Cooking Grease Caused Sewer Main Break

Marlboro Township, NJ - Cooking grease.

That’s what clogged a sewer main and resulted in four homes on Mccue Road being flooded with sewage on Sunday afternoon, Brian Valentino, executive director of the Western Monmouth Utilities Authority told Patch Monday.

At 12:37 p.m. Sunday, police got a call about water seeping up through a manhole cover on Mccue Road, said Captain Fred Reck with the Marlboro Township Police Department. As police responded, another homeowner called in to report sewage water leaking into his basement.

The cause? A local sewer line had become blocked with cooking grease, causing liquid in the line to seep out and flood into nearby homes, said Valentino. In total, four homes experienced raw sewage flooding into their homes Sunday, Reck said — three on Mccue Road and one on MacKenzie Terrace.

“We were dealing with a beachball-sized blockage of grease,” said Valentino. “We used a high-pressure jet of water to clear it out on Sunday.”

The flooding was not major, police said, however it did require the township health department to be called in. All the homes were deemed habitable.

Many people carelessly discard cooking grease down their kitchen sink, Valentino said, and it’s often the No. 1 cause of blocking pipes. Blockages usually occur during a change in temperature: As the weather cools suddenly, such as now, grease that has long accumulated in pipes becomes cold, solid and binding, and can clog pipes.

People often pour grease down drains from cooking, but grease can also make its way into drains from cosmetics and cleanings, Valentino said. Another major offender of clogging drains is ”flushable” diaper wipes, which really are not flushable at all, he said.