Urban Legend: Super Bowl causes super spike in Sewer Lines

      There is quite a grimy urban legend that surrounds Super Bowl Sunday and it goes something like this: During Super Bowl half time a mass influx of people go to the bathroom at the same time and that causes a spike the flow of sewers into treatment plants. I suppose logically speaking that should make sense, but practically speaking, no, it doesn't work that way.

      Kevin Enfinger, a senior project engineer with ADS Environmental Services, states that this is not the case at all. Enfinger states, "If you were at the stadium, you would see a spike at halftime when people tend to run to the restroom, but in residential America, that's not really what we find." In fact. he states that Super Bowl Sunday is a slow day, because people are stopping what they would normally do, such as shower, wash their hands, use the bathroom, etcera, and instead they are watching the game. 

      During the 2007 Super Bowl, when the Indianapolis Colts played the Chicago Bears, ADS Environmental Services used its equipment set up at an Indianapolis sewage treatment plant to measure Super Bowl flows. What the company found is a spike in usage before the game and below-average usage during game time.

      The change in bathroom activity also depends on what part of the country you are in. For example, if an East Coast team is playing, sewage flows out West will likely match what they do on any given Sunday, Enfinger said.

      The expanse of the sewer system also makes it difficult to accurately measure a halftime spike in activity. "If you've got 30 or 40 miles of sewer lines, obviously the flows that are flushed close to the plant would come in, go through it and be gone before the flows from 30 miles away," he said. "It's not like it's all instantaneous. It may take up to eight hours for that flow to get here from different parts of the system."