Toys block Market Drayton sewer
Someone in Market Drayton has been throwing their toys out of the pram, or in this case... into the toilet!
Severn Trent discovered a sewer blockage at their treatment works in Market Drayton, and when a team investigated, they discovered that the sewer pipe was blocked. The culprit – a toy pistol, golf balls and toy trucks that had been flushed down a toilet, somewhere nearby.
In the last year Severn Trent have been called out to thousands of blockages in Shropshire, of which three quarters were caused by people misusing the sewer system. And the figures for this area show that the situation is getting worse. The number of times Shropshire’s sewers have been blocked has increased by over 75 per cent between November 2013 and March 2014 – almost doubling the number of blockages that we've had to go and clear.
This problem is costing the company over £10million per year to clear sanitary products such as nappies, wipes and in this case children’s toys.
Meirion Turner, service delivery manager said: “We expect sewers to get blocked with fats or baby wipes, and we actually see a lot of children’s toys too. We totally understand how easy it is for young children to drop things into the toilet, but this is just one example of all the amazing things we find blocking the sewers.
"We’ve had everything from fish, pants and slippers to hundreds of knives and forks, all of which are causing problems for the local community.
“These sewer blockages, if not identified and cleared can lead to sewers backing up and overflowing into people’s homes and gardens. And it’s not necessarily the people who put the wrong things down the toilet that are affected. The blockage can happen further down the street, so what you do in your home can be causing a problem for your neighbours. We're spending millions of pounds every year sending teams into sewers with jetting equipment and sometimes even spades to dig out these blockages.
"So get yourself a bin in the bathroom and kitchen and use that rather than the toilet. And if you have small children, keep an eye on their toys – I’m sure they think it’s fun to flush things, but they must miss their toys when they disappear into the sewers.”
