

"Rags" are what people in the water treatment business call the broad class of consumer products known as "wipes" — baby wipes, disinfectant wipes and "personal cleansing wipes" that are used like toilet paper, with names like Dude Wipes, Stall Mates and GoodWipes Flushable Butt Wipes. Manufacturers declare boldly on the packaging that the items are "flushable."

"That's what the rags do," said Schmitz, now the plant's superintendent, pointing to what looked like a mound of frozen seaweed piled on a dumpster. It was a conglomeration of browned wipes saturated with raw sewage overflowing from a hopper. It smelled like a neglected zoo enclosure on a hot summer day.

"We call 'em 'rope rags,'" Schmitz said, referring to the phenomenon of many individual wipes getting spun, mashed and twisted around one another until the mass grows so large it bedevils screening equipment. Plant operators, like Schmitz in his younger years, must periodically extract the rope rags with chains, pitchforks and a custom-made treble hook that looks like a tool for fishing giant squid.

"(We get) this amount probably every three or four days," he added, staring at the specimen heaped before him in the treatment plant's lower level.

Like public water and sewer utilities all over the country, Anchorage has a rag problem. The products are typically made from non-woven fabrics derived from petrochemicals, though some brands tout their organic composition. Technically speaking, they are indeed "flushable," in that they will disappear down a toilet and move through the sewer system. But unlike toilet paper, wipes do not break down in water. Instead, they clutter and clog utility equipment designed to pump huge volumes of organic waste and water toward the Asplunt plant, where it is treated and discharged into Cook Inlet.

"For the wastewater industry, the cost of wipes in it is horrendous," said Sandy Baker, the coordinator of public outreach for the Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility.

The AWWU facility is the largest treatment plant in Alaska, taking in 30 million gallons of wastewater each day. The greatest volume of wipes ends up there, between 6,000 and 7,000 pounds daily belched through an 8-foot diameter pipe that feeds "influent wastewater" into filtration chutes. The majority of those wipes are removed from the water system during the screening process, along with all kinds of detritus, from gritty bits of sand and rock to clothing and household trash.

But the rope rags are too massive for that, and have to be manually dislodged. This happens not just at the main Asplund facility but from smaller pumps scattered all throughout the sewer system.

"We probably have more wear and tear (at) our pumps," Baker said. "It's thousands upon thousands of dollars for one of those pumps."

Wipes are not a new issue for AWWU. But the problems they cause worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic because more of them were getting flushed, and the volume has not returned to its pre-pandemic level.

"Everybody was using them to wipe down their surfaces," Schmitz said.

"People got used to it," Baker cut in.

"They got in the habit of buying the wipes and being 'ultra hygienic,'" Schimitz added.

This was a national trend. It got so bad during the early lockdown phase that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a notice.

"Flushing anything other than toilet paper, including disinfecting wipes, can damage internal plumbing, local sewer system. Fixing these backups is costly and takes time and resources away from ensuring that wastewater management systems are otherwise working properly," the agency wrote in March 2020.

Wipes are not the only bathroom detritus that jam up the flow of sewage. Schmitz said other particularly troublesome grooming supplies that show up are dental floss, hair ties and rubber bands, all of which get tangled in gears and knot around machinery.

Organic matter that arrives at Asplund is incinerated. But the tons of matted wipes can't be, and instead are diverted and then put into dump trucks to be hauled off each day to the landfill, along with about five tons of ash from the incinerated poop.

Calculating the exact cost incurred on the utility from wipes is tricky, in part because they've been gunking up the sewage system for long enough that the procedures for dealing with them are routine.

"So you don't even know how much you'd be saving if they weren't there," Baker said.

In 2020, the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, which lobbies for water utilities around the country, published a report that sought to calculate the cost of wipes on public water systems across America.

The researchers used a conservative methodology to arrive at a price tag of $441 million per year in additional costs. That figure primarily came through operating costs from sending employees to clean and repair equipment choked with wipes. It did not include capital expenditures for replacing equipment that breaks or degrades more rapidly because of wipes.

Schmitz lost an auger to rags this year, but said it's difficult to directly attribute equipment failures to them. Rather, he thinks the costs show up in a shorter lifespan for equipment that wears out more quickly.

Earlier this month, the Anchorage Assembly voted to allow a proposed increase in rates for AWWU customers. If state regulators approve the plan, it will mean roughly 5% more on ratepayers' water bills, equating to $72 more per year. In explaining the increase, AWWU has cited rising costs from permitting, commercial chemicals, and labor, a portion of which is applied to de-ragging sewage equipment.

Seven states have dealt with the problem by passing legislation mandating that wipe products be clearly labeled as non-flushable. And this past June, Congress passed the Wastewater Infrastructure Pollution Prevention and Environments Safety Act, or WIPPES Act. The measure, cosponsored by outgoing Democratic Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola, would "require certain products be labeled with 'Do Not Flush' labeling," and establish penalties for violations. The bill was sent over to the Senate, where it has remained in the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.

Should the act pass, it might eventually change customers' understanding and purchasing habits of "flushable wipes," Baker said, but it won't be a panacea for the water industry's wipe woes. It also may be hard to get people to abandon habits they've had for years without ever viewing the toll it takes on public infrastructure.

Baker and Schmitz both said that educating the public is the factor that will ultimately make the biggest difference. In its public releases and social media posts, AWWU regularly pleads with people not to dispose of them in pipes and septic tanks, including in a 12-minute video Baker narrated about the utility's treatment plants.

"They cause havoc in the system," Baker says at one point. "Please, don't flush any wipes, even if they say 'flushable.' Just throw them away."