Whether you use a septic system or are connected to a public sewer, prepare to open your wallet wide to address issues that can occur when we flush wipes.
More than one in five households in the U.S. depend on individual septic (decentralized) systems or small community cluster systems to treat their wastewater. If you flush wipes down the toilet and into a septic tank, they enter their own leach fields and private systems. “Then they start plugging up the leaching systems, and next thing you know, they get overflows out of these private sewer systems that are leaching in the ground and the waterways—it’s more than just the public sewer that’s affected,” Carter says. “And if you have your own private lease system, that cost to you to dig that up and replace it could be $15,000 to $20,000. For a typical family, that’s a lot of down money.”
Plumbing costs can range anywhere from a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars when dealing with flushable wipe backups, says master plumber Dave Yates, owner of Yates PHCP-PVF and HVAC Consulting. This price will depend on whether you need service on weekends, holidays, and after normal business hours, and whether a firm offers flat-rate pricing. Yates says clogging your pipes with wipes can open up a real can of worms. “It is not uncommon for wipes to bring to light compound problems,” Yates says. “Tree roots will snag flushable products as will broken/separated/cracked piping, and bellies lying partially or completely full will offer a safe haven for things, like wipes, to gather together and pile up.”
Repairing a public sewer line isn’t chump change, either. According to NYC Environmental Protection, repairing a sewer line in New York City can cost between $10,000 and $15,000. According to the NACWA, the highest levels of wastewater collection occur in California, New York, Illinois, Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Florida. States with the highest utility costs stemming from flushed wipes tend to be located along the coasts or in heavily populated industrial areas in the Midwest.
On a national level, Steve Dye, senior director of government affairs at WEF, says every utility—small, medium, and large—bears a substantial cost due to wipes going through their system. Larger utilities can bear those costs a little more, he says, because they have the capacity and taxpayer base, while people using small utilities may struggle when that utility has to raise rates to meet their compliance obligations under the Clean Water Act. “The lower-income taxpayers, individuals in cities, big cities, and small little towns, are really, really struggling with those rate increases,” Dye says.
Future cost predictions for clean water infrastructure needs (including the damage caused by flushable wipes) look grim, too. According to the 2022 Clean Watersheds Needs Survey, which the Environmental Protection Agency releases every two years, the EPA estimated that utilities would need $630 billion over the next 20 years to meet the Clean Water Act water quality goals, not taking into account future regulations to address substances such as PFAS, according to Dye. This cost is not just to address issues with wipes but includes wastewater treatment, conveyance system repair, stormwater management, and more.
