The strangest things found in Coventry’s sewers

Poo, pee and paper – the three P’s. That’s what Severn Trent has begged businesses and residents to throw away in their toilets. However, all sorts of things end up at the Finham water treatment plant.

On a regular Thursday afternoon visit, Severn Water showed the load of wet wipes and rags that had been heading to the facility. However, among the piles were things ranging from socks to children’s toys and even a square of carpet.

What’s more, the plant also receives input from some of the surface drains that line public streets, meaning cigarette butts, needles and lots of sand can find their way into the plant. Severn Trent’s head of blockage strategy, Grant Mitchell, said nothing else should go near the sink or toilet.

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“Wet wipes, diapers, cotton balls, dental floss, sanitary products. Such things should be bagged and put in the trash.”

As for the kitchen, Mitchell said that dry wiping greasy pots and pans has helped tremendously in keeping the pipes clean.

“All that food scraps, especially sauces and gravy, and that if they end up down the sink, they’re going to freeze with things like wet wipes and make a fatberg that clogs the drain. Once the sewer gets blocked, it can no longer reach the works and instead will go back to where it came from, which unfortunately could be on your property, in a park or in a river.”

Two large pipes crammed with frozen waste slowly spread the product over a concrete slab before it is collected in a skip. It’s a slow and seemingly endless movement of garbage, somewhat like the first squirt of a new tube of toothpaste.

It’s easy to think of the sink or toilet as a mysterious hole where things disappear into thin air, but when it comes to the three P’s, it’s a process of recycling. Dirty water is turned into fresh, clean water that goes back into the river system and eventually to the Bristol Channel.

The only problem is bottlenecks, which team leader Sam Craig said can mean manpower being allocated away from other important tasks.

“The reactive side is where it really hurts. Where we don’t expect something to fail and it does, we could talk for hours, sometimes days, about a problem.

Craig said there was a faulty pump at the pump station, it took a minimum of two people to lift the pump and possibly more to vacuum depending on the severity of the problem. The impact of businesses on individuals was also highlighted.

For businesses where there is a clear record of them operating in a premises where the origin of any inappropriate material in the pipeline can be identified, it is easier to take punitive action. This means that if there was a construction site, for example, with an open drain where gravel, debris, chemicals and other materials were dumped, it is easier to take action against that company.

However, individuals are much more difficult to track wet wipes and other non-washable substances. Mitchell said that even though some products are labeled as flushable, that doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t clog a pipe.

“In a dream world where only the three P’s were washed, it would be such a simple system. Our staff should just go through the network, checking that everything worked and making a better customer experience.

“The message is slowly getting out there and we have significantly reduced blockages in recent years through our campaigns. We are solving this very well, but we still need to get the message out to everyone.”