"A blockage estimated to be around 100 tonnes has been cleared from a west London sewer. Thames Water said a specialist team took more than a month to remove the so-called "fatberg" that was more than 10 metres (32ft) below street level in Feltham. The solid mass weighed as much as eight double-decker buses and consisted mainly of wet wipes held together by fat, oil and grease."
"But while some blockages in our biggest sewers can weigh as much as 25 elephants, we must not forget most blockages occur in local pipes - often narrower than a mobile phone and usually caused by a few households. When these pipes get blocked, we can't simply switch off the sewage. It backs up and must come out somewhere, whether that's roads, rivers or even people's homes. The consequences can be devastating."
A blockage estimated at around 100 tonnes was cleared from a west London sewer in Feltham. The fatberg sat more than 10 metres below street level and weighed as much as eight double-decker buses. The mass consisted mainly of wet wipes bound by fat, oil and grease. A specialist team accessed the sewer through a large manhole chamber equipped with gas monitors, then blasted, chiselled and sucked the blockage along 125 metres of pipes. The waste was craned into skips and taken to landfill. Thames Water clears about 75,000 blockages a year, removes some 3.8 million wipes annually and incurs operations costing 18m.
Read at www.bbc.com
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