Houston tweaks Adopt-A-Drain website, rules after sewers linked to sex toy retailer

The City of Houston's Adopt-a-Drain program has been temporarily suspended after a "bad actor" peddling a sex toy website adopted more than 200 drains. The City of Houston's Adopt-a-Drain program has been temporarily suspended after a "bad actor" peddling a sex toy website adopted more than 200 drains. Photo: Twitter Photo: Twitter Image 1 of / 23 Caption Close Houston tweaks Adopt-A-Drain website, rules after sewers linked to sex toy retailer 1 / 23 Back to Gallery

The City of Houston is retooling its Adopt-A-Drain website and program rules after someone adopted more than 200 storm sewers and named them after an online sex toy retailer.

The city late last week disabled a feature on the Adopt-A-Drain website that allows residents to see the sometimes playful nicknames adopters have assigned to their drains after public works employees noticed people essentially were being directed to the website of Phoenix-based Bad Dragon where it sells hand-made dishwasher-safe, hypo-allergenic sex toys.

Attempts to reach Bad Dragon on Monday were unsuccessful.

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It remains unclear whether the company or a satisfied customer was behind the questionable drain adoptions.



The city unveiled the Adopt-A-Drain program just two weeks ago, asking residents to help keep neighborhood storm sewers clear of debris and yard waste to prevent backups and possible flooding during Houston downpours. Adopters are asked to clean 10 feet on either side of the drains at least four times a year.

Almost immediately, the program began to draw attention for some of the names residents put on their adopted drains. Among them: Blue Eyes Crying in the Drain, Drainy McDrain Face, Thomas the Thirsty Trench, Snakes on a Drain, and Sterling Cooper Drainper Pryce.

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As of Monday, more than 500 drains, not including the Bad Dragon sewers, had been adopted, Houston Public Works spokeswoman Alanna Reed said. More than 115,000 storm drains are available for adoption.

"They literally took down the system for all of us," Reed said. "I was really excited because people were coming up with funny and appropriate names. We are working right now getting the system fixed."

The Adopt-A-Drain program was born out of the 2017 Houston Hackathon in partnership with Sketch City, a nonprofit community that advocates for civic technology and open data, Reed said. The goal of the program was to keep water flowing and avoid backups, especially as flood recovery continues following Hurricane Harvey.

Many cities have Adopt-A-Drain programs, including San Francisco, St. Paul and Burlington, Vt.

The Adopt-a-Drain website is still up while nicknames of adopted drains have been hidden, for now.

The city hopes is to have the website running normally Friday with added restrictions on how many drains an individual or business can adopt and what type of nicknames will be allowed, Reed said.

Fernando Alfonso III is a digital reporter at Chron.com. Follow him on Twitter at @fernalfonso.