The owners of a popular caravan park in Queensland are pleading with travellers to make one small change that could stop thousands of dollars from going down the drain.
This week, Amanda and Blake from Stanthorpe Holiday Park were faced with an expensive and rather smelly $4,000 “disaster” when their septic system became clogged with wipes.
“We discovered that the chopper pump that runs our septic system had blown up and wasn’t processing, so we had 10,000 litres of poop about to explode into the park,” Amanda told Yahoo News.
The system was clogged with flushable wipes, which turned out to be not so flushable. Source: Stanthorpe Holiday Park
“The seven-metre-deep pit was completely full – and this was the first day of the school holidays too, mind you.”
The pump was choked with wipes, flushed down the loo by visitors despite multiple signs in the toilet block warning them not to.
Donning a pair of gloves, Blake managed to fix the mess on Friday morning but it wasn’t a pleasant task.
“He’s very brave. He just goes, ‘don’t come near me. I’m covered in everybody else’s DNA’,” Amanda said.
Photos from the site show Blake holding up a dirty wipe at arm’s length, with a pile of muck-covered wipes lying on the ground in front of him.
The cost of a new pump set the pair back $3,000, along with an additional $1,000 to have the pit emptied.
“During busy school holidays, it’s very inconvenient to have to do that. And obviously, the cost involved too means we basically lose our profits for the whole school holidays which, as a country park, we rely on,” she said.
Amanda and Blake are issuing a plea to all travellers to PLEASE stop flushing wipes down the toilet. Source: Stanthorpe Holiday Park
The ordeal has prompted Amanda and Blake to issue a plea to travellers to never flush wipes down the toilet, even if they are labelled as ‘flushable’.
“It’s absolutely not flushable, it still can cause major issues,” she said.
“The three Ps is what you should always flush – pee, poo and (toilet) paper – and anything else should go in the bin. With a big please!
“It’s for any park, and particularly the country parks because the sewage systems can be very delicate and expensive to maintain.”
Stanthorpe Holiday Park provides a specific type of toilet paper that is designed to dissolve into septic systems. Amanda advises guests to use what the parks have provided before bringing in your own supplies.
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