CHARLOTTE, N.C.,None — Nearly $1.6 million is spent every year on sewage overflows in Mecklenburg County and most of them are caused by people unwilling to change their habits in the kitchen.
Charlotte Utilities crews are working on cleaning up a sewage overflow that happened Monday. Officials said it was one of the largest in the last six months and it was caused by people pouring cooking grease down their kitchen drains.
Just east of uptown Charlotte, 5,000 gallons of greasy sewage bubbled from a manhole off 7th Street. According to CMUD, it's not uncommon.
"Grease is about 60 percent of our issue," said Grant Gray, who spends his days checking the sewer lines that run under the city for CMUD.
In 10 minutes his crew can clear 1,000 feet of pipe. The trick, he said, is to catch a problem before it happens.
"This one doesn't have any holes in it, so water and grease would be shooting up all around and it would be just flowing and flying out everywhere," he said. "When the weather gets cold, the grease gets hard and it causes our sewer overflows."
Just last year, CMUD responded to 335 sewage spills. Of those, 193 were caused by grease. Each spill costs about $4,800 to repair.
"That conservatively is $1 million a year, just for the response," said Karen Whichard, who also works at CMUD.
Whichard said the spills always increase by about 10 percent around the holidays.
"Thanksgiving is here and we know how people like to fry those turkeys. Well when you finish frying it think about that grease disposal," she said.
Whichard said the best thing to do is take the grease to a recycling center. If a resident clogs their pipes by pouring it down the kitchen sink, it is ultimately the resident paying for it, Whichard said.
CMUD officials said it will take crews a few days more to clean up the sewage spill on 7th Street. Because of the magnitude of the spill, they had to report it to the state.