by William Rabb

Milk. Cooking oil. Sanitary wipes.

These three innocuous-sounding materials wreck havoc in the pipes, say ECUA officials. When poured down the drain or flushed down the toilet, they can cause millions of dollars worth of problems for the sewage system.

“Milk is the number-one, worst thing you can put down the drain,” said Jim Roberts, spokesman for the Emerald Coast Utilities Authority.

Milk is full of fats that don't dissolve in water and can quickly clabber in a drain pipe. Cooking oil, likewise, won't wash away, and hardens and builds up inside sewer lines. And despite the “disposable” and “flushable” labels, sanitary wipes, also known by the brand name Handi Wipes, don't degrade like toilet tissue does.

Together, these three materials were responsible for almost 400 sanitary sewer overflows in the last 10 years across the ECUA system, utility data show.

The stuff turns into a gummy mess, restricting flow through drain pipes, causing backups and clogging pumping stations. And while the numbers have dropped in recent years, these items are still a problem, said Stephen Holcomb, ECUA's director of wastewater infrastructure.

To combat the scourge, ECUA has beefed up a public awareness campaign, urging residents and businesses alike to never flush anything other than human waste and toilet paper, and to never pour grease or milk down the drain.

The utility presents awards every year to food-service companies who do the best job of keeping grease out of drain lines. And ECUA this week opened a new residential cooking oil disposal station in Perdido Key. The site is at the Escambia County Sheriff's substation, 12950 Gulf Beach Highway, where residents can pick up free plastic containers of varying sizes and drop off the cooking oil, which will be reprocessed into biodiesel motor fuel, Roberts said.

Other disposal sites are listed on the ECUA website.

ECUA also offers curbside disposal of used cooking oil, motor oil, paint and other hazardous materials on the first Saturday of the month for residents whose trash is collected by ECUA. Residents are asked to call 850-476-0480 ahead of time.

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