Yorkshire Water says ‘stop it, don’t block it’

False teeth, a space hopper and gold jewellery are among the bizarre items that have been found blocking the county’s sewers.

Yorkshire Water’s ‘sewer crusaders’ have already been called out 50,888 times across the region so far this year - with 7,241 of the call-outs in Leeds.

Nearly a third of the county’s blockages were caused by wet wipes, with several tonnes being pulled out of sewage plants in every city every weekend.

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The firm has now launched its ‘stop it, don’t block it’ campaign, urging people to only flush away toilet paper.

James Harrison, technical manager, said: “We’re noticing a significant increase in the amount of sewer blockages related to wet wipes in particular. We understand information from manufacturers can be quite confusing as some products say flushable on the packaging; however, we would urge people to flush only ‘the 3Ps’ - poo, pee and paper down the toilet and to put anything else in the bin to try and prevent sewers from becoming blocked.”

In the worst case scenario, blockages could cause raw sewage to flood back into people’s homes. Yorkshire Water’s sewer technicians use high pressure water spray jets to clear the blockages and reduce that risk.

The company will also be investing £252 million to improve the quality of the region’s sewer network.

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