Corrections1 Staff
LANCASTER, Pa. — Inmates at a prison in Pennsylvania have flushed so many towels, sneakers and other debris down facility toilets that problems have begun to arise for operators of the local sewage treatment plant, the Associated Press is reporting.
And now county taxpayers will pay up to $225,000 to provide a remedy.
On Wednesday, County commissioners approved spending $225,000 to install a large filter in the prison’s sewer main to catch debris that shouldn’t be there before it reaches Lancaster’s sewer system. The items mess up motors and grinders in the system.
“They will flush just about anything they can stuff in a toilet — sheets, towels, clothes, sneakers,” said Barry Garman, project manager for the facilities management department, in an interview with the Intelligencer Journal.
In some instances, items flushed by prisoners have clogged the system so badly that the pumps have stopped working completely.
“We’ve had to pull out motors a few times to unwrap strings that got wrapped around them,” Charlotte Katzenmoyer, Lancaster’s director of public works, told the Intelligencer Journal. “The best way to deal with this stuff is to get rid of it at the source.”
The planned modifications to the prison sewer system should be completed this year.