Ten-Ton Fatberg

A 10-ton mass of congealed fat and wet wipes was recently removed from the London sewer it destroyed. The 130-foot-long “fatberg” was under the streets of Chelsea, home to posh restaurants, all of them pouring cooking grease down the bunghole, and prestigious residences flushing wet wipes down the loo. It will take four months and $600,000 to repair the sewer.

This is far from a UK record. In 2013 a 15-ton fatberg was removed from  a sewer in Kingston.

Updates:

“Wet wipes could face wipe-out in plastic clean-up,” BBC

“A Pretty, Seaside Town in England Vanquished Its Giant Fatberg,” Jessica Leigh Hester, Atlas Obscura

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Fatbergs in the Sewers

A glob of fat the size of a school bus was stuck in the London sewers. The 15-ton ‘fatberg‘ formed when waste food fat congealed around discarded wet wipes in the main drains under London Road in Kingston, Surrey. The blockage was removed by engineers before raw sewage started spurting out of neighborhood manholes. Fatberg-damaged sewer pipes will take six weeks to repair.