Russ Steele
I hate low-flow flush toilets! Ellen and I have a travel trailer and visit campground across the nation. Although we have a bathroom on board, it is some times more convenient to use the public campground facility. Cuts down on the number times we have to use the dump station. Many of the RV parks have upgraded their facilities with low-flow flush toilets and more often than you would expect they are plugged, close to over flowing. In my experience, your have to flush a low-flow flush toilet multiple times to get the waste product to disappear down the drain. This seem to be contrary to the intended purpose of saving water.
Now we learn of another unintended consequences of those low flush toilets from a story in the San Francisco Chronicle.
San Francisco‘s big push for low-flow toilets has turned into a multimillion-dollar plumbing stink.
Skimping on toilet water has resulted in more sludge backing up inside the sewer pipes, said Tyrone Jue, spokesman for the city Public Utilities Commission. That has created a rotten-egg stench near AT&T Park and elsewhere, especially during the dry summer months.
The city has already spent $100 million over the past five years to upgrade its sewer system and sewage plants, in part to combat the odor problem.
Now officials are stocking up on a $14 million, three-year supply of highly concentrated sodium hypochlorite – better known as bleach – to act as an odor eater and to disinfect the city’s treated water before it’s dumped into the bay.
I wonder of anyone ever thought about the unintended consequences of less water in the sewer system before mandating low-flush toilets? If one of our standard flush toilets break, I am going the junk yard and find replacement. No low-flow toilets for our house! We do not need any unintended consequences.
