Thanksgiving means food and family - but when you're gathered around the table, the last thing you want is a backup in the bathroom or worse.
When you think of the ingredients for your dinner, you don't know that what's going down the drain could spoil your holiday. While turkey is on your mind, trouble could be lurking beyond the drain if you let grease and other kitchen scrapes go down your pipes.
“It’s a bad idea because what it does is it causes backups in our system,” said Diego Gonzalez, from the Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Management Department.
Miami-Dade's WASD serves 2.4 million people around the clock, including on Thanksgiving. When grease ends up lining sewers, it can ultimately cause a blockage that sends a stinky surprise back into your bathroom.
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“The grease, it creates a film on the pipe. And that film with time, it goes getting harder,” Gonzalez said. “It goes building up and building up and building up and then it’s gonna cause a backup.”
At the Kendall pump station, pumps can handle the grease but there is something else they can't handle so well.
“Wipes, anything that is solid should not be poured down the drain or down the toilet,” Gonzalez said.
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It's a reminder that your toilet is not a trash can and respecting that rule can help keep your holiday emergency free.
“You don’t want to have a case where you have all your family members at home and tell them we can’t use the bathroom because we’re clogged,” Gonzalez said.
