Museum stakes claim as battle begins to clear giant ‘fatberg’ in London sewer

LONDON — Sewage workers have found a 130-tonne ball of congealed fat — dubbed a “monster fatberg” — clogging a Victorian-era sewer in London, utility company Thames Water said Tuesday.

Engineers expect it will take up to three weeks to remove the rock-solid mass of festering food fat mixed with diapers and sanitary wipes found in drains under a major road in Whitechapel, east London.

“This fatberg is up there with the biggest we’ve ever seen. It’s a total monster and taking a lot of manpower and machinery to remove as it’s set hard,” Matt Rimmer, Thames Water’s head of waste, said in a statement.

“It’s basically like trying to break up concrete. It’s frustrating as these situations are totally avoidable and caused by fat, oil and grease being washed down sinks and wipes flushed down the loo,” he added.

Images show that the sewer is totally blocked by the 250-meterlong fatberg.

An eight-member crew is removage ing an average of 20 to 30 tons a day, the statement explained, using highpowered jet hoses to break up the mass which is then sucked out into tankers.

Weighing the same as 11 double decker buses, the fatberg easily eclipses the one found in 2013 in Kingston, southwest London.

Described at the time as Britain’s biggest ever fatberg, it weighed 15 tons and took 10 days to clear up.

Thames Water clears up an aver- of three fat-related blockages and five blockages caused by items including wet wipes every hour from its sewers in London and the Thames Valley.

It costs the company around 1 million ($1.3 million) a month.

Rather than being completely destroyed, however, a section of the fatberg could end up in the Museum of London, who are trying to acquire a piece to display.

Museum director Sharon Ament said on Wednesday that adding the fatberg to its collection “would raise questions about how we live today and also inspire our visitors to consider solutions to the problems of growing metropolises”.

Alex Werner, the museum’s curator, added: “This item hits home that we do have quite an old infrastructure. Our sewer system dates back to the mid-19th century.”

The museum hopes to obtain a cross-section of the fatberg. It hasn’t decided how it would be displayed.

It’s a total monster and taking a lot of manpower and machinery to remove as it’s set hard.” Matt Rimmer, Thames Water’s head of waste