Halftime sewer surge? Packers myth flushed down toilet

• Capacity of sewage%2C water delivery systems too huge to see impact of home games
• Average weekday morning in Green Bay area sees more water useage
• Lambeau Field has its own sewage holding tank%2C which gets pumped out over days following home game

Packers Pride is big in this area, but not as big as the Green Bay Metropolitan Sewerage District.

It turns out that the famous halftime flush, when water usage surges dramatically throughout the community as a couple hundred thousand Packers fans rush off to the bathroom at the same time, is nothing but a myth.

Or, at least, it doesn't register on any important dials and gauges. The Green Bay Water Utility checked water consumption for two of this season's biggest home games, the Oct. 2 Vikings game and the Nov. 9 Bears game, both played in the evening, and water usage was unremarkable, according to Russ Hardwick of the utility.

"I would consider water usage on these days to be typical for a Sunday evening," he said. "We did not notice any increase in water usage."

The metropolitan sewerage district, which markets its services under the name NEW Water, serves a 285-square-mile area. That includes a lot of Packers fans. Brian Vander Loop, field service manager for the district, estimates it covers about a quarter-million people.

For the sake of argument, Vander Loop suggested, let's assume every one of them is a Packers fan, and every one of them – even the babies in diapers – is glued to the TV set or at the game, along with another 25,000 people visiting Green Bay for the game.

If every one of them rushed off to the bathroom in a single 15-minute period like halftime — also unlikely — it would mean about 450,000 gallons of water being flushed through NEW Water's system almost at one time. If it happened that way — and it wouldn't be anywhere near that — it would still not register on NEW Water's system, Vander Loop said. It would be less than .07 of a cubic foot of waste water in a system whose smallest pipe can handle almost a full cubic foot of waste water per second, Vander Loop said.

"And that's only if everybody could have access to a toilet in that 15-minute period," he said.

Even at Lambeau Field itself, where a lot of people are crammed into a relatively small space, the impact on the sewer system is miniscule. That's partly because all 80,000 people at the stadium couldn't possibly use the bathrooms at the same time, Vander Loop said.

But there's also the matter of a septic holding tank built below the stadium about 10 years ago. It allows sewage to be discharged into the metro system at a steady, controlled rate over the days following a home game.

The fact is, on an average weekday morning, when thousands of school kids and laborers are showering and getting ready for their day, water usage and waste water discharge is far higher than at any single moment during a Packers home game, Vander Loop said.

— psrubas@pressgazettemedia.com and follow him on Twitter@PGpaulsrubas.