A town in America is so backed up with poo it's closed down

A town in Massachusetts is in a state of emergency as it was forced to close down due to too much poo.

On Thursday, Provincetown issued an emergy declaration on its website and Facebook, which said that any restaurant or food business utilising its vacuum sewer system must close quickly.

It also said that residential properties on the system should also limit the water use, including instances of "dishwashing, laundry, showering and only flush when absolutely necessary."

The town's officials also anticipated needing up to 48 hours to repair the vacuum system and get it running, as usual, Town Manager Alex Morse noted.

He also explained that the restaurant shut-downs in the town are necessary to "prevent a further public health emergency caused by sewer overflows."

Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

Reducing the flow into the sewers will help the repair get done.

On Thursday and Friday and the town also had 18 port-a-potties arriving at 11 a.m. that was being set up on Ryder Street near Town Hall.

The sewer emergency also doesn't impact sewer customers that are on the gravity system or properties with on-location septic systems.

A map of the different sewage systems was posted on Facebook. The vacuum system is colour-coded in brown, and the gravity system is in green.

The town said it would provide updates throughout the next couple of days.

Provincetown's sewer emergency came after a major storm crashed on Tuesday afternoon.

It brought on bringing relentless rain showers and caused some local flooding.

According to NBC 10 Boston, the Provincetown Police Department noted that on that day, the central vacuum sewer station experienced an electrical malfunction due to the extensive rain.

At that time as well, the police said staff at the Wastewater Treatment Facility were doing their best to remedy the problem.

This is not the first time Provincetown's Commercial Street area experienced sewage issues.

On Independence Day weekend in 2009, the Cape Cod Times reported that raw sewage bubbled from underground and ran like "a river."

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.