Jeff Taylor said he has learned a few things since widespread panic broke out during the coronavirus outbreak, perhaps most importantly, that there is no substitute for toilet paper.
Now the 15-year-old San Clemente resident is spending $ 11,200 to replace the street drainage pipe running under his house on Calle Mendoza, nestled in the hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Like many people in Southern California and the nation, Taylor was a victim of the post-purchase toilet paper shortage from panic-related coronavirus. So he turned to an alternative – baby wipes – to clean his bum. Other popular substitutes were paper towels, napkins, and feminine hygiene products.
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“You have to keep yourself clean. I didn’t know what else to do, “said Taylor, 67.” I’ve been thinking about newspapers. The towels weren’t that big. A couple of passes with one of these and you will feel clean and good. “
Other residents across Southern California have made the same mistake by generating hundreds of calls to plumbers for service and urging public sewage officials to warn people to stop flushing toilet paper substitutes.
“Please remember, toilets are not trash cans,” said a recent joint notice from the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. “Only the three Ps – pee, poo and (toilet) paper – belong in the toilet.”
The problem is nationwide. The New York Times reported that in Charleston, South Carolina; northeastern Ohio; Lexington, Kentucky; Austin, Texas; and Spokane, Wash., sewage treatment officials have urged residents not to flush the towels down the toilet using the hashtag #WipesClogPipes.
Looking for TP
But, like a lot of people, it wasn’t like Taylor didn’t go out of his way to find toilet paper. After several attempts to buy it from Ralphs Fresh Fare, his usual place to shop for groceries and household items, Taylor went to the most reliable source he could think of: Amazon.
“The toilet paper and paper towels I ordered from Amazon haven’t arrived yet, and I ordered them almost a month ago,” he said on Friday.
He then went to the online auction site eBay, which turned out to be even more futile. He found a four-pack of Charmins that was auctioned off with a starting bid of $ 200.
“I actually emailed the person selling it and said, ‘If this is real, God has a special place in hell for you,” said Taylor, a retired real estate agent.
Plumber on a roll
Orange County’s plumbers Frank Vega and Derek Mallet stayed with Taylor all day Thursday and Friday replacing his sewers.
Vega said Taylor called her Anaheim employer, Barker and Sons Plumbing & Rooter, and reported that none of the toilets in his 57-year-old single-story home were clogged.
“We came out and ran our camera through the cast iron pipe and found baby wipes there,” Vega said on Friday. The pipe was rusty and decrepit too, so Taylor told them to just replace the whole thing.
Vega said he has responded to similar calls in Orange County over the past two weeks, including Anaheim, Orange, Yorba Linda, Mission Viejo, Aliso Viejo and Costa Mesa.
“Before the virus, our average daily calls for clogs was probably four a day, and now we make 10 to 13 calls a day,” Vega said.
“This has been an ongoing business,” said Mike Barker, owner and president of Barker and Sons. He said if baby wipes, paper towels, and other non-biodegradable materials are constantly being flushed down the toilet, it usually means trouble.
“If they get into the drainage system, it will be causing a problem most of the time,” Barker said.
Vega said that of the last 10 calls he answered related to clogged toilets and sewers, seven were from baby wipes and the others were from flushing feminine hygiene products. “We even pulled out underwear in one,” he said.
Sean Kurdoglu, general manager of Roto Rooter’s Inland Empire office in Rancho Cucamonga, said service requests attributable to clogged pipes have increased by about 10 percent in the Inland Empire alone in the past two weeks, Rialto and Riverside below other.
Other cities in Southern California that have seen the number of service requests have spiked include Los Angeles, Long Beach, Anaheim, West Covina, Covina, Downey, and Cerritos, Kurdoglu said. In Redding, California, someone was using a tattered t-shirt to replace TP.
“We don’t have any major problems in the Southern California market with securing urban sewers, but we are seeing more problems with residential management,” Kurdoglu said.
Public bodies affected
The problem has forced the public water authorities to post public notices warning people of the problems caused by flushing non-biodegradable products down the toilet.
Aaron Kraft, general manager of Rialto Water Services, operated by Veolia North America, a transnational water and wastewater management company, said the agency’s 100,000 customers will receive a flyer on their next water bill preventing them from Baby wipes and paper to rinse towels, handkerchiefs and feminine hygiene products on the toilet. The information is already published on the agency’s website.
While there have been no reports of significant clogging in the city’s sewer system, workers have discovered a build-up of disinfectant wipes in the purification plant’s filtration system.
“We saw a higher build-up of this material – the rags, the tissues that people flush into the toilet,” said Kraft.
The California State Water Resources Control Board, in a March 17 press release, stated that flushing towels, paper towels, and similar items in toilets can not only clog sewers, but also create backups and overflows in wastewater treatment plants, adding an additional risk for represents public health in the US amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“Even wipes labeled ‘flushable’ clog pipes and interfere with wastewater collection and treatment across the state.” according to the press release.
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