The people at Global Water Resources’ water reclamation plant at times have a real sh*tshow on their hands.

There’s really no better way to accurately describe it, except without the asterisk.

Their multimillion-dollar equipment, paid for through customer rates, often gets all plugged up with baby wipes and Clorox wipes, which literally constipate the system.

“There are a lot, and I mean a lot, of baby wipes, Clorox wipes, all of them are things that get flushed down the toilet and they end up here at our plant,” said Andrew Miller, GWR regional manager in Maricopa. “They ultimately rag up our systems, slow down pumps, things have to get pulled out. You can see it’s a huge undertaking and we want to especially make sure that our employees are safe while their treating all of this.”

Miller showed Maricopa City Council members a graphic photo of a clogged sewer filtration outlet at a Tuesday meeting. As a result, GWR is in the process of upgrading sewage treatment filtration with a “sewer screening initiative that is basically going to catch most, if not all of that before it gets into the system,” Miller said.

“So, we’re not going to have pumps that are down, we’re not going to have issues where we’re in situations where our employees are dealing with a lot of very nasty things,” he added.