Toy car ‘parked illegally’ in sewers in Cornwall

A water firm has asked the public to be more careful of what they flush away after a “bizarre collection” of items were found washed down drains.

Engineers from South West Water (SWW) said they had found various items in the sewers including a toy car in Hayle, a plastic Iron Man model in Penzance and a traffic cone and football in Kingsbridge.

They said blockages in pipework caused by inappropriate items caused a variety of problems including flooding.

Jay Harris, SWW director of waste water operations, said: “We’re always working to stay prepared for the unexpected, but when a toy car was parked illegally in a sewer pipe, we knew this wasn’t your average day.”

Mr Harris added: “It’s amazing what turns up in our sewers and we really don’t know how these mysterious items get there.”

He said SWW’s teams were “constantly battling with culprits like wet wipes, cooking fat and cotton pads”.

“But sometimes we have a little surprise,” added waste water operations manager Jenny Eamer.

She said: “Some more recent finds have been a toy car that’s blocked the sewer, a football, we’ve had traffic cones and once upon time we found a toy kids scooter.

“So yes, we never quite know what we may find when we’re doing CCTV and sometimes we can’t understand how an item the size that it is has managed to find its way into our sewer.”

The water firm clears about 8,500 avoidable blockages each year “at a cost of millions”, Mr Harris said.

Ms Eamer said: “Sewer pipes can be all sizes, they’re not all big sort of London huge ones you can walk down.

“Be careful about what you’re putting down sinks and the toilet.

“All we really want are our three Ps, which is pee, paper and poo.”